Soapbox

He squints fiercely at the menu,
bright pages of heiroglyphics
for which he has no Rosetta Stone.
And so again and again he must ask,
What does this say?

Fine, I’ll have one of that, please.

He puzzles over the knife and fork-
which water glass is his?
He realizes he is holding the spoon is upside down
and rights it with a smile
as fragile as new ice.

The conversation flows around him,
friends and family
speaking in a language
that he is slowly learning in reverse.

He mostly watches the world now,
pretending he isn’t struggling
to make sense of it,
his pleasant demeanor
masking a fierce resolve
to surrender nothing without a fight.

The children are so gracious,
never stare or seem impatient
as he tries to locate his errant water glass once again.
He does not say how much he loves them
except with the look in his eyes
each time he says goodbye,
hoping he will recall their names
the next time they visit.

The water glass, nearly spilled,
is righted again
and the meal ends with nothing broken
except everyone’s heart.

I feel so special!

You know, I write a lot of letters. Letters to my congressmen, letters to television shows that allow professional character assassin Ann Coulter to enrich herself by being interviewed her on their show, and of course, letters to newspapers.

Recently the Columbus Dispatch published one of my letters, written in response to another letter. This is my text:

I respond to the letter of 5/21 telling us all to calm down, because the newest revelation about the Bush administration’s assault on civil liberties is no big deal.

The writer begins by assuring us that Bush is only eavesdropping on our conversations if we are talking to al Qaida. And he bases that assurance on what? On the fact that President Bush says so? George Bush: the same man who said he was not spying without warrants at all when he was? Who told us there was “no doubt” Sadaam had WMD’s when he knew there was doubt? Who signs hundreds of laws he has no intention of following and intimidates government scientists into falsifying data to support his policies? Sorry; this president has been caught lying too many times to get by with “trust me” ever again. We need proof.

The writer then informs us that the governmental data mining operation is completely benign and similar to that engaged in by many corporations. Perhaps he should have read the previous page of that day’s Dispatch, where Attorney General Alberto Gonzales makes it clear that the Bush administration (which doesn’t care what information they leak or whom it hurts) will prosecute any journalist who exposes the truth- excuse me, publishes classified information. Tracking calling patterns enables the government to intimidate reporters by tracking down whom they call and who called the people they called, to stop the flow of information and silence the press. There is nothing benign about this in a so-called democracy!

If president Bush was really concerned about national security he would be actually securing our nation: inspecting cargo, not selling off America’s debt to hostile foreign powers and not threatening war with Iran and cold war with Russia when he can’t even handle the two wars he has already started, etc. While a certain amount of spying is indeed necessary, his behavior to date makes it clear that the Bush administration is more concerned with “administration security” than national security.

If that’s not worth being upset about, I don’t know what is.

T.L. Meisky

Columbus, OH

By my standards, that’s pretty benign. I got a couple of phone calls the day after it ran from a few friends and a stranger who apparently looked me up in the phone book and congratulated me on countering some of the Republican spin that allows them to twist our democracy into something unrecognizable.

So yesterday, I got a postcard in the mail. Well, it was addressed to Ted, but it was clearly meant for me. With no opening salutation and no closing or signature, it read as follows:

You forget the part about the stolen elections and big, bad Carl (sic) Rove. You have to be an idiot (already obvious) to believe there were no WMD’s. You probably think there are no IED’s. Did you serve in the military? I doubt it. Every morning I thank GOD we have Bush and not Gore or Kerry. My only fault with Bush is that he didn’t nominate Kennedy for the Supreme Court. Bush or any democratic president can tap my phones, read my mail or do anything else they please.

At first I thought this was a fake, and skipped to the bottom to see if it was signed by my friend Marj (who works investigating voting fraud in Ohio) or someone else, because it just seemed too pat: too textbook, knee-jerk Republican to be real. I mean, do people really talk this way?

Also the reference to Kennedy on the Supreme Court leaves me puzzled: first of all, because there already IS a Kennedy on the Supreme Court…and he’s a pretty liberal judge. Clearly the writer is confused about more than a few things.

I was finally convinced of the authenticity of this missive by the fact that it was addressed to the wrong person. Apparently this crank (I’m guessing man, but who knows) also pulled out the phone book and wrote to the only Meisky he found there, assuming his poison arrow was on target.

I found this to be just precious! Some scared little conservobot got angry enough at my humble letter to write an anonymous piece of hate mail… to the wrong person. I guess that means I am doing something right…?

Ted was disappointed that it wasn’t signed. He wanted to track this guy down and say something to the effect of: “I’m sorry that some letter got you so upset that you spent 24 cents to bitch about it . Bad news though: I didn’t write it. Does it make you feel better to insult a stranger who had nothing to do with what made you angry? .”
I guess he doesn’t find it quite as funny as I do. I was only disappointed that it wasn’t written in crayon and wasn’t even more stupid. I’ve written some really liberal stuff in my time, and I think I deserve truely high-quality hate mail~ but i suppose this will do.

I was particularly touched, though, by the reference to being fine with intrusions on privacy from a person who insisted on the anonymity of a plain postcard with no signature. So apparently this man is a hypocrite as well as a coward.

A lullaby to America from Bill Frist.

In those anxious midnight hours when you’re staring at the ceiling
And your thoughts turn and tumble like a hamster in a wheel.
The world we’ll leave our children when earth and air are poison,
Or the debt they owe before they’re born are not the fears you feel.

It’s not that leaking roof that keeps you up at night,
Or the savings you don’t have, the tuition you can’t afford;
Not the new hip for your mother that insurance will not cover
Or the word that came last week: your neighbor’s son’s been sent to war.

It’s those kids who wait ‘til after school to read the 10 commandments!
And the fellows 2 streets over who’ve been together 20 years
And now they want to go and say that they are married,
And angry kids who burn a flag that are your demon fears.

Don’t lie awake another restless night.
We’ll pass a bill- now go to sleep
Everything will be all Right.

I’m so confused. I thought that Republicans (the right-wing kind anyway) were the “moral values� crowd. No seriously, I’m sure I remember being told over and over that trying to create a second-class citizenry of gays and forcing women to live out the religious beliefs of some old guy in a suit was “values voting�. Yet when it comes time to put the values on the table, to really walk the walk…where are the conservatives?

The military is about to release the results of their investigation into the incident in Haditha, Iraq last November that finally has made the mainstream news. I’m referring to the apparent massacre of 24 civilians by a squad of Marines bent on revenge. All the details are not known to us yet, but those that are make it pretty clear that several young marines from  3^rd battalion, Kilo company, lost it after a fellow marine was killed by a roadside bomb, and rounded up civilians and shot them in cold blood, including women and children. Photos taken after the event show that some victims were kneeling when shot, which certainly puts the lie to the official military story that the civilians were killed in a firefight.

This is pretty awful. Most of us recognize that the incredible stress put on these young men week after week, as both the Iraq mission and the Iraqi nation break down before their eyes certainly contributed to what was nevertheless a criminal act. Our heart breaks for all the people involved. And yes, many are angry at President Bush about it. Why?  Because:

1) it was his Attorney General Gonzales who, at the administration’s request, set Geneva Conventions aside, calling them  “quaint� and said, in effect, that whatever has to be done in the pursuit of terrorists is Ok,

2) It was President Bush who wanted this hideous war so badly that he was willing to lie, cheat and steal to start it, and

3) The press secretary  says that the president didn’t even know about this until a reporter for Time magazine asked him about it. He told the world that the gunning down of unarmed civilians months ago by United States Marines is so unimportant to the Bush administration that no one bothered to tell the Commander in Chief about it. So, as with the incidents at Abu Ghraib, while we blame the ones who committed the acts, we also hold the Bush administration responsible for setting the stage.

When the investigation is complete we need to determine what should be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Until then, here’s what’s being done about it right now by the “moral values crowdâ€?: they crow, night after night on FOX News and CNN that the only wrong done here was done by congressman John Murtha, who spoke up about this incident (when he learned of it from the Marine corps itself), and by the press reported it.

Here’s where my confusion comes in. The only outrage I see over this murder from the values voters is outrage that it was talked about. Murtha and the “left-wing press� are “besmirching America� by admitting that this happened and calling for action, according to Bill O’Reilly, Glen Beck and others.

So I guess gunning down children is a family value but prosecuting the shooters is traitorous. It doesn’t weaken America to murder children, but talk about it and here come the terrorists! I’m not sure how this is pro-life, but it certainly demonstrates a remarkably consistent inconsistency. This is exactly the same song these folks sang when the truth about Abu Ghraib surfaced. While decent people of all political stripes were asking “How dare they do that in our name?â€?  the right-wing “moral valuesâ€? gang was puffing up their chests, sharpening their knives and shouting, “How dare you  talk about it?â€?

The next time you hear Ken Blackwell, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich or any other self-appointed guardian of the nation’s virtue talk about their precious “values�, ask yourself what it is that they value. Is it honesty? Justice? Responsibility? Standing up and admitting your mistakes?

No, no and hell no. Look at Haditha, and at Abu Ghraib, and you’ll see that what they value is silence.

Shhhh. If you don’t talk about injustice, it doesn’t matter.