FRANK ZAPPA: The interesting thing about Bundy like characters in all sitcoms, the universal rule of all sitcoms is: fathers are weak. Fathers are bad. Mothers are wise. This has been with us since the 1950s, and this has sent a very bad psychological message to the entire society.

It seems to me that in the United States, the family has been replaced by the Squadron.  --Frank Zappa 

Frank Zappa called out television for what it really was:a tool for social engineering.

He warned TV was being used to reshape values, dissolve the family structure,and raise kids more loyal to MSM than to their own parents.

The TV wasn’t entertainment -it was indoctrination. pic.twitter.com/cZkDsUy3Am

— Raymond (@Raymond82310289) July 30, 2025

The reality is invented for you by people who choreograph it.  There's got to be an office in Washington some place where a bunch of people that you have never heard of choreograph reality.  It's not just what the next photo op is going to be, it's what is the interpretation of a given international event.  And this has to be generally dispensed to the media with no questions asked.  

The closest you would get to something really reflecting actual behavior and actual attitudes is what happens on Fox.  Fox has shows which have a little bit more of a contemporary, realistic feel.  So The Simpsons, Living Color, and the other thing that is very successful is Beverly Hills 90210.  The interesting thing about Bundy like characters in all sitcoms, the universal rule of all sitcoms is: fathers are weak.  Fathers are bad.  Mothers are wise.  This has been with us since the 1950s, and this has sent a very bad psychological message to the entire society.  It has made fatherhood almost a criminal activity, and a lot of people would be dissuaded from ever becoming a dad based on the images that are presented to the public from American television shows, and this goes all over the world.  And you know what, American dads lived up to the image.  They eventually became just as stupid and ineffectual as . . .  there's plenty of real Bundys out there.  That's the reason why that show resonates.  With each Administration, they get to nominate the people that they want to sit on the FCC, and the FCC, although it's not chartered as a censorship organization, they do censor either directly or by influence or by threatening people's licenses.  And so certain things just don't go on air. 

. . . because the news isn't just the story.  It's how often they repeat the story, what the tone of voice is that is used to set up the story, how the story is actually photographed, whether or not they bring on a so-called expert to explain the story.  It seems to me that in the United States, the family has been replaced by the Squadron.  If you look at MTV and the way the dancers are set up, young people group together in squadrons.  They have terms like, "Me and my crew."  Nobody's got a family because who wants to hang out with a dad?  Dads are like Bundy's.  Then again if you live in a neighborhood where they don't have gangs, your other options are you belong to the football team, which is another kind of a gang.  Or you belong to some other thing, which is not a family.  The family is an endangered species in this country.  I think there is a nostalgia for families as an institution, but they're rapidly fading away.  I mean more choice means more the same because the minute somebody comes up with something which is successful, the natural instinct of the American is to imitate it and just clone it and beat it to death just as . . . .  The thing I find very ironic in today's political world is that we are always talking U.S. politics about how the Japanese never really invent anything, they just copied our stuff.  Well, we just copy our stuff.  We're chasing our tail here. 

DR. HEATH: I was trying to show him that he's welcome to choose his behavior, but the behavior he chooses may have no effect on his getting what he wants.

It's How You React That Matters - Therapy Bites with Dr Heath

Dr. Heath on X @therapy_bites
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— Johnny Vedmore (@JohnnyVedmore) December 6, 2024

00:00.  Dr. Heath, my week is always made brighter by your psychological cherries which adorned my proverbial cake how are you today?

00:10.  I'm great and my week would not be complete without a Johnny Vedmore interview so I'm just happy to be here on a day or two before Father's Day.

00:20.  Indeed, Father's Day is upon us, Dr. Heath.  Have you any ancient wisdom for the modern dads? 

00:30.  I actually have a surprise for your listeners . . .  Book titled, The Enchiridion of Epictetus: Handbook of Epictetus, written about 2,000 years ago, and here he is, none other than Epictetus, sitting at his desk with his walking stick, his crutch. And we're going to talk about him today because I raised my son on a steady diet of 2000 year old philosophy from Epictetus and the first thing that I taught him was an opportunity I will remember his mother had gone to Walmart he did not want to be separated from her he threw himself down on the parquet wood floor of the kitchen and started crying.  So I asked him if that was what he was going to do, "Are you going to lay here and cry?" and he said yes, and I said "That's fine.  I'll be in the living room.  When you're done, you can come and join me."   And one of my favorite quotes from Epictetus is, "It's not what happens to you, but how you react that matters."  So what I was trying to do there, dads, is I was trying to show him that he's welcome to choose his behavior, but the behavior he chooses may have no effect on his getting what he wants.  Throwing yourself down on the kitchen floor and crying only gets you dirty pants, and so I raised him on that and he learned that it is not things that are out there that decide our thinking and decide our mentality and decide our mindset, but what we decide to think.  And so he began choosing healthier behaviors, not because I slapped him around because we didn't do that, not because I yelled at him, but because I showed him that his behavior, that particular behavior, didn't get him what he wanted.  And so it's not what happens to you that you don't get your way or something like that, but it's really how you decide to act to those things that really decides a course of your life.  

03:31. There are a lot of people who react to that a lot differently it's really emotional bringing up children of course it's a very emotional experience being a child in the relationships you have with your parents too so it's always a mail what advice would you like to give to fathers about how to be a positive influence in their children's lives on a day like this?

04:00.  That's a fabulous question because one thing I didn't do as a dad, I did not catastroph-ize or awful-ize his emotions.  I actually invited him to experience every single one of those.  I told the story of a very tragic incident where a friend of his died of a gunshot wound, and there's no way I could take that hurt away from him.  It would be unfair of me to do so because I said to him you were going to have to experience every single drop of those difficulty emotions.  And that's what's really going to carve your future.  And indeed, that's what has made him very successful is that he has learned that emotions are not our enemies.  Emotions are normal.  Emotions aren't just things for women.  I watched him cry.  I sat with him while he cried.  He has seen me cry.  He has sat with me as I've cried, and we've come to embrace that part of our humanity.  But what we make decisions on are not the presence of emotions but the direction of our thinking and he's in fact very good at that; that's why this was such a meaningful gift to me of old Epictetus because it really cements how major a role men older men dads teaching boys not what to think but how to think. 

05:35. And so I didn't but show to think I didn't catch the fish for my son.  I taught him how to fish for thoughts so that he would be a more effective thinker.

Yeah, by the sounds of it how to feel and process the emotions that emotions exist as well that is something I have to say my dad wasn't the best at you know I only saw my dad cry a couple of times but when that was so you knew that times were bad because he was someone who used to be he would give the "Let's suck it up," taking your emotion and just take in your emotions and just hold it with him.  Is that something that you hear a lot from grown men that that's what their fathers were like, fathers who thought they had to be strong characters, we're strong men that didn't show emotions?

Oh yeah that