The Daddying Backstory for My Documentary "THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD"
- Allan Shedlin
- Apr 8
- 8 min read
Updated: Apr 9
Guest Post by Jen Senko
Award-winning Filmmaker, D3F Official Selection and Finalist, The Brainwashing of My Dad
My Dad. Hoo boy, what can I say about my Dad?
He was famous with the kids in our neighborhood. He could make all kinds of noises, funny faces, gave horsey rides, and had the same enthusiasm as us kids. He was especially famous for his ability to burp the words: "All right, Louie. Drop your gun." It would send us into peals of laughter and envy.
He would even get scolded by my mother, just like us. But he could be strict too. He was adamant about education. He revered it. He grew up dirt poor during the Depression but boasted that he attended his one-room schoolhouse every single day of his life. Got some reward for it too.
My Dad considered himself lucky. He had been a medic in WWII (which came in handy with us kids) and got his master's in engineering on the GI Bill. He was (almost) eternally grateful to the government for that. Somewhere along the way, that changed.
I never could have imagined that, one day, the goofy Dad who made us laugh until we cried would become someone I barely recognized – someone who saw the world through a lens of fear and anger.
His affinity for math and numbers made him especially frustrated with me. He would labor over explaining to me the logic of math and wondered why I just couldn’t "get" math to save my life. I even invented a method of adding numbers by putting imaginary points on them. That way, I wouldn’t get caught counting on my fingers in class.
I scored high on intelligence tests but did poorly in school. Little did my Dad know as he laboriously explained the logic of math in a philosophical way to me, I was daydreaming about horses. But I figured out when to nod.
Nevertheless, I pined for his approval. He was more interested in his son, who was pouring sand into the gas tank of the neighbor's car and breaking school toilets by throwing shotputs down them. He rationalized "boys will be boys."
Both my parents made us read in bed for an hour every night before "lights out." Because reading allowed us to open up our worlds.
I struggled through school but the last two years of high school, I decided I wanted to focus on my schoolwork because I didn’t want to graduate believing there was something wrong with me. I got better grades and even appreciated the complexity of algebra.
With that, I felt I'd finally earned my Dad's respect.
After high school, he presented me with an ultimatum: get a job or take some college courses. I took some college courses. Among them was painting. I had a talent. The school offered to buy my second painting for its permanent collection. It's still hanging in my mom's living room. Anyway, I got the fever. I enrolled in a community college, full-time. The freedom! The respect! No silly rules. I did well.
Then I wanted to test how far my talent could go. I got accepted at Pratt University and graduated on the Dean's list. My Dad was super proud. I was even doing better than the boys. My younger brother was still getting into trouble, and it eventually became clear, at least to me, that he had a mental illness. My father denied it to his dying day.
My Dad eventually retired in the late 80s. He was 62 and had a great pension after working for the government all those years. My dad picked up a part-time engineering job, which included a long commute. Since he valued education, he listened to talk radio instead of music. He thought maybe he’d learn something.
Indeed, he did. And Bob Grant, the openly, proudly racist and sexist father of "conservative" radio, became his teacher. My Dad got really caught up in Grant's radio show and gradually started to develop this rough edge on his personality. He got a little confrontational and argumentative. It was no biggie. Or so we thought.
By the time my Dad fully retired, he was hooked on talk radio. Then he found Rush Limbaugh.
Listening to Limbaugh changed the course of my Dad's life and his relationship with his family. It wasn’t just that he argued more, it was like he was slipping away from us. The warmth, the curiosity, the dad who once accepted everyone and anyone was disappearing. In his place was someone who saw enemies everywhere, even in his own family.
My Dad, who had been really open-minded and non-judgmental, became racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, and a radicalized far-right Republican who no longer believed in any government help. Essentially, Rush Limbaugh's voice became his. He was Rush Limbaugh ("I am Heathcliff").
My father no longer cared about education because he said colleges turned students into "god damn liberals." He used to love my gay friends (naturally, I made a lot of them when I was at Pratt). His attitude towards Hispanics sickened and shocked me. He had become evangelical about his newfound religion of Rush.
An older white man was the perfect target for Rush Limbaugh. Older white men had seen extreme sociological changes since the 1960s. They had to make room for women, blacks, and gays in the workplace. They had to stop calling their women "girls," talking about them jokingly in a sexual manner, and judging them by their looks.
