Meet the Press is the television equivalent to the New York Times. It's a media outlet of record. This is why I want to deal with this weekend's appearance of Drs. Poussaint and Cosby. A Special Edition of Meet the Press is big deal. They have an intent. In this case, I believe the intent is to restore the default diagnosis of race problems in the USofA.

The fact is, the United States of America would not work well if current events affect that understanding. But the ground beneath those assumptions is shifting. And I feel I have to deal with the Doctors' issues separately from Meet the Press' issues.

But first this morning, we take a break from our coverage of political campaigns and focus on issues that are very important to this nation. As this book explains, “No matter your economic status, no matter your age, no matter your race, no matter your gender,” “no matter your religion. Many families in tight-knit communities are crumbling at an alarming rate. We need to see this as a reality, not something to just talk about” “to act on.” And that frames our conversation with Alvin Poussaint, Bill Cosby.

Like this one. This “frames the conversation,” but it's the last sign of universalism shown in the full hour of programming. If you took that opening out and showed the full hour to anyone in the country, they would NOT see it as independent of economic status, age, race or gender. Sorting folks out by those very parameters is what this Special Edition was all about.

Anyway, I'm assuming I can extract the Doctors' actual concerns and I intent to consider them seriously.

MR. COSBY: “Somewhere in my life a person called my father has not shown up, and I feel very sad about this because I don’t know if I’m ugly, I don’t know what the reason is.” And so there’s a great deal that a person has to put up with.

DR. POUSSAINT: Mm. That’s—I—that’s a good, good point. I think a lot of these males kind of have a, a father hunger and actually grieve that they don’t have a father. And I think later a lot of that turns into anger. “Why aren’t you with me? Why don’t you care about me?” And also affects their own feelings of, of self, self-worth, being—feeling abandoned in, in that way. So fathers have to see how critical and important they are in a society where they’re always talking about two-parent families and TV wherever—whatever you see there’s fathers there, and they don’t see these men.

And I'll start by saying I've seen this effect myself.

Back when I was social I used to mentor kids pretty much at random. I didn't so much seek it out as recognize opportunities. One kid was the son of a single mother who reported to me (she was an assistant vice president; just to let you know). Young man had writing skills that could have been developed and he mentioned the idea of writing a memoir. He said the first chapter would be titled “Where's Dad?”

Yes, this society developed around the nuclear family concept, and if father or mother is missing it's like a leg that 's missing on your coffee table. You think more about the missing leg than redesigning the table.

On the other hand

DR. POUSSAINT: And, and this is how—is one of the ways Bill got started on this, was that, you know, when traveling around in the callouts, you know, over 50 percent of, of black males were high school dropouts. And in some cities, one nearby, I think, Baltimore, the dropout rate was 75 percent for black males.

I just don't believe that. It's just not the case around me. I've seen folks take more than four years to graduate, and maybe they're counting folks who got a GED (both San Francisco and Texas were actively advising kids to “test out”). I think they may be confusing the unemployment rate with the drop out rate. Or over 50 percent of the people that attended their “callouts” were dropouts.

See Part 1a