Barack Cosby

The Obamas spent some of their Father's Day at church, as is said to be their tradition. But they didn't attend their traditional church.

The Obama family attended services at Chicago’s Apostolic Church of God, one of the city’s largest African American congregations and just six and a half miles from Obama’s former place of worship, Trinity Church of Christ.

Just six miles from the scene of so many Sunday Debacles, Barack was greeted warmly, and, it sounds, with a great deal more dignity than one might expect down the street.

Longtime church leader Bishop Arthur Brazier greeted his “good friend” warmly and touchingly noted, “[Obama] has done something [in] this country that I never thought I would live to see.” He continued, “I am filled with emotion because I have lived through some very tough times in America. But the America today is not the America of yesteryear. And I don’t think, I don’t think it behooves us well to keep talking about the past. The Apostle Paul said forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out to the things that are before.”

Barack did a little preaching of his own, delivering his best Bill Cosby imitation.

Obama took to the pulpit to deliver a speech on fatherhood, a tenet that should be strengthened, he observed. “Too many fathers are also missing. Too many fathers are MIA. Too many fathers are AWAL. Missing from too many lives and too many homes. They’ve abandoned their responsibilities, they’re acting like boys instead of men, and the foundations of our family have suffered because of it. You know and I know this is true everywhere, but nowhere is it more true than in the African American community,” he said, delivering his straight-talking message to the African American congregation.