This week David Letterman brought shame on Fatherhood. This has nothing to do with with politics, whether you are a supporter or detractor of Sarah Palin, whether you believe that as a public figure her family is also fair game for being the brunt of a humorists attention, David Letterman, as a Father should know better.

His defence, which was thin at best and consisted mostly of saying his joke wasnt about a 14 year old girl it was about an 18 year old girl, was ridiculous. As was his initial defence that “its what I do”.

It made me think about the way we try and excuse our behavior when what we should really do is think about the lessons we try and instill in our children.  If your child did something that you found unacceptable and you took them to task over it would you accept lame weak excuses? Would you want them to accept responsibility for what they had done? Would you want them to make amends?

As the Father of a 5 year old son, does David Letterman want his son to grow up to be a man who takes responsibility or does he want him to grow up following in his Father’s footsteps and duck responsibility.  As the Father of two daughters, one of whom is 18, if David Letterman or any one else suggested that my daughter was an easy target for a baseball player, I’d be more than angry.

So David Letterman man up, face up to the fact that you made a mistake, you made a poor judgment call, accept it, we all do it, the error is not in making the mistake, it is in not correcting it properly, openly and fully.

As Fathers we have received a bad press, and in some cases rightly so, we have our share of bad “members” like any other social group. However, I’d like to believe that for the most part, Fathers are a responsible group of people who are working hard to instill in the next generation good values of respect for women and for other people in general.