Son, your daddy was bad?

I was listening to CBC radio yesterday, and they were getting ready for Father’s Day in the typical radio way — asking hosts for recollections about their dads, talking about the roles that fathers play in the lives of their children, and asking people what it meant to be a dad.

There were some really touching stories — I particularly recall one about a man who described in intimate detail the hopes and dreams and questions he had had about his son before he was born. And when his son was born severely autistic, and would never ski, for example, how he had dealt with that.

But then they took a music break and played this song, by the United Steel Workers of Montreal:

Son Your Daddy Was Bad

It’s a great song, albeit a little country for my tastes. But I question the message, for a Father’s Day segment. Perhaps there’s a paucity of tunes about fathers, but playing a song that is all about a son trying to take revenge for his father’s killing, only to find out that his dad was a wife-beating awful man, and the killer did the world a favour, seems like a tasteless choice to honour dads.

Can you imagine a CBC host deciding to play a song called “Your Momma Was a Drunken Slut Who Gave You FAS” on Mother’s Day? Or marking Grandparents’ Day with a little ditty called “Hurry Up And Die, You Wrinkled Old Crone”?

Fathers get little enough respect as parents — and I’ll be the first to admit that they often do it to themselves — but maybe we can use the one day a year known as Father’s Day to perhaps celebrate the ones we do like, rather than pick on the ones we don’t?