Dear Mr. President,
Unlike most eligible Americans, I voted on Tuesday. I vote for two reasons, mainly. First, so that I can complain about the direction our country is headed with a clear conscience. Second, because its only been eighty years that people like me have had the right to vote, so I do it out of respect for the people who had no voice in the first 144 years of our country’s history.
I vote in Tennessee, the state that is responsible for women’s suffrage. I don’t know what kind of historian you are, so, pardon me if you’ve heard this before, but it’s actually a pretty interesting story. Turns out that a woman’s right to vote came down to one man, who voted to ratify the Amendment, because his mom told him to. The rumor is that after he cast his vote, a riot erupted in the state legislature, and he had to hide out on a window ledge for fear of his life.
On Tuesday, though, only about a third of the people eligible to vote actually did.
Frankly, knowing me, I’m stunned that two out of three people I know would let me make their decisions for them. I’ve made some terrible decisions in my life. When I was two, I climbed up my brother’s dresser, intending to get into his crib and toss him out, but instead ended up dumping the dresser over on me and breaking my foot. When I first moved to Tennessee, I had a brief thing with an amateur professional wrestler that ended with his wife coming to a restaurant to confront me (don’t worry, I escaped out the side door before she saw me), and just two weeks ago, I spent all my grocery money on books about motorcycles and their maintenance and I don’t even own a motorcycle.
Sincerely,
Betsy Phillips
Dear Mr. President,
When I was five, I thought my father’s voice was a basketball, the way it bounced off my face like that.
Two years later, I went through this phase where I buried books in the backyard to see if they would grow. They did. They grew into dirt.
Sincerely,
Ebon Stein
Dear Mr. President,
What should an immigrant have to do to get a green card these days? I have come up with a couple of possible exercises for prospective citizens to determine if they are worthy of a green card. Included in the exercises is the presumption that every immigrant should receive a new name upon conferment of American citizenship. If you think these exercises sound useful, please feel free to use them. Here they are:
THE N.R.A.EXERCISE
Two deportable immigrants, How Do You Feel? and Put Yourself In My Mouth, ballet to and fro with a pistol clasped between their foreheads. For the purpose of this drill, their arms will be surgically removed, and depending on how successful they are at copulation, their arms will subsequently be reinstalled or, in the event of failure, withheld.
THE DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL EXERCISE
Two unisex squads of deportable immigrants are corralled into a rubber sea bunker, and uniformed in inflatable, Class A memory-deprivation bikini fatigues. The first squad is named Every Human Was Once A Drop Of Sperm (red fatigues), and the second squad is named Shut Up (blue fatigues). At the Bunker Umpire’s signal, trebled with three blasts from a brass Liberty Whistle, the members of Every Human Was Once A Drop Of Sperm commence convulsing in forward flips, with the understanding they possess 30 seconds to unify their flips, at which point, if members of the Shut Up squad unanimously determine the members of the first squad are flipping in unison, then they begin imitating them. If, however, Shut Up determines Every Human Was Once A Drop Of Sperm is not flipping in unison, and the Bunker Umpire concurs, then those members committing irregular flips are deported from the rubber sea bunker.
Sincerely,
Eric Lufkin
Dear Mr. President,
You need me like a hole in the head.
I am a 91-year-old woman whose main asset is that her marbles still seem in place. Having survived too many wars and not having a huge desire to go on indefinitely, I am really and truly scared by your idea that terror can be rooted out by war with Iraq.
It is crystal clear that war can only increase the number of people who are committed to die for their beliefs, (and for the thousand virgins they are promised in the next world). Mass counter-terror can only breed more terror.
I have fought anti-Americanism because I am of the generation that believes that without American intervention, especially the Marshall Plan, Europe would not have been able to rise from the ashes of two world wars. Now, terrorism can only be fought by intelligence and improving the living conditions for those who have nothing to lose but their lives. All this is too obvious to try and explain to someone of your perception, Mr. President, but after your unique half-term victory, your options are infinite.
Sincerely,
Gertrude Millet
London England
Dear Mr. President,
I am the mother of a son, who is twenty. This intelligent, funny, bear-sized guy, smarter than average due to his father’s side, (witty British folk who effectively wiped out the effects of generations of Kentucky inbreeding on my side,) may be drafted for your wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’m telling you right now that I didn’t endure twenty-four hours of labor, not to mention childhood croup, ear infections, learning disabilities (although we’d never called it that to him), five a.m. hockey practices, parties that resulted in having to re-paint our walls, moments of drug-induced aggression, which was really just knocking over the barbecue on the porch, and moving out and back in again (two times so far), just to have you send our son to war.
This is not going to happen to my child, who is a man, and would be ridiculously embarrassed to hear himself called a child. I’ll personally form an Underground Railroad to prevent anyone’s child from having to endure your wars. Mothers everywhere will equip them with tuna casseroles and Band-Aids, with clean underwear and headphones (respected for having saved many a family member from near death in this household).
