Fox News Faux-Psychiatrist Blames Gun Control On President Obama’s Childhood ‘Abandonment’
I have a problem with mental health professionals giving their “opinions” on people that they haven’t treated. Call me crazy, but I think medical diagnoses should be, ya know, informed. I’m pretty sure that Dr. Drew and his ilk are ruining the world. But even Pinksy wouldn’t have made the ridiculous and ignorant claims that psychiatrist Keith Ablow did about President Obama and his approach to government.
On a recent Fox News segment, and of course it was Fox News, Ablow claims that President Obama is proposing gun control not because of the thousands of lives that are lost each year due to gun violence, but because he was “abandoned” as a kid. In fact, the resident cable news mental health analyst says that the President’s entire world view and political philosophy is based on his horrible upbringing.
Ablow explains to Lou Dobbs:
”The autonomy of others did [Obama] no favors as a kid, when he was abandoned again and again by people who were ”” quote, unquote ”” ”˜responsible’ and supposed to do the right thing like parents. So his belief is: ”˜You know what? What good is individual autonomy in decision making? What good did it do me? The collective is what needs to be empowered, and all the better if I am the center of that collective and the most powerful person in it.’”
Maybe I really should have read Barrack Obama’s memoirs better. I seemed to have missed a crucial part in his history. See, from everything I know, even though his father did indeed leave, he had the love and support of his hard-working single mother and his grandparents.
Whether you agree or disagree with President Obama’s political positions and governing strategies, pretending to know and understand what’s going on in his head and where all of his motivations come from is ridiculous, and honestly a bit offensive. “Analyzing” the childhood and how it impacted a person’s decision-making is not work that should be done a partisan political network, especially by someone who doesn’t seem to know a whole lot about the person’s childhood.
If we want to know the motivations behind Obama’s policies, there’s a whole lot of information that we all have readily available to us. He gives a whole lot of speeches. He lays out a lot of his thought processes. Delving into his childhood and pretending our country’s government is simply responding to one boy’s “abandonment issues” is belittling to the ideas of progressive government and it’s perpetuating ignorance.
Psychiatrists commenting on people they don’t treat has always been sketchy. Now, it’s more than that. It’s offensive. And both Keith Ablow and the network that gives him a microphone should be embarrassed.
(Photo: Johnny Louis/WENN)
