That’s My Dad

fundimentia

Great analysis! One crucial addition (that I have never seen commented upon in the media):
These “Flat Daddies” are always in uniform. (camouflage/combat fatigues)
How many Real Daddies wear their camos around the house….always?
So, not only is real daddy replaced by a two-dimensional simulacrum–but this simulacrum is *exclusively* military.
Instead of seeing their real dad, who might pulls a 9-5 at the office/warehouse, and only dons the combat gear one weekend a month, Flat Daddy is a full-time Warrior… not just a regular guy trying to pay the bills any way he can.
I can understand, of course, why fathers posted in Iraq would want their families to see them as they are NOW–i.e., wholly taken over by their military role.
But we need to recognize that these Flat Daddies are also a *militarization* of the HOME.
(will this make for a less jarring re-integration into the family? Or will it make it worse–trap returning fathers into their uniforms in the minds of their children? I honestly have no idea.)

Sorry, I forgot to extend a warm welcome to Dennis as guest columnist – first time out suggests some ‘added value’ (with all due respect Michael!) for all us! Good luck.

(oops, one more thought):
Imagine, for second, that these Flat Daddies were pictured in their normal clothing. (whether suit & tie or carharts & flannel)
How would it make the ENTIRE discourse about the war different?
(I think it would shift the discourse from heroic, “soldiering on” rhetoric, to one of disruption or even potential loss…)
And would the mass media (let’s face it, not the sharpest crayons in the box) be even able to handle the cognitive dissonance of a report about a soldier, which included an essential visua that depicted him as a civilian??! How would they try to negotiate that text/image contradiction?

Hey, can we order a Flat President and Cabinet?
Welcome, Dennis!

“What if flat daddy comes back looking exactly like the picture-no hands, no legs.”
He’ll have to be put in a bowl to beg,
Johnny I hardly knew yer.

This is incredibly surreal. I had that disjointed feeling while reading it – that feeling that it was a put-on or some April Fool. I think I first felt this feeling of un-reality during the 2000 post election scrum.
It’s like a parable – or a sophisticated satire maybe -something you’d expect to find in some political science fiction of Vonnegut or Orwell. The Iraq war has just jumped the shark. It was a farce to start with, and has seemed to devolve into a sick joke.
The image is disturbing as hell since, as others said, it implies daddy might not have hands or legs.
The nulmber of severely injured runs into the multiple tens of thousands right? Given sophisticated kevlar jackets and armored humvees, along with much better medivac and medical facilities, it’s no wonder ‘only’ 2900 have died.

How about we send the cardboard cutouts to Iraq, and bring the people home?

Welcome, Dennis. Nice, enraging post.
To take JT from BC’s spot on comment from a different angle. . .
“Hey Johnny your daddy’s in the war too, why don’t you have a Flat Daddy like me?”
This is really, really disgusting.

This whole “flat daddy” idea makes me a little nauseous. It’s just so… wrong… on so many levels. I would seriously question the sanity and stability of anyone carrying one of these things around. It has that “sickness of the mind” feel to it.
I know kids have imaginary friends and pretend that inanimate objects are actually thinking and intelligent beings (heck, we all do that from time to time). But replacing your father or mother with a cardboard cut-out and treating it as though it were the same is disgusting. They’re already intelligent to begin with.

I agree with all of the above, it is disturbing to say the least. Are parents nothing more that a ever smiling cutout for their children?
Did anyone say Nineteen-Eighty-Four?

This little kid, playing believing is he an icon for the american people who still support this war?
Many of you have made great points. Images like this make me wonder if we’ve all fallen down the rabbit hole.
But, I guess these “fun” cut-outs make the whole thing seem more light and less scary. Nobody’s think they were disturbing if they were stand-ins for daddies on long business trips. These poor families are kidding themselves in to think it’s just a game. If in the same position I’d probably do the same.
I hope no kid ends up getting stuck with the cut-out when no real dad comes home… but, I doubt we’ll be that luck.

In our little town up in the hills we will have a memorial service on Sunday for a Flat Daddy who became a Dead Daddy.
We’ll dedicate a granite bench that looks down at the river, just below the Falls where the Real Daddy used to fish.
Mike left behind a wife and two little girls. His father says “I am so angry at George Bush. They threw away Michael’s life without thinking, without even knowing who he was.”

Man, oh man. I find photographs to be powerful tools (which is why I totally dig this site) — but this one literally took my breath away.
It’s like looking at a freaking ghost. From the image alone, I thought it was representing the ghost of a father, dead from war, overlooking his son on a swing set. The cutout seems just enough higher in value than the rest of the photo that (and perhaps the camo jacket has something to do with it, too), but it’s less like you’re looking *at* flat daddy and more like you’re looking *through* him.
What a striking and powerful shot. Thank you all for sharing.

