Fathers Continued

This is a continuation on the Fathers post, spurred on by what I have been seeing on the internet lately when it comes to media.

         Yesterday, I saw an article about Bill Cosby's reasons for doing the Cosby Show. It was aimed to reinforce good parenting, something that isn't seen on TV these days. The kids are the "smarter" ones even though they still are "lost." There seems to be nothing that shows how adults are to be adults. Instead, they are just big brats. Considering that most of Disney's starlets seem to grow up into scandalous, drug addicted, divas who try to be "mature" but only show that they are in fact immature, I would think it's serious.
         What happened to the old shows where they were fun to watch, but we still got to see good and real parenting dealing with real situations. Those shows were more real than "reality" tv, which people laugh at the title. When the most prominent dad in society is either Homer Simpson or Peter Griffin, then how can we expect kids to grow up to be good dads. Sure, some learn by deciding to be the opposite, but not enough do.
          This leads to the second thing that inspired me to write this. The abundance and focus of incarcerated fathers. That is the only focus the media seems to have if they pay attention to fathers, all the bad ones. I will agree that it is important to talk about that, but in order to complete the conversation and progress, the media needs to show the good fathers too, especially on tv shows. Otherwise, the only image that boys have of what it means to "be a man" is only bad stuff that actually quite the opposite.
          I just read that Sesame Street is going to have a character who's father is in jail. I can see potential here. What I hope is that the character does give support for those children in that situation, but also help express what it means to be a good father when there are practically no models out there (considering that the heroes for boys nowadays are athletes who get into a bunch of trouble, yeah there aren't many).
         There has to be a problem here when I can't think of one tv show nowadays that has a good father-like figure. It took a long time, but the show that popped into my head was NCIS. I think a lot of people like Gibbs, and I don't blame him. He seems to be a good father figure, and that's how the characters on the show treat him (though I haven't watched the last few seasons so I don't know if that has changed).
          The dad on Psych, I guess isn't a bad father. He's a different type and shows effort and gives some sound advice, but I wouldn't call him the best, though far better than a lot of other adult models, though not as neat as Andy Griffith. I have heard some praise for the father in Smallville, but it has been so long since I've watched an episode that I have no idea how he was portrayed.
          For movies, the only examples I can think of for responsible adult males is the latest Captain America. I do hope we can turn this whole thing around and get more responsible adults and parents portrayed in the media, because the lack of leads to more fathers incarcerated, and that leads to other problems.
(Yes, I agree this essay was not well written, but at least it gets the idea out there for you to start thinking about)