Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 492 Editor's Choice: 5
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To Anonymous p31
[Read the article: The knives come out in South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]HCR is not my candidate, nor is anyone else in the US Presidential election. I live on the other side of the world and am not an American citizen. Perhaps you are unaware that what is going on in America right now (apart from your tottering economy) is a subject of great interest in Western Europe - and beyond, I'm pretty sure. I might add that your incumbent President, George W. Bush, has been urging the EU to facilitate Turkey's entry into the EU, despite the fact that the French and Germans, in particular, are less than enamoured with the idea. America "calling the shots", metaphorically or literally, is not a popular proposition at this particular time.
What is fascinating to me as an individual who has no political affiliation but has an enquiring mind, is the degeneration of an election campaign into issues about race, gender and now age. It seems terribly anachronistic and I regard your response as silly, even puerile if I may use that word. It was you who dredged the recesses of your mind to use vivid representations of another womans's sexual behaviour as anyone can see by reading paragraph 3 of your intemperate post. I'm not as addicted to sexual fantasising as you seem to be. As a country girl, I saw a cow giving birth to a calf, we all knew about rabbits who got on with their mating assiduously but with a minimum of fuss. It's the human animal who wants to preen and strut while other human animals gloat and/or feign shock and horror. Elsewhere, you might be surprised to learn, we are more concerned about the Bush/Cheney "Shock and Awe" strategy in Iraq than in the sexual peccadilloes of any of your candidates and that includes all your former Presidents. Wasn't it Henry Kissinger who claimed that power is the greatest aphrodisiac of all? That seems to explain why really ugly men have very little difficulty in winning attractive women. It's the size of their wallet that counts.
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Is this your version of "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Comedy of Errors"?
[Read the article: The knives come out in South Carolina]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]As the Clintonistas and the Obamites argue vehemently - and sometimes vulgarly - about the merits and despicable flaws of the two respective candidates, I can't help wondering why you are so jinxed. The Obamites are for "Change" but not the change-of-life (the traditional, non-medical expression for the menopause before we all became medical experts from watching television). Those irritating matronly types in New Hampshire were so hormonally-challenged that they couldn't appreciate how dishy Barack is, or so goes the tale. The Clintonistas are doing the familiar routine of demanding "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" when claiming that Hillary's aversion to the invasion of Iraq was really, really, truly more sincere than Barack's. It's all hogwash anyway and, without overdosing on Shakespeare, I make no apology for saying "A plague on both your houses" because the world is a far more dangerous place now than it was seven years ago. What's done is done and now the American economy is paying the price, not forgetting all the lives, American and others, which have been lost in this futile adventure.
Yes, indeed the world is a much more dangerous place as Russia is about to stage huge naval exercises in the Bay of Biscay, off the coast of two NATO countries - France and Spain. According to the London Times: "Moscow's message is clear. NATO is encroaching into areas of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus that Russia regards as its backyard....America is pressing ahead with the construction of its missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic". There is growing friction between Russia and the U.S. but that doesn't feature in your presidential campaign at all. Your media is doing you all a disservice. Foreign policy may not be sexy but if you do not want to envisage a future in which your children are conscripted, you need to pay attention. Was it Biden or Richardson who knew anything serious about the world outside the US? I've read a lot of comments about holding your nose and voting for someone but, it seems to me, that the American people are being led by the nose by an utterly crass media and a number of "stuffed shirts" who've decided who the contenders must be.
America elected George W. Bush twice. I wasn't paying much attention at that time as I sort of relied on the good sense of the American people to know what they were doing, not only for themselves but for the rest of the world. What's happened in the intervening years has been atrocious - we saw what happened in New Orleans when struck by Hurricane Katrina and could hardly believe that this was America. People laugh when there is any talk of the US bringing democracy to the Middle East, pointing out that one has to be a millionaire several times over, or have the backing of the plutocracy, to get anywhere near a Presidential candidacy.
It's time for me to do some useful things for myself before I go to bed but I'll leave this forum now, thinking of the wisdom of that adage "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me". The West wishes America well but it is disconcerting the way the election for the position of the most powerful person on earth is being reduced to a succession
of gaudy gimmicks as though the prize is something from a huckster's stall.