Wow! I saw the post last night and didn’t have time to comment, and so many things have popped into my head since then, but I’ll try to be brief.
Since this was the first I’ve heard of “Flat Daddies” and “Flat Mommies” (was someone at the National Guard involved in a Flat Stanley project?, I googled them to read more about it. The first article I read said:
“He’s quietly in the background on family outings to the grocery store, to restaurants, camping, even on Mary’s most recent visit to her gynecologist…
“The Holbrooks’ Flat Daddy has been to birthday parties, ballgames, school, the hairdresser, the babysitter’s with Logan, and to the funeral of Mary Holbrook’s mother.
“When the family first got him, they propped him up in a chair at dinner.
“‘We put plates in front of him the first few days,’ Holbrook said. ‘But he didn’t eat much.’”
I wonder how the read daddy reacts to this.
I’m trying to be sensitive to the needs of these families, and I can see where a photo might be comforting, but taking “him” to a gynecologist appointment and putting food in front of “him” seems very strange… it’s as if he’s become an idol. It reminds me of seeing trays and trays of fruits and other food set it all in front of statues of “gods” to rot – as if statues could eat or “gods” needed food.
In the photo, it wasn’t immediately clear that the “Flat Daddy” was on the swing; it sort of looked like he was stuck in the grass, which makes him look sort of like a tombstone. He also made me think of something that Northern Virginians would use to pretend they had fellow commuters in the car so they could use the carpool lanes. Or those lifesize cutouts of Presidents they used to have around D.C. so tourists could take their picture with the “President”. (I had a great picture of me choking Ronald Reagan.)
These cutouts could be a good idea for an anti-war protest. Sometimes they have rows and rows of shoes or combat boots to represent the service members who have died, but what if they had these cutouts? Or family pictures with the deceased cut out of the picture and a black hole left where he or she should be…
If the country is going to take fathers, and especially mothers, and more especially, BOTH parents, away from their families, it should be for a fight that’s absolute necessary. In Iraq, they’re cannon fodder; they go into a neighborhood and snipers (increasingly sophisticated) fire at them or IEDs explode. But – to state the obvious – if they weren’t there, the snipers and IEDs wouldn’t be targeting them.
(And welcome, Dennis.)

While I personally find Flat Daddies and Mommies thoroughly creepy, radically obscene, and profoundly disturbing, I also think the cutouts are entirely fitting and appropriate.
Flat Daddies and Mommies are “fitting” in the sense that the families who ACCEPT Real Daddy’s fifth tour of “duty” in Iraq without protest must live in a state of complete denial and delusion in order to cope. So a cardboard surrogate makes perfect make-believe sense.
Flat Daddies and Mommies are “appropriate” in the sense that they represent, in reality, what the military thinks of its servicemen and -women: that they *are* disposable, interchangeable, manufacturable — not flesh-and-blood human. Ironically, it’s the military’s only honest gesture to date.
The Donald Rumsfeld-directed military has created a new class in the United States, one that exists *below* the working class: the military class, the disposable class. Since they aren’t human, they aren’t victims.

“Donna è mobil, qual piùma al vento, muta d’accento e di pensier, e di pensier, e di pensier!” (:

Donna,
1) signing a contract is a choice
2) HUAW is historically correct and consistent for armies world wide;” hurry up and wait”
3) yes there are formal rules of engagement, but combating insurgent or guerrilla warfare 24/7 with often inadequate training, rest or rotation time, lowered admission criteria, accelerated NCO or Officer promotion and other factors, produce a different set of survival rules not found in official documents. Think Rumsfeld Light and ” Wars of the 21 Century” & rewriting rules.
4) “love the sin but hate the sinner”, or continue following orders until a personal moral imperative takes precedent over being “a good soldier”. There are also different rules of engagement, for instance in Israel a boy from Palestine is considered an adult at the age of twelve, in Fallujah there was not this official designation but the treatment was the same. I would be happy to expound further.

Why don’t we send all the ‘flat daddies’ to Iraq and bring back all the real daddies. And mommies.
And I second the idea that we should get a ‘flat president’ until we can elect a real president.

What if mommy or daddy does come home but not looking like the flat mommy or daddy? What if the real mommy or daddy is missing a face or arms, or legs or even half of the brain?

