Day 351- Celery

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Mike Huckabee Extended Interview
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

Dear Mr. President,

Watching The Daily Show last night, I felt like cheering when Mike Huckabee suggested that Democrats were making health benefits for 9/11 first responders a political battle and Jon Stewart retorted "honestly, to their discredit, they haven't." Stewart goes on to compare the situation to the Democrats being handed a feast of a political win on a silver platter and refusing it in order to sit in a corner and eat celery. His entire show seemed to beg the question "hey, where's your outrage now?" of every 9/11-invoking Republican, FOX news pundit and mosque-protesting bigot. Because honoring those who died on (and continue to die from) 9/11 is about more than keeping Islamic community centers outside of a 10-block radius of ground zero. Mr. Stewart, after the rally to restore sanity, forcefully reminded Rachel Maddow that unlike pundits representing real news networks, he doesn't have any skin in the game, he doesn't play so much as shout drunkenly from the stands. I think yesterday's show demonstrated rather clearly why that isn't always true. It must be frustrating to watch a comedian out-articulate you with a message that Democrats ought to have been owning since the Republican filibuster began.

Another silver platter story arrived in the form of the Republican opposition to the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010. House Republicans voted against the bill (even some who co-sponsored it) citing fiscal concerns and bizarre fears that such legislation could increase abortions. I just want to tear my hair out at the horrifying logic being used to justify this. Where is the family-values outrage now?

(See that Cat? See the Cradle? )

I understand the desire to live in merry bipartisan bliss, especially now that every one is in the spirit of the holidays. But Jon Stewart is right. Enough celery! Democrats ought to be finding every TV camera they can and repeating some version of the same line about honoring 9/11's heroes and protecting vulnerable children from exploitation in the name of marriage. The race for 2012 starts any day now (if not yesterday) and voters across the country need to know that voting Republican is tantamount to saying it's OK to let 9/11 first responders suffer and struggle and die, that it's OK to quibble about the global gag rule while 12-year old girls are forced to marry men old enough to be their grandfathers.

Put down the celery Mr. President, it's time for a more satisfying entree.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 239- Comfort reading and baiting Glenn Beck fans

Dear Mr. President,

My friend and coworker wrote a short piece on the reliable pleasure of reading Kurt Vonnegut for our bookstore's blog. Comfort reading, returning to a familiar author for the needed reminder of why I read, is something I often find myself in need of. His post recalled my own affection for Vonnegut, and my sadness at his passing. Vonnegut's writing shaped the way that many of my generation approached the world; his humanism and his compassion are certainly things that I strive to emulate in my own life. As Jon Stewart told him once, he made adolescence bearable. Thinking about him today I couldn't help but wonder how he would feel about our country as it is now. How disappointed he might be with us, and how much easier and more absurd the horrible things would all seem if he were still here to comment on them.

If comfort reading is how I escape temporary frustrations with the written word, than I certainly spent my morning occupied with its political equivalent. Sometimes, when the political world gets too frustrating, too disgusting or too bleak, I turn to the familiar comfort and reliable entertainment of baiting Glenn Beck fans. It isn't a nice thing to do, I suppose, and probably not enough of an intellectual exercise to even make it good practice for real debate, but I feel like I'm allowed a certain amount of pleasure on what is definitely one of the toughest days I've had in a while. And so, when confronted with the question "how is Glenn Beck a racist?" by one of his groupies, I felt compelled to answer.

I think what comforts me about arguing with Beck's ilk is that it offers a clear opportunity to articulate my opinions and positions to a clear opponent. Beck's divisive, bigoted and ignorant rants are exactly the sort of thing I stand in opposition to. They are an affront to my values, a poison to our political discourse and one of the last havens for the idea that Real America is the birthright of the white, english-speaking, Judeo-Christian middle class. And, despite all of this, I still believe Beck has every right to say the hateful and stupid things that he says (even, unfortunately, in the historical shadow of much better men.) This feeling is a comforting reminder that I have not lost all perspective for the sake of my partisan beliefs. That I still see the struggle between Right and Left in ideological and not apocalyptic terms. In short, as petty as it may seem, I am merely reassuring myself that for all the comfort of a clearly identified opponent, I have not yet sunk to his level. That Mr. Vonnegut taught me well, and his lessons have not been drown out by my impassioned, emotional reactions.

So much of my time discussing politics feels like war. Two (or more) sides stubbornly entrenched and unwilling to even consider their opposition to be human. Willfully entering a fight like this, just to remind myself that it can be fun, keeps me from sinking into the combative mentality too deeply. Maybe that's unforgivably smug and self-satisfied. I think, so long as Mr. Beck enjoys the right to keep spewing his nonsense, I will enjoy my right to challenge those who are buying into it.

