insomnomaniac

Frank Rich Compares Bush to Joe Millionaire

I kid you not! Rich's opinion piece today concludes the most long-winded, wordy prognostication of doom with these paragraphs:

Mr. Bush's rhetoric says we can have it all ó lower taxes, better schools, a war or two or three, civil defense ó without pain. But the numbers don't add up, and when the expanded war becomes a reality, we'll see a bottom line that not even the smoothest politician's bedside manner can obscure.

While we wait, an anxious nation whiles away the time with "Joe Millionaire," a "reality" TV show in which a sweet-talking con man charms a bevy of credulous women into believing he will give them a fairy-tale ending. And why not? It's a perfect reflection of the reality of this moment, right down to its predictable, all too inevitable, denouement.

In the piece, he insists that there is a double standard in the way we're handling Iraq and North Korea, the Bush economic stimulus package only benefits those who are paid "dividends" (as if they are bribes or graft or something), and that Bill Frist is a smooth-talking, disingenuous, power-hungry shape-shifter who doensn't really care about people (sound like any ex-President we know?).

Here's what I wrote to him in response...

Mr. Rich,

You do a disservice to thinking Americans who:
...hold stocks that pay dividends, but are UNEMPLOYED (like me), and who could use those tax breaks so as to avoid reductions in the ONLY SOURCE OF INCOME we have. And while I am only in my thirties, there are many senior citizens, like my own father, who also hold stocks that pay dividends. Why punish us for being smart investors in our economy? Why reward those who don't contribute anything to it at our expense?

...can ADD. We know who pays most of the taxes in this country, and we know that "tax cuts" are not payoffs or costs. Taxes come from OUR MONEY. We shouldn't have to defend our right to have some of it back. We don't "owe" it to the "poor" who pay ZERO taxes already!

...do not equate RACE with DIVERSITY. I believe, sir, that if you look each word up in your handy dictionary (I'm sure you have one), you will notice that they are NOT one in the same. Would you be happier if there were an even number of blacks, hispanics, asians, native americans and whites in the house and senate, but all the blacks were women who come from wealthy families, like to play golf and just happened to be REPUBLICAN? I tend to doubt it. Diversity is much much more than the color of one's skin.

...understand that continuing to classify people by their skin color, as you do when you count up legislators like so many jelly beans in a bowl, IS RACIST.

...recognize that as inexcusable as Mr. Lott's comments were, they were no worse than the praise former President Clinton lavished upon Mr. Faubus of his home state.

...know that our AIDS policy vis a vis AFRICA and RACE RELATIONS in this country are two separate issues! As you know Mr. Rich, there are CULTURAL issues at hand that money will not fix. This has nothing to do with not trying to help black people, it has to do with realizing that no matter how many millions of our tax dollars we throw at African AIDS populations, they will continue to resist using condoms, will continue to engage in unsafe sex with multiple partners, and will continue to get sick and die. You might as well demand that we fund a program to prevent selective sex abortions in China or India, or to prevent spousal abuse and female mutilation in the Arab world. I'm quite sure Dr. Frist is sincere and wants to save lives. I also think that sincerity causes him to sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture. He's only human, after all.

...know that North Korea and Iraq are NOT CHILDREN, and this is not Christmas morning. We do not owe them some arbitrary fairness or "equal treatment." They are out enemies, and we must use all our cunning to undermine their agendas. Iraq has unstable neighbors caught in the throes of a fundamentalist revival so intense, and so dangerous, we cannot simply sit back and allow Saddam to become any more like Kim Jong Il than he already is. He has expressed expansionist desires, Kim has not. He has said he would use nuclear weapons against Israel, and has demonstrated his willingness to do so by launching scuds at them during the Gulf War. North Korea has had a nuclear program since 1994, and has yet to use weapons of ANY KIND against its neighbors. How each leader treats his people is equally deplorable, but this cannot be the only guiding factor in our policy. China, Russia and Japan, while not as vocal right now as we might like, are not about to just sit idly by and allow this crisis to escalate beyond the point of no return. They have too much to lose. Also, Asian and Arab culture are as different as night and day, as you should know Mr. Rich. How you can just toss this important fact aside is beyond me. It's careless at a minimum, but I suspect you are doing it on purpose to make your point.

...are not being duped by Joe Millionaire. We the audience are TOLD up front that he is a fraud. The only ones who are being duped are the greedy silicone injected bimbettes around him.

Stop talking down to us Mr. Rich. Americans are not stupid. We can do math, we can speak English, and we are better judges of character than you give us credit for. Until the Democrats and people like you stop insisting that you know what's best for us, and you know better than we, you will never have our respect or our trust. It's high time you all figured that out, you're too smart to keep living in your little fantasy world where you're the only people who "get it."

Posted by insomnomaniac at January 18, 2003 1:47 PM | TrackBack