James Dobson died last week – and if you didn’t hear the news about that, it might be because the cheering drowned it out.

Not a lot of people in my circle of acquaintances know anything about Dobson, which is something worth discussing in itself.  If you didn’t, Dobson was an evangelical author and the founder of such fundamentalist organizations as the Family Research Council and the radio program “Focus on the Family.”

The short way of describing Dobson is that everything you loathe about Christian fundamentalism in contained in the works and words of Dobson:

The school children murdered at Sandy Hook were God’s retribution for homosexuality.

Women in a marriage consent to sexual activity in exchange for the protection provided by a man. 

Girls speak twice as many words a day as boys.

And the only way to get a child to behave the way you want is through painful punishment.

Dobson spread this stuff, Family Research Council claims, to 200 million people around the world. It was his way of combatting what he perceived to be the permissiveness that was swept into society beginning in the 1960s.

He was MAGA brainwashing before Trump’s ascent. He was the anti-Dr. Spock.

A persistent theme in the social media posts about Dobson’s death is the idea that his philosophies and teachings are the reasons adult kids have nothing to do with their parents.

Among the more common phrases on the Bluesky site: “rot in hell,” “rest in piss,” “good riddance.”

I found out about Dobson during the early days of the Internet when I tried to start a parenting news website called Raisin. I kept seeing press releases from Family Research Council and its mouthpiecs. Gary Bauer, a former Reagan administration official who tried to run for president in 2000 and got less than 1% of the vote in the New Hampshire Republican primary.

So that’s how I became acquainted with their extreme ideology.

As I said, most of the people I know have any idea about any of this. They’re not evangelicals and they certainly would be more apt to follow trained child psychologists’ advice about how to raise their kids. 

My friends and acquaintances would be horrified by the thought that their children might be afraid of them. Their operating theory is that a child is conceived in love – and that’s the guiding principle in their upbringing.

So think about it. There’s an America where Mr. Rogers, Elmo and Arthur are the heroes. There’s another where a wooden implement is the dominant force.

It might explain what’s at the root of our super divided society. The old ways of doing things vs. the thought out way of doing things. If you can see a “Make America Great Again” philosophy in this retro view, it’s understandable.

To the point that there was actual glee in Dobson’s death at age 89.

The Romans believed that of the dead, you should speak nothing but good. To which actress Bette Davis, when hearing about the death of rival Joan Crawford, supposedly said “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”

It seems cruel to pick on dead people. I get it.

But there’s a reason the Munchkins sing “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead” when Dorothy plops the farmhouse on the Wicked Witch of the East. Some bad stuff was going down in Oz, and until her demise, the Munchkins were suffering.

It’s a little more serious here. Thousands of adults who are troubled or estranged from their parents are wishing that some god really did strike people down with lightning. it was just too late when it came to Dobson.

The lessons I take away are twofold.

One, I think I’m OK, but I really hope I have lived my life in a way that my passing is not reason for anyone to celebrate.

Two, I can think of at least one person who’s a constant presence in our lives these days whose death might be celebrated more than Dobson’s. I, for one, have Champagne on ice for that one.

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