I hope that tomorrow doesn't devolve into something really awful, that Mr. Beck and his supporters remember the great men who stood in that place before them and act accordingly. If not, well, as Mr. Vonnegut said, so it goes.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 133- Bring them home

As a personal preface to tonight's letter, I'd like to emphasize that I do not intend this letter to stand as a sweeping indictment of anything other than war itself. I do not think that all soldier are war criminals, and I do not think that all those who commit the kinds of horrible acts I'm writing about are necessarily responsible for their own actions. I know I have a number of readers who are serving or who have served in the armed forces; I have tremendous respect for them, and for all our troops, which is why I don't believe they should be sent into situations like Iraq and Afghanistan. It's also why I do believe that those who put all of them at risk by violating the rules of war and of common decency should be held accountable, be they soldiers, commanding officers, or the civilian leaders of the military at the DOD or in the White House.

Dear Mr. President,

As a student at Boise State University, I was lucky enough to take classes from a gifted professor who had a friendship with Seymour Hersh. Mr. Hersh gave a lecture at our school that year, and, the morning before, spoke with the thirty or so students in my class directly. Our discussion was mainly about the recent revelations, brought to light by Mr. Hersh himself, about the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib. I recall thinking, at the time, that Mr. Hersh's legacy of bringing the most intimate horrors of war to the public's eye was a testament to his tenacity as a reporter, but not to any increase in the brutality of America's wars. Mr. Hersh, who would have still gone down in history a journalistic icon if he'd retired after breaking the story of the Mai Lai massacre, continues to bring us the sad news of our own war crimes, this time on your watch. Battlefield executions (or, for that matter, prisoner abuse and the killing of civilians,) are probably nothing new in the history of the American military; one only need read Vonnegut's account of World War II to see that, even when fought for noble and just causes, war cannot be waged without these kinds of brutalities.

How does your Christianity allow such conduct? How does your humanity? The evidence mounts, daily, that the wars we fight in Iraq and Afghanistan, (wars which, I grant, you did not start,) are bloody, costly, and doing far more harm than good for all involved. There must be a clear sense, in the field, by the troops, that their commanding officers right up to their commander in chief will not allow, condone, or, most importantly, ignore, the violations of human rights and international law that continue to be uncovered. This expectation must be clear, public, and enforced even at the levels of high command. I respect the men and women who serve our country in uniform, sir, if anything I count them among the victims of these wars, but when even one of them kills a prisoner in cold blood, they do so in my name, with my country's flag on their arms, and I am just as responsible for it as they are. And, even more to the point, Mr. President, so are you.

A distinction Mr. Hersh made to our class about the awareness, higher up the chain of command, as to what was going on at Abu Ghraib, was echoed years later by another professor, this time at the University of Washington. Discussing international law, both emphasized that the standard for culpability is when those in power knew, or should have known human rights abuses were occurring. As much as I love international law, this is one instance in which my first concern is not the legality of your behavior but the morality of it. I don't know, and will likely never know, if you condone or even order these battlefield executions, but I doubt very much that you do. I do know that you are the leader of this military and I elected you, in part, with the hope that you would curtail the human rights abuses by US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan by the only means that I know for sure will accomplish this; by bringing them home.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 62

Dear Mr. President,

Today I gave blood at my local blood center. Before any one is allowed to donate, they are asked a series of questions about lifestyle, travel and medical history. When the woman preparing me for my donation saw that I'd been to Palestine, she started asking me about the trip. Soon, she and several other employees were talking about Palestine, where it was, what the political situation is, and their own travel experiences. They asked me about Ariel Sharon and the peace processes, and before long the other donors and I were chatting as well. The man in the chair next to mine had just relocated from southern California for work, and his wife and two young children were still there.

It was one of those perfect, sunny days that Seattle gets, more often than our reputation implies, but not so often that we've forgotten how to appreciate. I'm terrified of needles, and blood, and doctors, so this particular experience is not one I usually handle with very much grace. But this kind man, and the employees and the center chattering away as though we were all old friends, the sunlight pouring in through the windows, even the calm, sleepy greyhound that lived in the recovery area outside combined to keep me from the grips of complete panic. After, we ate cookies in the recovery room and joked about the weather.

We're all so different; facing such different struggles and looking for such different things in life. It reminded me strongly of the concept in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, of a karass, a team of people who work together without knowing it, to do God's will. I may spend most of my days in groups based on false constructs- age, social class, employment, education- but there are other things that bind us together as people, a willingness to help one another, that I sometimes forget in my day to day interactions. In the end, what ought to have been a really awful experience was really not so terrible at all.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey