Obama Tell Black Fathers to Man Up, Then Gets Back to Bashing America

Bill Cosby has been preaching this message for decades, and he's excoriated for pointing out the ugly truth.

Barack Obama does it in Chicago today, and just watch how the media will gush.

White House contender Barack Obama Sunday demanded fathers, especially black men, shoulder their responsibility to heal broken families and restore hope in crime-ridden communities.

In a Father's Day speech at a Chicago church, the Democrat also pressed for government action to help struggling parents, through tax breaks, job training and family-friendly employment laws.

The African-American Illinois senator amplified one of his campaign themes in condemning absent fathers who have "abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men."

"You and I know how true this is in the African-American community," Obama said, recapping government statistics showing more than half of all black children live in single-parent households.

Such children are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime, nine times more likely to drop out of school, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison, he said.

"And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it," said Obama, who dwelt on his own challenges growing up with a single mother from the age of two after his Kenyan father abandoned them.

Highlighting one of the signature themes of his presidential bid, Obama said the "greatest gift" that fathers can give their children is hope.

"I'm not talking about an idle hope that's little more than blind optimism or willful ignorance of the problems we face," he said.

"I'm talking about hope as that spirit inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better is waiting for us if we're willing to work for it and fight for it. If we are willing to believe."

Naturally, he served up a heaping helping of America-bashing with all the hope.

Dwelling on the kind of world his two young daughters may inherit, he said: "Are they living in a country where there's a huge gap between a few who are wealthy and a whole bunch of people who are struggling every day?"

"Are they living in a country where we are hated around the world because we don't cooperate effectively with other nations? Are they living in a world that is in grave danger because of what we've done to its climate?"

Meanwhile, they're still seething over at Trinity.