Happy (bleeping) Father's Day

By TAD BARTIMUS

Once upon a time, Ozzie Nelson was America's archetypal TV father, a straight-arrow, buttoned-down disciplinarian who wielded unfettered power within his nuclear family. His kitchen-bound wife, Harriet, played second fiddle as the little woman whose job it was to deliver the punch line to her husband's straight-man wisdom. Sons David and Ricky were portrayed as incapable of getting out of bed in the morning if Ozzie didn't tell them to.

Now comes Ozzy Osbourne, who's being paid upward of $10 million as an MTV father figure. By the looks of him, Osbourne's is the brain-turned-fried-egg pictured in the anti-drug commercial. Listening to this latest Ozzy being interviewed on talk shows, Americans surely lean forward in their chairs, tensely willing him to complete one -- just one -- simple sentence. Stuttering, stumbling, searching for a (bleep) noun, then a (bleep) verb, then another (bleep) noun, Osbourne tries to (bleep) express himself.

He can't. Instead, wife Sharon bleeps for him, as presumably she does everything else. Daughter Kelly and son Jack also bleep on his behalf, when they aren't bleeping on their own. Like the Nelson children, Osbourne's offspring are stereotypical incompetents, updated in the new millennium with foul mouths, poor posture and total irreverence. They'd mistake a napkin ring for a nose ring.

Just as "Ozzie and Harriet" suited the American Dream 1950s, so "The Osbournes" match the emotional disarray of our post-Sept. 11 times. Optimism is dead, pessimism prevails, discipline is out, dysfunction is in.

So why are there so many couch potatoes watching a has-been old rocker, his shrewish wife and pierced spawn sitting on their own couch?

For the same reason my friends and I watched the Nelson family -- because kids rule! Ozzy's children are always putting one over on dear old dad, just like Ozzie's children did. It's a plot as old as Shakespeare -- the commoners outsmarting the nobles. Be it the Bard or the Black Sabbath outlaw, watching an authority figure get snookered is funny.

In TV land, father never knows best. He's the foil, the buffoon, the befuddled bill payer who never quite gets the joke. In Ozzie Nelson's case, the star had to act the part. Ozzy Osbourne merely has to show up. The results are the same: pure entertainment.

Sermonizing and hand-wringing over the crude (and obviously shrewd) Osbournes has MTV executives laughing all the way to the bank; Sharon has committed the family to another 20 episodes with a contract that reportedly includes lifetime psychotherapy for her dogs and cats.

Think about it: "The Osbournes" may be your next-door nightmare, but CNN has more violence, and top-40 CDs have more profanity. So what if Ozzy's main claim to fame is that he once bit the head off a bat? We don't have to dine with him, although his soaring ratings garnered him dinner with President George W. Bush and a performance at Queen Elizabeth II's golden jubilee celebration. You can't get more mainstream than that.

Most of us wouldn't want either Nelson or Osbourne as a father; one rationed conditional love, the other doles out nonsequiturs. The best thing that can be said about reality television shows that portend to depict "a real American family" is that they don't. Which makes us appreciate our own all the more.

So Happy (bleep) Father's Day to all you "normal" dads out there. Even if you think you're not a good parent, cheer up: You're not Ozzy.



© 2002 The Women Syndicate

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