My Dad sent countless emails that carried a pseudo-folksy tone but all parroting the same underlying, not always subtle, right-wing message: "Liberals" were the spawn of Satan and were to blame for "the American dream" fading into oblivion.
Day-in and day-out, my Dad argued with his family, trying to convert us. Sometimes he even rejected us or berated us for being Democrats. This torture went on for years.
The only one who didn't end up blocking Dad was my Mom. She honed her sourcing and arguing skills and would reply to his emails. One day when she was in her 80s, she sent me an email asking how she could get an apartment as she couldn't take it any more with Dad. But she nixed that idea, eventually, and stuck it out.
Watching my Mom, who had once been his equal partner, now constantly defending herself or us against his tirades, was heartbreaking. She stayed, she argued, but I could see the exhaustion in her eyes.
One day, as Dad was nearing his 90s, Mom insisted they move out of the neighborhood they had been living in and into a "senior neighborhood." Enough was enough of feeling like "the old people." A move is one of the top 5 traumas a civilized human can experience (death of a loved one and divorce are a couple of others). Even if it’s ultimately a good thing, it is a cause for stress and trauma, which can leave your mind open for other change.
Well…
During the move, Dad's radio "tragically" broke. A child of the Depression and an engineer, my Dad didn't believe in throwing anything out he could fix. So, he temporarily put his broken radio in the garage while they got settled in the new house. But it sat there, forgotten.
No more Rush Limbaugh.
Immediately, it seemed Dad mellowed a good bit. A few months went by, Dad still sent emails and watched Fox at lunchtime, until the old TV conked out. Mom got a new TV and programmed the remotes – her way. Dad didn't want to bother to figure her system out, so he just watched what she watched.
No more Fox "News."
Dad mellowed some more. One day, he said that President Barrack Obama was "doing a pretty good job!" We were gobsmacked! He became less argumentative with the family – people, in general – and more appreciative of my mother. He was even understanding of my dilemma after I got laid off, lost my health insurance, and wanted universal healthcare.
A few months later, Dad had to go in the hospital to have kidney stones removed. They kept him a week. While there, Mom asked me to delete some of Dad's emails, so they wouldn't overwhelm his inbox. I told her it wouldn't do any good unless we unsubscribed from them. Otherwise, they'd continue to pile up. So, my Mom took it upon herself to delete and unsubscribe him from some of the worst right-wing propaganda emails. Then she got the idea of subscribing him to some of her more neutral or liberal political newsletters.
My dad stopped raging completely.
He became more sympathetic to others' plights. He became open-minded again and started talking to immigrants and non-natives again (rather than labeling them "illegal aliens") in order to exercise his amazing language skills. He sang songs and was pleasant to be around.
My Dad and I bonded in a way we never did before. He was growing old and tired, so I became his personal angel when I came to visit. Oh, and I was making a movie about him. My 2016 documentary, The Brainwashing of My Dad, is now steaming as an Official Selection and Atticus Award Finalist during the 2025 Daddying Film Festival now through Saturday, April 12, on Eventive. He loved the attention.
In the last three years of his life, my Dad found his old self and happiness again.
He passed just a few months after watching my film. He told me he was proud of me. And I was proud of him – not just because he was my Dad, but because he found his way back. In the end, I got my dad back. And, more importantly, he got himself back too.
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Jen Senko is an award-winning documentary filmmaker based in New York City. Her documentaries focus on socio-political themes with the intent of inspiring discussion and fomenting change. Senko’s 2016 documentary, narrated by Matthew Modine, The Brainwashing of My Dad, tracks the disturbing rise of right-wing media and the motive for one-party rule by oligarchs behind it. The film has won numerous awards, screened in festivals and theaters across the U.S, Canada, England, Ireland, and Sweden. Most recently, it won the prestigious 2021 Webby People’s Voice Award: Public Service & Activism. It was adapted into a book by the same name and published in 2021.
Senko’s previous documentary, The Vanishing City, co-directed with Fiore DeRosa and narrated by TV series Law and Order's Kathryn Erbe, exposes gentrification’s dire consequences in New York City. Her first documentary, Road Map Warrior Women, is a road-trip documentary about extraordinarily independent women in the West and garnered Senko numerous awards.
In addition to filmmaking, Senko defines herself as a social-justice activist-documentarian with a focus on media: “I am passionate about the role of the media and how it plays the most significant part in creating what has essentially resulted in an assault on our democracy.
She graduated on the Dean's list from Pratt Institute in New York where she studied Communications Design, painting, and fashion illustration.
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