Happy Father's Day! Now the hard work begins: digesting all the Dad's Day stories out there. Be patient, this'll take a few days.

Lemme start with the big pubs: the New York Times' op-ed guy John Tierney weighed in with this take on "Doofus Dads" tracing the unhappy rise of the dumb-as-rocks father figure on TV. It's nice to see the overused, played out stereotype take some dings, and Tierney does a nice job of cataloging the different flavors of doofus we're saddled with. He does place the blame in a weird place, fingering the female-heavy sitcom-watching demographic as the ones responsible for the smart-mom, dumb-dad family setup. But that rings wrong to me. The comedy writing club in Hollywood is a notorious boy's club, and the whole Jim Belushi-Courtney Thorne-Smith coupling wasn't the result of some female fantasy.

(Tierney does make a thoughtful defense, however, of Homer Simpson, who is probably the most complex character on TV today, in all seriousness. But to watch Homer's evolution over the past 15 or 20 years is also a study in the way that doofusness has become commonplace. When the Simpson was just a brief segment on the Tracy Ullman show, Homer wasn't a lovable, donut-eating buffoon. He was an angry, occasionally violent father. But as time has gone on -- and the doofus dad has become more widespread -- Homer become more bumbling. It's hard to tell if Homer led the charge toward doofusness or merely reflects the ascendancy of the stereotype.)

Apologies may be in order. I took a swipe at "Stay-At-Home Tom", an embryonic SAHD movie, a couple of days ago. As it turns out, Russ from the Daily Yak beat me to the analysis, and ended up with a comment from the writer, Adam Gibgot:

The dad is not incompetent in my script. We've seen that movie before and what makes my script different (hopefully) is "Tom" is a good dad who realizes that he actually is a GREAT dad and has to come to terms with the fact that being a dad is the thing that he is BEST at and is destined to do. I wrote it as a loveletter to stay-at-home dads because i think any man who makes that choice is the greatest possible kind of man. I hope people give the film a chance before making assumptions based on a tag line that PR people attached to it ("21st Century Mr. Mom.") Mr. Mom was a great movie no doubt. But what I wrote is from my own experience and from the experience of other parents I know. I figured I'd weigh in with all this because my son is not yet awake and I actually have five minutes to myself before the whirlwind day begins! Lots of love to all you dads out there!

That makes me feel better. Still curious as can be to learn more ...