A White House Response

A friend, Eddie Chapman, emails me stuff, almost always from a liberal perspective. This time, he seems on the verge of conversion...
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A reply from the White House: A person wrote a letter to the White House complaining about the treatment of a captive taken during the Afghanistan war. Attached is a copy of a letter they received back:

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, D.C., 20016

Dear Concerned Citizen:
Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our Treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Our administration takes these matters seriously, and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington. You'll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like you, we are creating a new division of the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the "Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers" program, or LARK for short.

In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care. Your personal detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence next Monday. Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud (you can just call him Ahmed) is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of admonishment. It will likely be necessary for you to hire some assistant caretakers.

We will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are commensurate with those you so strongly recommended in our letter. Although Ahmed is a sociopath and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his "attitudinal problem" will help him overcome these character flaws.

Perhaps you are correct in describing these problems as mere cultural differences. He will bite you, given the chance. We understand that you plan to offer counseling and home schooling. Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We do not suggest that you ask him to demonstrate these skills at your next yoga group.

He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless in your opinion) this might offend him.

Ahmed will not wish to interact with your wife or daughters except sexually) since he views females as a subhuman form of property.

This is a particularly sensitive subject for him, and he has been known to show violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the new dress code that Ahmed will recommend as more appropriate attire. I'm sure they will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the bhurka - over time.

Just remind them that it is all part of "respecting his culture and his religious beliefs" - wasn't that how you put it?

Thanks again for your letter. We truly appreciate it when folks like you, who know so much, keep us informed of the proper way to do our job. You take good care of Ahmed - and remember...we'll be watching. Good luck!

Cordially...Your Buddy, Don Rumsfeld

Talk Show Hosts in Memphis

Radio talk show hosts are just like any other profession. Some are good and some are bad. And some are in-between. For example, take college professors. I’ve spent the last ten years auditing classes on various topics. Some of the profs are excellent. They know their subject. Some have even written textbooks. And know how to teach their students. Others are mediocre. And then some are really atrocious. Their command of English is totally inadequate. They have come from another land, perhaps. It may be they are the best the college can afford to hire on the budget available. But they should not be teaching. I feel especially sorry for the student who must struggle to understand and learn from them. These kids have to get a grade. I, as an audit student, do not. I can just walk away. And I sometimes do.
Why did I mention radio talk show hosts? Well, it’s the profession I practiced for a number of years before I retired. And now I can’t help but listen to today’s crop - and analyze their work. And I am saddened. At least with the offerings here in the Memphis market. Many of the talkers are syndicated. Cause that’s a relatively inexpensive way for stations to fill air time. And they’ve got to have some skill to reach that level of success. But the local hosts? They are, at best, two dimensional. They manage to toss out the usual litany of current events as grist for the mill. And they typically assume a belligerent posture on the topic and interrupt the callers and pontificate as if they are God’s gift to the human race.
They are not. They interrupt the caller and won’t let them make their point. They will do this over and over, and over again. As often as not, they won’t even let the caller finish his or her first sentence before jumping down their throat. It is infantile behavior. They are in control and can easily out shout the caller. And they do. To what end? To appear superior, I suppose.
So, what is the third dimension at which they fail so frequently? It is humility. They need to learn that they are not always right. That it is truly brilliant to be humble and admit one’s errors. If they were to adopt that posture of humility with some regularity, they might find their audiences could come to love them. As it is, they will continue to get a small number of regular callers, who obviously like to be verbally abused. They will be left with long stretches of air time when there are no callers on the line. They have convinced themselves that this means the public likes to hear them talk about anything - without limit. Even if they have nothing worthwhile to say. They simply continue to string words together. And they repeat and repeat over and over the simplistic arguments they make on a topic.
It would be a true service to their listeners if their program directors would make the talk hosts sit down with their show tapes on a regular basis - at least once a week - and listen to the drivel that they pretend is broadcast entertainment. They would quickly learn that they use a few dozen stock phrases over and over again, boring any discerning listener to death. Listening to their tapes would not completely cure this, but it would force them to come up with some fresh expressions or clichés on a regular basis. And their program directors would have to accept that there would be moments when they might be (horrors) at a loss for words! Such moments would only last for a second or two, but broadcasters have been trained to fear a second of dead air - afraid the audience will switch to another station. This kind of fear is paranoid and totally unwarranted. Though a few people might turn the dial, the greater number will come to judge fairly, and greatly respect, the talk host who has to pause for a moment to gather his thoughts and say something worth hearing.
There is another kind of talk radio in the Memphis market - the bought and paid for weekend hour. In this mode, the skill level of the host it less important. He or she is simply a shill for a service or product available in the market: vitamin pills or landscape service, or financial planning advice. If he has brought several sponsors to the station willing to pay the going rate, and if the proposed host has at least a minimal background of experience in the topic and doesn’t say “you know” at the end of every sentence, odds are he’s going on the air next week. The station doesn’t really care very much. Its weekend times don’t have much effect in a station’s ratings anymore. But if they can sell 20 or 30 hours over the weekend, they’ll pay for the electricity that keeps them on th air and for the parttime board operators who screen the callers.

It Will Take Us a Generation, at Least

Wash. Post columnist Jim Hoagland said recently:
"..in the long term, success can only come from enlisting and aiding moderate Muslims in transforming their societies from breeding grounds for cults of death into places that instill an unquenchable desire to live."
In addition, we need to enlist moderate Americans to moderate our society, chasing away the "Vulgarians at the Gates" as Steve Allen put it. He, of course, was referring mainly to those corporate types interested primarily in the bottom line, regardless of how coarse and obscene they make our society through the various mass media.
You see, our conduct and lifestyles (anything goes) is carried around the world in a heartbeat. And that's a major component of the enmity felt by Muslims against us. Although you might say that's none of their business, they think it is because it affects their younger generations.
Solution: Shame the media titans. Confront them at any public gathering and raise the issue. Do it over and over. Picket their homes. As well as their offices.