{"id":4940,"date":"2008-10-14T12:14:15","date_gmt":"2008-10-14T19:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4940"},"modified":"2008-10-14T12:14:15","modified_gmt":"2008-10-14T19:34:03","slug":"jerkbag-of-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4940","title":{"rendered":"Jerkbag of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

My daughter was named before my ex-wife and I got engaged and long before she was conceived; we both liked the name “Katherine,” and the middle name was a tradition for daughters in my ex’s family — and one that worked well with Katie. Had my daughter been instead a son, we might have had more trouble deciding. But we would have decided together, with the same focus we did with our daughter’s name — focusing on a meaningful name that would also be a good name, one that our child could bear happily through life.I cannot imagine instead choosing to name my child as a publicity stunt. And I sure as hell can’t imagine doing so over her mother’s objection<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A new father has named his baby girl Sarah McCain Palin as an endorsement for Republican ticket…and without his wife\u2019s consent. Mark Ciptak of Tennessee says he picked the name to \u201cget the word out\u201d for McCain-Palin because he can\u2019t give a lot of money to the campaign. \u201cI took one for the cause,\u201d he said. He wrote the name on the documents for his daughter\u2019s birth certificate, ignoring the name his wife picked, Ava Grace.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You took one for the cause? You<\/em> took one for the cause? Seriously? Dude, you chose to ignore your wife’s wishes and name your child for a sputtering campaign. Your daughter<\/em> took one for the cause. Your wife<\/em> took one for the cause. You<\/em> are a douchebag nonpareil, one who views your wife as a subordinate and a daughter as property to do with as you please. Which does explain why you’re a McCain-Palin supporter.<\/p>\n

Seriously, I’m not sure who’s most aggrieved here. Sarah is a perfectly cromulent name (at least daddy didn’t name her “McCain”), but her middle names are “McCain Palin,” which is going to be almost as popular a middle name pair as “Dukakis Bentsen” when she’s five. One suspects at some point she’ll want to change those to something more normal, like, say, “Grace.”<\/p>\n

And his daughter will also know from press clippings that her name was a cheap stunt, not a name picked for her to bear through life, but a name designed to throw support to a campaign. She’ll also know that her dad did so of his own accord — and did so without consulting her mom. Which will tell her exactly how much she’s valued, and how much her dad values women.<\/p>\n

And of course, mom now knows that even after going through one of the most arduous tasks a human can endure, her husband will ignore her wishes and do as he pleases.<\/p>\n

Amanda is surprised that a father can sign off on a name without input from a mother; having been through it, I’m not — the form for the birth certificate is presented after a long and stressful day, and while I vaguely remember signing it and turning it in, I think it’s just assumed that a family wouldn’t name a child without talking it over. (IIRC, my ex could have signed and turned it in too, but at the time she was on a morphine drip after an emergency ceasarean. It seemed only fair that I could walk down the hall to the nurse’s station.)<\/p>\n

Maybe that should change, or maybe the cure would be worse than the disease; regardless, the real solution is that men learn to respect their wives and daughters — and sons, for that matter. If you view your child as property, you can name them however you want, treat them however you want, and do with them as you please. If your view your children as people, you realize that your responsibilities to them far outweigh anything you can possibly imagine, and that you owe it to them, from the first day of their life, to treat them as a human who will grow up to some day be an adult. I never forget that I’m not caring for a child; I’m raising a future woman. And as such, I know damn well that my daughter is better off growing up as Katherine Marie Fecke than Obama Biden Fecke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My daughter was named before my ex-wife and I got engaged and long before she was conceived; we both liked the name “Katherine,” and the middle name was a tradition for daughters in my ex’s family — and one that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elections-and-politics","category-feminism-sexism-etc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4940\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}