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Name:
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MythBuster
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Subject:
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An open letter to Lou Pritchet
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Date:
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7/29/2009 11:58:22 AM
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An Open Letter to Lou Pritchett
Emblematic of the disturbed right-wing fear mongering that has grown up like ringworm on the American body politic since long before Obama was even elected is a piece entitled An Open Letter to President Obama penned by a Lou Pritchett, who was a vice-president of Proctor & Gamble and the author of a business self-help book.
Mr. Pritchett hoped to have had his work published in The New York Times but surprisingly never received any acknowledgement of his submission. Nevertheless, it has become a popular fixture on right-wing websites and fodder for e-mail forwards by conservatives to their friends.
In this letter, Mr. Pritchett sets out the reasons Obama supposedly "scares" him. His work instead has the converse effect of demonstrating the reasons people like Mr. Pritchett scare me.
Dear Mr. Pritchett:
I would like to take this opportunity to comment on your "open letter" to President Obama.
Dear President Obama:
You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.
You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.
Who's fault is that? The President's biography and curriculum vitae are public record. You could find out anything you want about Obama by a simple Google search or a trip to your local library.
You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.
FOX News, of all outlets, managed somehow to be aware that Obama paid for his expensive Ivy League education through student loans, which were paid off by the proceeds of his book deals. That you, Mr. Pritchett, were unable to discover this is very interesting.
You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.
Is there an objective definition of what it means to be "culturally" an American? It seems from this that you apparently believe so, and you believe you have the authority to judge others by that standard and determine whether or not they pass muster. That is scary.
You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.
And this is relevant how? You assert that Obama is the first President that has scared you. That implies that Obama's predecessor did not scare you and that you deem George W. Bush a better chief executive than Obama. Bush's record of company management was not exactly stellar. If you prefer a President who proved a repeated failure in running a company to one who has never run a company to ruin, that is scary.
You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.
The response to this concern is similar to that above. If Obama scares you because he has never served in the military, were you likewise scared by Bush whose military experience amounted to a brief cushy stint in the Texas Air National Guard without ever seeing combat? How about his powerful Vice-President who could not volunteer for military service because he had "other priorities?"
You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.
This is a pretty weak allegation. It offers no details, no specifics, just vague character aspersions. You'll have to do better than that, Mr. Pritchett.
You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.
I understand that it is common in conservative media to repeat allegations endlessly until they become memes irretrievably lodged in the public consciousness and thus accepted by many blindly as fact. However, it would be really nice if you happened to be able to name just one "radical extremist" with whom Obama had "aligned himself" and who "hate America" and "wish to see America fail."
While we're at it, what the heck does it mean to want America to "fail?" Fail at what? America is a nation-state, and as such its purpose is to protect the rights of its citizens and advance their general welfare, so I suppose America would "fail" if it defaulted on those goals. I don't know of anyone associated with Obama who actively seeks that outcome, but it's worth noting which party has been most consistently in favor of policies that restrict the freedoms of Americans based on their own narrowly-defined visions of "morality" and "tradition" and which benefit the most privileged strata of society to the exclusion (and all too often at the expense) of the working people who actually produce the wealth we enjoy. And no, the answer is not "the Democrat [sic] Party."
You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.
This suggests that you have apparently never read or listened to a single speech Obama has ever given. Either that, or you equate the honest admission of shortcomings (usually a necessary step in solving those shortcomings and improving oneself) with "blaming America." Perhaps you believe that America is infallible, guaranteed by Divine blessing never to make even the slightest mistake in any policy or program? If so, that is scary.
You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.
Given how well the "private sector" has been shown to regulate itself, why is this a bad thing? Moreover, why should one trust the autocratic and undemocratic corporate sector to run things better than the elected and theoretically democratic government? Europeans in general do not seem to be too upset with lifestyle and standard of living that their close cooperation of government and business provides them.
You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.
Similar to above, why is this scary? Moreover, it displays your ignorance: Obama has never suggested replacing the private health care system but rather augmenting it with a government-subsidized system for those who fall through the cracks. Our health care system as it stands now stinks. One has to wait ridiculously long to just get an appointment with a doctor in your network, and then you have to gamble about whether or not your insurance provider will grudgingly pay for the care you need. Insurance companies have no transparency or accountability, and I have yet to see any kind of convincing argument why a government-subsidized system would do any worse a job. Canadians and Europeans somehow manage just fine. One has to suspect that the root of what "scares" you is the fear that you will have to pay a little bit more of your wealth in taxes to help support programs for those who didn't have the good fortune to become Vice Presidents of major corporations with generous compensation packages. This is selfishness, pure and simple.
You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.
This is absurd, and short-sighted. These "vast oil, coal, and shale reserves" are not infinite. They will run out, probably sooner than we think. Maybe you think that "necessity is the mother of invention" and will trust in market forces to solve the fuel crisis once the world's economy completely collapses; common sense, however, would advise that an ounce of prevention is worth a
URL: Great minds...
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