The world can be divided into people who divide everyone into categories and people who don't. QED, I'm in the first group. And since it's Father's Day, I decided to categorize fathers -- fathers as they're depicted in plays and movies and on TV.

American culture provides four basic father types. First, the wimps. The wimpy father became a staple in the 1950s. Not coincidentally, the wimp dad emerged just as the country took its sudden, single-minded depict and serve rambunctious youth, with the invention of the modern teenager. Kids ruled. And so dad receded.

The most magnificently tragic wimp dad was James Dean's pathetic father in Rebel Without A Cause -- Frank Stark, played by Jim Backus.

On TV, there was Ozzie Nelson, the weak perpetually smiling father of rock stars, who turned the cardigan sweater into classic American wimp-wear. Following him were Dennis the Menace's cardigan-wearing milquetoast dad and Patty Duke's cardigan-wearing milquetoast dad.
I literally cannot wear a cardigan today as a result.

In the 70s wimp dads masqueraded as sensitive dads - like Mike Brady on the Brady Bunch. During the backlashy 90s and today they masquerade as red-blooded regular guys -- John Goodman on Roseanne, Ray Romano on Everybody Loves Raymond. But they are still essentially wimps. Hal on Malcom in the Middle is essentially a reincarnation of Darren Stevens from Bewitched -- high-strung and seething with needy anger, but a wimp nonetheless.

Next there's dad as jerk. At the high end we have tragic abusive jerks like James Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night and tragic abused jerks like Willy Loman in Death of A Salesman.

But mostly we have jerks with a heart of gold, who've ranged from William Powell's cranky Manhattan stockbroker in Life With Father to Archie Bunker to Bernie Mac to Robert Duval's remarkable Bull Meecham in The Great Santini.

And then there's the truly good father -- the strong steady wise man. In their bland, generic form this was the iconic 50s sitcom dad -- dad as news anchor, dad as president, Dad as white man with a not-too-demanding white-collar job. Like Robert Young as the preternaturally happy father on Father Knows Best. And Hugh Beaumont and Carl Betz as the cold, ironic, slightly scary dads on Leave It to Beaver and The Donna Reed Show. And Bill Cosby as Cliff Huxtable -- happy and cold, ironic and slightly scary.

But by far the most exemplary fathers in pop culture fathers are single fathers. And the golden age for perfect single dads was a very specific moment: the early 1960s -- weirdly, before the divorce epidemic, back when single parenting was uncommon and single fatherhood unheard of.

I'm talking about Chuck Connors as The Rifleman, and John Forsyth as Bachelor Father. And even more I'm talking about the best, wisest, most lovable TV dads of all -- Fred McMurray as Steve Douglas on My Three Sons...and Andy Griffith as Sheriff Andy Taylor.

All those great dads -- without a mother in sight. It may be that all the male writers and producers of 50s and early-60s television were working out some collective anti-oedipal fantasy.

But then I think of the ultimate, ideal, circa-1960 father -- created by a female novelist. If by means of cultural alchemy you combine Steve Douglas with Sheriff Taylor you get a kind, rock-steady, jacket-and-tied, American-provincial seeker of justice. You get Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

This is the father I wanted, and pretty much had. This is the father I want to be. Except for the jacket and tie part.

Although these days, that kind of charming, confident, deeply reassuring father figure is considered implausible, or maybe just insufficiently interesting.

Which is why the culture's two most beloved TV fathers are a new type: the buffoon. One of them entirely unreal -- Homer Simpson -- and the other, our 21st century neo-Ozzie, Ozzy Osbourne, a little shockingly real.

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.

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