Hey, stop pickin' on him

Up Yours! I Don’t Gotta Tell You Nothin’
By Joseph Walther

I was all set to change the pace and write a hilariously funny column today. I had the funny stuff all lined up. All that remained for me to do was put it in the proper order using cleaver segues. I changed my mind the second that I read today’s Sunday News Journal, more specifically, a six-paragraph letter to the editor written by 17-year old Bradley Lehman of Hockessin, Delaware, under the headline: What leaders do on their own time is a private matter.

Bradley presented his points well. While his letter was succinct, flowed logically from point-to-point, contained no misspellings, and was grammatically perfect, the headline was another matter. Of course, Bradley didn’t write the headline. A sub-editor employed by the News Journal wrote that.

I have some fundamental disagreements with Bradley’s conclusions. I am going to address them here. Since I am not sure how long the Delaware News Journal keeps hyperlinks to such letters direct and unachieved, I’m going to quote his letter, verbatim, one paragraph at a time. I will follow each of the quotes with my response. This way, I don’t run the risk of taking Bradley’s comments out of context. I also avoid potentially confusing readers by referring to links that may suddenly disappear.

In the first paragraph, Bradley wrote…

“Because I am 17 years old, some people might say that I am not mature enough to understand many issues. However, let me just say that I get more laughs reading the opinion page than I ever have from the comics.”

I, too, laugh a lot at some of the stuff that News Journal readers send to the editor, Bradley. They run the gamut from profoundly insightful to abjectly stupid. But, Brad, you know what you have to keep in mind about this stuff? PERSPECTIVE! Never let yourself believe that these letters represent a reliable cross-sectional view of Delaware’s general population.


Now, as to the matter of what some people think about your maturity level, you may be correct. Some people will assume this. I don’t, however. I think that 17-year olds can be quite capable of understanding issues. But, again, perspective is critical to the process. Realistically, however, most seventeen year olds have not gained enough experience to add meaningful perspective when it comes to “complex” issues. After all, you have to be at least eighteen in order to vote for the idiots who can send you off to die in a war!

Let’s just use one complex social issue, child rearing, as an example of what perspective really means. There are millions of others, of course, but neither space nor time permits that kind of detail.

I could not, for the life of me, as a 17-year old, figure out what was so hard about raising kids. Like most 17-year-olds of my time, I was convinced that my mother (my father died when I was 14) was an over-reacting, meddling old fool whose only joy in life was to rain on my parade. It wasn’t until I had gained some perspectives (spelled c-h-i-l-d-r-e-n) of my own that I realized the truth: that she was scared to death for my safety and just trying to stay sane!

Yes, at least from a father’s view, you need to have a perspective or two before you realize the impact of pure terror! I can’t speak for the mothers of the world, but from position as a father, my perspectives taught me plenty about child rearing, especially teenagers.

You see, from the age of birth to about sixteen months, baby perspectives exist in one of three basic stages: crying, just finished crying, and about to cry. A mother’s purpose for existence during this period, was to feed, change, and bathe the babies. As a father, my purpose for existence was to hand her the perspectives whenever they cried or were about to cry. Oh yes, and to provide the perspectives with a place to puke after she finished feeding them, usually in absolute silence down the back of my suit coat as I left for work each morning. “Hey, you got baby puke all over the back of coat,” they would say when I got to the office.

Then, from the age of around 17-months to about 9-years, perspectives develop a singularity of purpose in their lives, which is to kill themselves the first chance they get. The process begins with the ingestion of whatever they find on the floor as they crawl around. Perspectives, at this age, are fond of putting all sorts of stuff in their mouths and choking. It was a good time for me to practice going into cardiac arrest. It was fun.

Out of the blue, they learned that if they pulled really hard, they could stand up, which increased their propensity for suicide exponentially. Moving the coffee table and end tables to another country did not help because they found out that they could slip on the kitchen tile, or fall down the stairs that you didn’t even know they could climb. You also had to be ever vigilant because some perspectives really liked that pretty blue water in the commode, which they finally got around to noticing as they became aware that they could drop things in there.

From ten years until about 14, perspectives spend a lot of time trying to kill themselves out doors where you can’t see them. I once saw a couple of perspectives hiding in a cardboard container. Hiding inside one of these is no big deal, usually. However, this cardboard container happened to be sitting in the middle of busy four-lane street. The perspectives had planned to surprise drivers as they sped around the container. Can you imagine how surprised, and possibly silly, a driver would have felt after accidentally plowing into the container because they were drunk and didn’t see it?

From 14 on, at least for me, it was all a blur. The list of things that my perspectives might fall pray to kept getting longer and longer. I became an expert at worrying. I imagined drugs, perverts, gun-toting psychopaths, gangs, and a wide array of other ills, having designs on my perspectives. But, for that sheer, unabashed panic effect, nothing worked better than teenage insurance driving rates.

My perspectives are grown and long gone from the nest now, but I still bolt upright, sweating profusely, as the result of nightmares involving those insurance rates. I am hopeful, however. The nightmares seem to be tapering off a bit. They will probably fade out altogether once I die.

