Over the next several months Kip Patten will be painted as an angel and a demon, a hero and a villain, a master manipulator or some one who was masterfully manipulated.
We suspect the truth is none of the above.
What is clear in all the testimony is that kip Patten, first and foremost is a father caught in one of the worst nightmares a father can imagine.
It is after all a father’s duty to teach his son right and wrong, good and evil. A father is the first law giver a child will encounter and in many ways he is the harshest task master a son will ever know.
But a father is also the penultimate protector. He is the bulwark his children depend upon to defend them against what is potentially a hostile world.
It is a tough job. And for a father of sons it is just tougher, because in addition to the duties and obligations of fatherhood, men have to put up with that alpha male power struggle no daughter would ever think to get involved in.
As father to sons ourselves we have some sympathy for Kip Patten.
Caught between a rock of enforcing his moral code and the hard place of protecting his boy, we doubt whatever he did or did not do was dependent upon any other motives other than to see his boy act like a man at the same time protecting him.
The thing about being a father is that there is no handy users guide or rule book that comes with the job.
Not too long ago one of our sons asked us what kind of wisdom did we rely on in raising children.
We thought about for a bit and replied that while the Bible did give a few pointers mostly we just winged it.
We think Kip Patten is just winging it too.
For all the mistakes he may have made in raising a murderer, what we heard in his testimony and in recordings showed us nothing more or less than a father in an impossible situation trying to make the best of it, for his boy.
We admit that we always harbored a deep prejudice against Barrack Obama from the moment we heard him in the 2004 Democratic convention. He gave a great speech no doubt about it, and we hate great speech makers.
Our prejudice against speech makers goes back to our days as high school debaters.
Debate is a competition between two teams who on a coin flip take on opposing sides for or against a resolution.
It is a game where there are winners and loses and like most games the differences between winning and losing is harder work and quicker wits than the other guys.
Debaters are a scruffy lot part of that has to do with puberty but part of it has to do with a love of a good fight.
All debaters love a good fight, they love working on an argument, they love zinging it to the other team and without exception they hate orators.
Oratory is another for lack of a better word competition held under the umbrella of high school forensics.
While debate necessitates hours of keeping up on the ever changing argument for and against an issue as the season goes on, orators pick their own topic write their own speech and give it again and again and again for the entire year. They tweek it here and there practice a lot in front of a mirror. They dress impeccably, usually have better voices and lets be honest are usually much better looking than debaters. A good one can bring home just as many trophies as a good debater for about one tenth the amount of work and is luckier with the girls.
Debaters have one thing to cling to during those years of adolescent angst. Most successful politicians were debaters. Presidents like Reagan, Nixon, Kennedy and Johnson are counted in our number. Most orators end up in the toastmasters because there is more to running a country than looking and sounding pretty.
Until Barrack Obama that is.