Father knows best and you don't know until you walk in your father's footsteps are cliches, but ones that can take a sad twist depending on the news. For example, Iraqi father Najim al-Anbaky claims he killed his daughter to keep her from becoming a suicide bomber. And then there are the Turnidge boys, father Bruce and son Johsua, who worked together on plan to blow up Oregon banks ... and who were sentenced together to death for the one murderous bomb that exploded.
For most people, the Sandwich Generation years (i.e., when you assume responsibility for both parents and children) are difficult. However, Montreal's Teflon Don, Vito Rizzuto seems to have found himself a somewhat worry free way to make it through those years: he went to prison and his father and son got whacked. One inconvenience of his incarceration, he missed out on the funeral for his son (who got his in a back alley while looking at some real estate he was purchasing) and now for his pops (who was taken out at age 86 by a sniper while he ate dinner in his home).
It's all part of the Montreal Mafia Wars that have likely brought an end to the Rizzuto family. However, before one consigns the Rizzuto's to history it should be noted that the meat of the sandwich, Vito, is set to be sprung in 2012.
Is the pen mightier than the revolver?
Well, actually, it depends on the circumstances. For an Indian and two British dads, the circumstances are that they will be equally ineffective.
Jnaneswar Mudiraj took gun in hand and marched through Kanakamamidi's K. S. Raju Institute of Engineering and Technology determined to teach a lesson to the mean boys bullying his son. (They had asked him question on a bus; he replied rudely; they pushed him around on campus; he told his dad; ... dad brought a gun to the college campus.)
A bit more passively, Essex's Ian McNicol and Redding, Falkirk's Michael Hamilton are sending nasty notes to the man who murdered their teen daughters. They are targeting serial killer Peter Tobin and being really, really, really, really mean. As McNicol told the BBC
"I really want to aggravate him into him losing his temper yet again, and again, and again - I will keep going just to grind under his skin. ...I'm going to say things that are wrong to him intentionally in the hope that he will correct me by saying to the police 'that's wrong', which he probably will."Yeah, gents all, that'll work.
Spoiler alert! Auntie had daddy whacked.
Was daddy a good guy? Well, he seemed to be a loving father, but also one who left a very angry (albeit literary and often thoughtful) daughter.
There's the well-worn cliche that women begin planning their wedding, their perfect day, from the time they are very young girls. Not so with men, but maybe a little planning would be a good idea.
Even a tad of forethought might have kept a Turkish groom from killing his dad post-ceremony. It seems it is part of the culture in in the province of Gaziantep to shoot bullets INTO THE SKY during happy times. However, Kemal Bozo lost control of his weapon and whacked dad and two aunts on the ground, while winging another eight in the wedding "party."
The absolutely good news for Pierre-Marie Cottrez and all who care for him is that the Frenchman had no idea that Dominique Cottrez, mother of his two grown daughters, had committed eight acts of barbaric infanticide. However, the bad news is that he did not know his fat wife had also carried and given birth to eight other children during their 20-some years as husband and wife ... or that she had buried two babies and stuck six in bags in the garage just because she didn't want to use contraception.
While there is nothing from the news reports to suggest he is not a good father, there is certainly enough coincidental evidence piling up that it seems fair to characterize him as probably not the most attentive husband.
Two children have put their fathers' heads to use. One to the good; one to the grizzly.
An Ohio gent, Jack Hopkins, is growing his hair out until it will be long enough to cut into a wig for daughter Heather, balded by her chemotherapy for cancer. As he told The (Ashtabula, Ohio) Star-Beacon, "[My hair] needs to be eight to 10 inches long and I am just about there. She can have it any time she wants it. This is her hair, not mine. I’ll happily go bald for her."
Somewhere near the farthest extreme from that heartwarming tale is the continuing sagae of Gregor McGurk, 44, who used pop's cabeza as a football a bit over a decade ago. He hacked it off with a knife and knocked it about a parking lot. To general outrage he will soon be moving his previously (and perhaps still) Scottish schizophrenic self to a lesser security prison. Headlines, obviously, proclaim the outrage.
Dances to dads take various forms, some more fathomable than others.
Various father-daughter dances are scheduled for the next few weekends (pre-Valentines Day, but in possible conflict with the Super Bowl) to try and bridge the usually unbridgeable chasm between what a dad knows and what his teen or pre-teen thinks he should.
Then there is the choreographed movement of Welshman Marc Rees and two friends which will be performed as a tribute to their fathers. For Rees, his father's passing from cancer at 78, left him with memories and the seed of gratitude for who he became, that evolved into "3 Men Running,". Says Rees, "We were very close. My father was a very quiet man but I would ask him to do crazy things, such as be filmed for my work, and although he sometimes didn’t understand what it was about, he would do it. He was incredibly devoted."
Finally, there is the bizarre dance of life/death (?) fromRobert Farley, 63, who on New Year's Eve grooved to The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rollin Stone" after having killed his 93 year old dad. Reportedly, his dad disapproved of him dumping his terminally ill wife.
For dads it's (sorta) a jungle out there.
Corpus Christi (Texas) pop Joe De La Garza was killed by a cockatiel — a parrot like thing — according to his grieving family and perhaps a court, someday.
Perhaps the only thing that could have saved him would have been a house call from St. Charles' (Minn.) Bernard Allen Corcoran, the "mastermind" behind the death of a cat that killing birds in his yard. (Or, maybe they should have called the cat?). Now, the judge did outwit Corcoran by asking if he knew that killing a kitty was wrong before allowing his guilty plea. And it was actually his son — acting on an "unspoken understanding" between father and son — who took up bow and arrow to take on the tabby. Technically, it was the vet who killed the cat, but he was only carrying out the endgame for the diabolical father-son duo and so his hands remain clean — legally speaking.
Or perhaps it was De La Garza's original choice of winged pet for his daughter that was the poor choice. Maybe he would have been better off getting his child a bear, like Ram Singh Munda, who adopted a pet for his daughter after they both lost her mother. Not that it would have been completely without complications. Munda, too, finds himself in court. Apparently, he (or his daughter) had threatened wildlife ... and there are laws against that.
For every jungle there must be a guide. Perhaps a team. And so, to help dads make it through the animal kingdom, it may be necessary to turn to the directing Reitmans [Earlier: Sonday], after all the father was responsible for Animal House, a movie made from "the worst script the studio ever read" and the son is busy outgrossing his father.
What is the word beyond irony?
Whatever it is, that is the word to reach for when reading that a father was stabbed with a samurai sword and killed in front of his son — bullies had kicked his soccer ball away — just as his father trying to stand up to neighborhood bullies who were threatening him was beaten to death 23 years ago.
The insanity (and perhaps genius?) passed from Marlon Brando to son Christian that ended both their lives early is perhaps understandable, if tragic. But two dads murdered while standing up for their sons? Inconceivable, even if possible.
Reconciliation. Not a life or death issue, but important to every father-child relationship.
As Calvin Broadus [Earlier: What You See, What You Get] says about how he became a real man, "... those three babies are all wanted, and I wanted to be with them." Broadus, of course, is better known as Snoop Dogg, and currently starring in the reality freak show (aren't they all) Father Hood.
While Broadus reconciled with his wife, press releases and news flashes covered the Christmas day star realignment as Angelina Jolie called odd father Jon Voight, who a few years earlier happened to mention something, something about her "serious emotional problems" around the time she was marrying Billy Bob Thornton. Which she didn't take too well. Not that he was necessarily wrong about that.
Actually, peace between father and child can be a death issue. Seventeen years ago, Martin Tankleff was convicted after he was pressured into a confession by being lied to by interrogators that his father had awoken from a coma to finger him as the killer of mother and (then) father. He has been freed from prison, has hopefully found his peace with his father. But not everyone (i.e., his also orphaned half-sister) is happy.