Do any of you people even know anyone in the service? Let’s say a kid who lived in poverty and was promised an education, a career, etc. When someone enlists they give up their rights in this country and don’t you think for one minute that they don’t. I would suggest that you folks who think you have it all figured out, go out and adopt a soldier and let them tell you about the choice they made 4, 5, 6, years ago and how it affects them now.
How their time is up and they are still serving and getting deployed. How their families are left behind, some two times already in a child’s short life of four years. Don’t tell me this is a choice! It might have been at one time, but it is not for those enlisted now.
How about those rotations….let’s say for the next l7 months, and then in about 2008 the Army will go to 6 month rotations….how about serving over there in harm’s way for a year and then coming home for 6 months and then going back again for l7 months…until you have walked in their shoes, keep looking for a pair!
I have seen it, live it, and dread it every waking moment and sleeping moment which are few and far between when a loved one is deployed. Again, keep looking for your boots…..This is not a debate about the possible psychological damage a cardboard cut out could do to a child….this is about giving them something at home while they wait AGAIN. If you missed, this read this post again…ie four year old with two years out of his life missing with a father abroad…
For goodness sake, my 27 year old has a cut out of Canseco the baseball player and my 80 year old mother has one of George Strait and neither of them are harmed. And what if the guys and gals come home with no legs, at least they are out of the fricking military and home with someone who gives a crap about them. Again, go visit a military hospital, look up on line and find yourself an l8 year old who has been permanently changed by this war, and try to figure out where you were in America, making a difference in that kid’s life while he or she were pondering the military for a chance at the piece of the American Pie. I stand by my remarks, these kids today are caught up in a no win situation and all of us should stand behind them until they all come home. If we can’t pray in our own public schools, why in the hell are we in the middle of a religious struggle. Sadaam was caught, is on trial, end of story. And until it is the end to the story, I will continue my new endeavor to make the photo carry alongs for the kids of soldiers. Blessings.

Donna said: “Again, go visit a military hospital, look up on line and find yourself an l8 year old who has been permanently changed by this war, and try to figure out where you were in America, making a difference in that kid’s life while he or she were pondering the military for a chance at the piece of the American Pie.”
It’s called the American Dream. But regardless, both the dream and the pie are fictions. War, on the other hand, is real.
The other guilt-driven fiction is that I owe the 18-year-old vet something extra simply because I am an American. I don’t. If the 18-year-old chose to kill people for a piece of the American “pie,” then he chose to serve himself and those currently in power, not me and not our country. Do some research yourself, Donna (start with the link below), and you’ll learn that the kid’s already got his “piece”; I don’t owe him *more than* I owe the homeless guy who sleeps in an overstuffed chair at my local Starbucks or the schoolchildren who line up on the sidewalk outside my apartment building every day. Since I have limited resources, I am going to focus my empathy on the homeless guy and the schoolchildren, who get fewer and fewer of my tax dollars the longer these fucked-up wars I oppose last and the fucked-up people who conduct and execute them remain in place.
http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

Where in the hell did someone get the idea that because I support our troops that we support this war…and it is the American Pie, not the American Dream I was talking about…And for your information, my husband’s draft number in that other mistake was l6, so I have lived that as well. This is not a debate about the damn war, we all know that is wrong, it is about the kids who want something to carry around with them….how in the hell is that hurting any of you. As a matter of fact, I know a little five year old who has thrown up everyday since his daddy left, for the second time, let’s put our energy into bringing them home in one piece….and stop the bullshit about attacking one another and acting all up on politics….seriously look on line and I think you will find that most of these kids are very similar to someone in your own family, Unless you are a member of the White House Cabinet who wouldn’t dare have a child in harms’ way. So let’s all work together… if I knew how to get off this disgusting site, I would, I have way too much positive energy to be lectured about politics and how we are so stupid cause we support our soldiers…I hate this fricking war, it is stupid, it is ridiculous, it is A WASTE OF LIVES, IT IS A WASTE OF MONEY…and if I can make one little child smile while their parent is away doing what they HAVE TO DO NOW THAT THEY GOT THEMSELVES INTO THIS MESS, THEN THAT IS WHAT I WILL CONTINUE TO DO….Thank goodness for Freedom of Speech…let’s just try to stop the attack on our fellow citizens….and about those homeless people, you mean the ones I feed regularly that live beside the freeway in LA, or the ones that I serve in the soup kitchens….so a few of you who have such hatred in your heart for those of us who truly have a big heart, find something to do beside criticize little children who miss their parents….oh yeah, well before we get into that one….why not adopt a foreign child like three families I know, why not go to school and volunteer to help some underprivileged
children succeed….there is enough going on in this country….without our spending zillions somewhere else in something that is none of our business. Now I am going to go tell my son in law goodnight, one of the last 30 nights I will have the chance to do that and I will go explain to my three year old grandson why he can’t go with Daddy…like I said, find yourself a soldier and support them, you will find that they eat breathe and sleep just like you!

“Nobody’s think they were disturbing if they were stand-ins for daddies on long business trips”
I would. I can understand a picture, but a cardboard cut-out that’s pretty much life size? That is invited to the dinner table or put on a swing to play with? Creepy.