You do not know everything, Bradley. You are not going to believe this, of course, until after you’ve gained a perspective or two. Even after this, it will take several more years before you realize that, although you’ve learned a lot, you still know very little. I’m 63-years old and the horror of this reality has begun to sink in. I hope to have this down pat before I take my last breath.

Bradley continued to write…

“Delawareans seem to be fixated on bashing President Bush and proposing new conspiracy theories whenever they seem convenient.”

There you go again; make some more sweeping generalizations. Remember what I said above concerning general populations. It’s still true. Delaware’s is of sound mind. People with 3-digit IQ’s have not accused the President of anything conspiratorial. This is also true of the country as a whole.

On the other hand, his approval rating hovers between 34% and 38%. Of course, this could mean that insufferablel jackasses have overrun the country. It could also mean that the President is not very adept at timely, effective communications, admitting a mistake or two, and generally keeping us up to snuff on things in a way that isn’t quite so “in your face.”

Perhaps his approval rating would be higher if be began to think instead of just believing. I have always found that thinking before believing helps when trying to say what it is that you believe. At the very least, thinking about what you believe before you say what you believe prevents you from sounding like an idiot when you open your mouth.

Bradley continued to write…

“President Bush did not cause Hurricane Katrina or the complications afterwards. New Orleans was built below sea level so they should have seen it coming and made preparations themselves.”

You make a good point here, Bradley, at least as far as it goes. However, I don’t think that intelligent people are blaming George Bush for the hurricane or its aftermath. Neither are lobbyists and attendant politicians the culprits. The blame for this disaster falls squarely on the shoulders of the locals who permitted politicians and lobbyists to put their lives at risk.

No matter hard much we try, we can’t repeal the laws of probably. Sticking our collective heads up our collective asses and convincing ourselves that everything will be fine does not fool the probability gods. Whenever and wherever people continue doing stupid and dangerous things, it is never a question of whether catastrophe will strike. It is simply a matter of when it will strike.


Bradley continued to write…

“If Dick Cheney shoots someone by accident on his own time, it is none of your business and neither he nor the president has any obligation to tell you about it.”

You are dead wrong on this one, Bradley. Dick Cheney took the oath of office for the Vice Presidency of the United States. Once he did this, his right to individual privacy became secondary to the country’s right to know what he’s doing. Whether he does it on his dime or ours is immaterial. Everything he does is newsworthy. We have every right to know what he’s doing, when he’s doing it, with whom he is doing it, and why he’s doing it. The same is true of the President. Once people assume these offices, they forfeit their dimes.

What happened relative to Cheney was an accident. People realize this. However, Dick Cheney goes to great lengths to stick it to the news media. He dislikes the mainstreamers and does not try to hide the fact. He raises arrogance to new heights and the press he despises will not cut him any slack.

I have always found it easier to say that I’m sorry than to say please. This is just as arrogant, but I am not the Vice President of the United States.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. It can be very efficient and beneficial to all concerned. However, you must be willing to say that you’re sorry if you screw it up. Dick Cheney is not capable of asking permission or of saying he’s sorry and it’s because of this insolent, “up yours” attitude that his approval rating is at 18%.

Bradley continued to write…

“Finally, it seems unreasonable to me that Bush was able to graduate from Yale University, be elected governor of Texas, and earn the respect and confidence of enough of his peers in the Republican Party to be nominated as their presidential candidate if he is indeed as dim-witted as you say.”

Brad, you overate the Ivy Leagues. The toughest thing about graduating from Harvard, Yale, or any of the other Ivy League academic powerhouses is paying the tuition and fees for the four or five years that it takes to graduate. When you come from a family of “means”, institutional VIPs are willing and able to work “around” certain things, such as low SATs and less than stellar grades.

Bush finished with a C average. He has never been an academic heavyweight. In his younger days, he lost interest in and walked away from everything he ever started. This is a fact. Do yourself a favor and Google it. It doesn’t mean that he is stupid or dim-witted.

He has overcome a lot in his life, not the least of which was heavy drinking. Conquering dependency addictions is difficult. While he credits Jesus Christ for it, I credit his wife for helping him do it, as well as his own veracity in sticking with it. He won his party’s nomination precisely because he’s NOT a lying dimwit.

Dim-wittedness is not the issue for me. The man who presently occupies the White House as our President is not the same man I voted for two times. I also see and read daily reports that somewhere between 62% and 66% of the American people agree with me.

Finally, Bradley ended with…

“I am willing to wager that the majority of Delawareans who get their information from this sorry excuse for a newspaper have barely enough brainpower to govern their own lives, let alone governing a nation of almost 300 million.”

And you would be wrong, Bradley. Thanks to Borders, as well as Barnes and Noble Bookstores, I read several newspapers on a daily basis. The News Journal is on a par with all of them. The Op-Ed pages are either lame or meaningful, depending on whether you agree or disagree with the commentators. I disagree more than I agree, but that’s why we call them “opinion and editorial” pages.

The News Journal does not require its reporters to manipulate the news content in order to support its editorial positions. Otherwise, Gannett would have to change the paper’s name to The New York Times: Delaware edition.

Hang in there Bradley and keep on writing. I’ll bet you’ll be hell on wheels once you get a couple of those perspectives I referred to earlier on. I’ll be your parents can’t wait!

See you all next week.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.