Yesterday a select group of National Zoo donors were given first crack at seeing the District’s newest four-legged sensation, Butterstick (yes, officially he is called Tai Shan, but National Airport is also officially known as Reagan and we’re not about to start calling it that). Parents and children took the opportunity to ohhh and ahhh their way past the undeniably cute panda cub and mother Mei Xiang, while those of us too cheap to donate money to the cause are left with little more than the voyeuristic Panda Cam.

In reporting on Butterstick’s first public outing, WJLA noted that while Mei Xiang has been a staple in her cub’s life, father Tian Tian has been, well, a bit of a deadbeat. It’s not that Tian Tian, pictured here above Mei Xiang, is an unloving father or that he spends too much time out hitting the sauce with the boys (see Federline, Kevin), it’s just that it’s nature — male giant pandas don’t much care for their offspring. And this being Washington, expect that someone somewhere will seek to make a political point of Tian Tian’s pitiful paternal contribution to his only child.

How so, you ask? Not two months the New York Times reported that various conservative organizations had adopted “March of the Pengiuns” — a popular and moving presentation of penguins’ harrowing experience in mating and raising offspring — as unofficial evidence of the importance of monogamy, the value of family life, and proof of some sort of intelligent design. Some called it a stretch, many agreed.

But given that some people are willing to use anything to make a political point, what can we expect from Tian Tian’s terrible fathering? Will feminist organizations take him as poster-child for deadbeat dads, using his likeness to demand that Congress and the states increase penalties for failing to make child support payments? Or will conservatives blame Butterstick’s apparent restlessness and proclivity for trouble-making on his lack of a stable heterosexual household?

Just who will make that first unfortunate leap?

Picture of Mei Xiang and Tian Tian courtesy of the National Zoo.