Mothers know how to fight terrorism. Give us a chance to utilize the power of estrogen, the rage of mid life menopause, the compassion of a woman who has had to clean her son’s vomit from under the radiator. We’ll solve your conflicts without killing anyone. It’s what we do every day.
Sincerely,
Sonya
Dear Mr. President,
I am sorry to write again so soon, but I wanted to continue our conversation about language (Mr. Wallace Stevens) and birds (blackbirds).
Tomas, in Mr. Milan Kundera’s book The Unbearable Lightness of Being, says “It is much more important to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground, than to send petitions to the president.” Although of course Tomas was speaking of the Czech government during the time of the Soviet Bloc, I still wonder whether what Tomas said has validity today?
Sincerely,
Mark Yakich
Dear Mr. President,
A lot of American citizens are scared to write you a letter.
Make of that what you will.
Sincerely,
Jessica Rabinowitz
Dear Mr. President,
A woman named Conchita has been keeping an anti-nuclear vigil outside the White House since 1981. Twenty-four hours a day—a hundred yards or so from your doorstep on Pennsylvania Avenue—she sits, crochets, and mumbles.
I can imagine the fiasco that might arise if you decide to pay her a visit: an army of Secret Service, police, media, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if you stepped outside your doorstep some morning, just to say hello to Conchita?
Sincerely,
M. Stroud
Dear Mr. President:
I am really having a difficult time explaining historical and current events to my 12-year-old daughter. I thought if you could answer a few of her questions, it would put us both at ease. When I try to explain a political situation to her, she gets that “deer in the headlights” look.
1. If you knew the World Trade Center was going to be hit by airplanes, why didn’t you warn the American people? Israel warned their people about the WTC, and they closed their offices (broke their contract at WTC) and left weeks before 9/11. How do you account for their early departure?
2. Why weren’t the 9/11 pilots carrying guns? Doesn’t the Second Amendment in the Constitution allow all citizens the right to carry a gun for self protection?
3. If the Constitution of the United States gives the citizens rights, why are you enforcing the Patriot Act, which takes away individual citizens rights?
4. I thought only Congress could declare war.
5. If we are really free, why do we have to undress at the airports and be searched like criminals?
6. If the Constitution is the “Supreme law of the land,” then why does the United Nations tell us what we can and cannot do in our own country?
7. I thought great philosophers were people like Socrates and Plato, so why did you say Jesus was your favorite philosopher?
Sincerely,
Lana Noland
Dear Mr. President,
I love you and I pray for you every day. You are doing a marvelous job and it is my fervent desire that you run for re-election in two years and win, which I’m sure you will do. Congratulations for your great victory on the 5th and your victory at the U.N. (Tuesday was my birthday and the election outcome was the best birthday present ever—I just wish Ed Rendell hadn’t won the governorship here, but it’s a small price to pay). You’ve made me very proud to be an American again. Thank you very much! I really appreciate your job well done! God bless you.
Sincerely,
Gayle Bielech
Dear Mr. President,
I’d love to call you Georgie Boy, just like the editor of a newspaper back in my country does. You probably know this—you know a whole lot of things that the rest of us don’t—but that’s in Mexico, south of the border—a wild and scary place that you visited recently. Yeah, remember? Los Cabos? (Colin and Condoleeza were there and once again you talked about Saddam.) Ring a bell? Your pal Giuliani just got a multi-million dollar contract as an advisor to the police force of D.F., the country’s violent capital. Those Mexicans, they can never handle their own problems. Still don’t remember which country I’m talking about? You should know—hell, Texas used to be a part of it. Yeah, exactly, the country now governed by your cowboy buddy, Mr. Fox. I bet it was intentional but I must say that for the first time you acted distant toward him. (Hey, by the way, have you ever seen a movie by Fassbinder called Fox and his Friends? It’s really good. I truly believe you would enjoy it: it is a cruel tale about how gay bourgeois men take advantage of this working class gay man who is played by Fassbinder himself. They drive him to his own death. Throughout the movie he wears this very cool denim jacket on the back of which the word ‘Fox’ is embroidered with shiny, lovely beads.) I guess the reason that you were cold to Fox was because of his stance on Iraq. You never know who is capable of betrayal, right? Who would’ve thought Osama and Noriega, those ingrates, would turn against America?
Sincerely,
Kyzza
Dear Mr. President,
Now more than ever before, I notice that my hair has an unmanageable frizz. I’m not sure if it’s from the color or what. My friend suggests multiple products, but since my health insurance has nearly doubled in the last year, that seems costly. Can you recommend a good all-purpose product for thick, unmanageable, color-treated hair? Preferably with a lovely citrus-based scent?
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Crane
Dear Mr. President,
My mother’s voice was full of horses, dogs, caramel apples, and long afternoons spent at the beach. When she sang you could see the dog running in between the horse’s legs.
Sincerely,
Jeremy Kaplan