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2004-10-15 Home Front: Politix
News from Clark County Ohio
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Posted by Mrs. Davis 2004-10-15 3:59:55 PM|| || Front Page|| [11130 views since 2007-05-07]  Top

#1 Remember, sign up early and often Rantburgers - spare some Ohio resident a whiny letter from some snotty British socialist.
Posted by OldSpook 2004-10-15 2:46:21 AM||   2004-10-15 2:46:21 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 Here's my letter to Jennifer C.:

As you can see from the enclosed printouts, I got your name and address by e-mail from The Guardian, a left-wing newspaper in England. They got it from Clark County voter registration rolls, and seem to think it’s a good idea to give it to a British citizen (or anyone on the world, including your home town, with an Internet connection) to write to you and tell you how to vote in our upcoming Presidential election. They claim they’re not telling people which of our presidential candidates they want you to vote for, but – in case you don’t know anything about The Guardian – I can assure you they don’t want you to vote for President Bush.

I’m obviously not a British citizen, and it’s not my business how you vote (though it’s certainly more my business than it is the business of a foreigner). I just thought you’d like to know that The Guardian invaded your privacy by giving your name and address to a total stranger, though they were courteous enough to assure that total stranger, when they gave me your name and address, that they’ll protect my privacy. (“We will not use your email address for any other purpose or pass it on to any third parties.”)

I’m guessing from your address there’s a good chance you live alone (as I did when I lived in an apartment). Guess they didn’t care that they might be giving your address to a weirdo or stalker. Luckily, I’m neither. Just thought you’d like to know.

If you’d like to thank The Guardian for invading your privacy and interfering with our election, send your thoughts to: Emily Bell, editor in chief of Guardian Unlimited, editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk.

Cordially,

Barbara Skolaut

Not as funny or pithy as some letters others have written, but it gets the point across.
Posted by Barbara Skolaut  2004-10-15 3:20:47 AM||   2004-10-15 3:20:47 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 
The newspaper also encourages letter writers to include their name and address with the hopes of recipients replying and maybe even creating pen pals, Katz said.
Oh, sure, that'll work.

Who wouldn't want to be pen-pals with a snotty, oh-so-superior busybody from another country?
Posted by Barbara Skolaut  2004-10-15 3:26:20 AM||   2004-10-15 3:26:20 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Mrs D. Your comments are spot on
Barbara - great letter! I'd bet the residents of Clark county are going to be ticked!

Oh...and I especially loved this line from the Guardian saying they had a positive response from some, receiving :"reasonably intelligent letters to the newspaper saying “good on you” for its efforts." LOL!

I'm sure the people of Clark county are really going to respond really well to the arrogance of these fossilized, socialist, snobs.

Now I've never been to Clark County, so I don't know much about those folks, but someone needs to let the winner of that contest know that those guns in their gun racks, the're real.

And the only way I can imagine that the guardian got quotes to put around that "good on you" was if someone said, "the tar and feathers will look......."
Posted by 2b 2004-10-15 4:05:04 AM||   2004-10-15 4:05:04 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Barbara - Your letter was perfect. Period. Simply perfect. *kudos*
Posted by .com 2004-10-15 4:41:09 AM||   2004-10-15 4:41:09 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 Anyone thinking "Backlash"? Could this push Clark County hard toward Bush?

I hope so - it would be a fitting result.
Posted by OldSpook 2004-10-15 10:21:50 AM||   2004-10-15 10:21:50 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 Barbara--Excellent letter! I have a gentleman's name and address I need to write to as well. I'll use your letter as a guide, with your permission.
Posted by Dar  2004-10-15 11:29:25 AM||   2004-10-15 11:29:25 AM|| Front Page Top

#8 Just a quick note for my fellow Ohioans if you get a letter from a well meaning reader of Al-Guardian. The accepted method of closing a letter to your new Lefty Pen-Pal is:

Sod off, you bloody git
Posted by A Jackson 2004-10-15 9:21:32 PM||   2004-10-15 9:21:32 PM|| Front Page Top

#9 Hello chaps;
The letter writing was a silly idea wasn't it? You are happy to trumpet your (rapidly dimishing status) as world's policeman and (ahem) greatest democracy (i assume thats some form of American humour i don't get) but the second well meaning people in another democratic nation (your allies of almost 200 years i'll point out) tap you gently on the shoulder and suggest that perhaps we all share the same planet and would you possibly mind just hearing our point of view for a second in between your flag waving and merry gunslinging and you react in this shocking jingoistic kneejerk way. Now i don't for one second hate americans or america (two of my flatmates last year were American; one was even a republican! i know! with a passport and everything!; and we got on splendidly, we could even talk about politics like rational adults) and i'm not an 'enema uf fridum' as your illustrious pres would doubtless say (after all, having a feeling of social responsibility towards my fellow man is doubtless the true mark of a communist athiest) but please, please, take a look at the world, take your foot off the peddle of your SUV and just think for one second 'good lord, maybe those foreign chappies have a point and aren't just a bunch of whiney liberals and terrorists; perhaps the welfare of the world and a good future for my children is worth more than cheap gas, super sized meals and a new set of patio furniture'. You know, if you feel like it;

toodle-ooo
Posted by AthiestSocialist!! 2004-10-17 11:43:19 PM||   2004-10-17 11:43:19 PM|| Front Page Top

#10 O and PS;
Here is a link to some of the responses that have poured into the Guardian's office in London http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections2004/story/0,13918,1329858,00.html ; it's headlined 'Dear Limey Assholes' and contains some wonderful examples of that peculiar gunboat diplomacy so favoured in the US at present;
Posted by AthiestSocialist!! 2004-10-17 11:58:23 PM||   2004-10-17 11:58:23 PM|| Front Page Top

#11 Calm down now, you Republicans. The Guardian is only a leftie-pink-liberal-whiney etc etc paper to you guys. To most people here in Europe, it's more a centrist, common-sense sort of paper. No need to get all hot and bothered and to start stroking your guns, you mixed-up people! Come on, you gave the world The Lucy Show! Where's your sense of humour? And US papers non-partisan? Tell that to Rupert Murdoch! Ta-ta.
Posted by Shemble Whaiger3886 2004-10-19 10:04:42 AM||   2004-10-19 10:04:42 AM|| Front Page Top

#12 Guardian - common sense? centrist? Take your thumb out of your posterior.
Posted by Howard UK 2004-10-19 10:08:33 AM||   2004-10-19 10:08:33 AM|| Front Page Top

#13 LOL Guardian 'centrist' 'common sense'!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA. Non-sense, more like. The Guardian is a left wing rag whose only redeeming feature is that it's not as ridiculously slanted as its sick midget cousin, The Independent. If you want centrist reporting you buy The Times or the Telegraph. Most people who buy newspapers do, as the circulation figues indicate.
Posted by Abu Anus  2004-10-19 10:23:38 AM||   2004-10-19 10:23:38 AM|| Front Page Top

#14 Well my nice lefty letter writing EUropean friends let me introduce you to Revernd Smileys notorious Wall 0' Guns (3 states and 2 Canadian provinces.) My cave here is just smack dab full O' guns infact there is so little room in here from all the guns, reloading equipment computer and, amateur radio gear I can hardly move around. I literally have my one foot on an ammo can full of 7.62x51 to feed to my various rifles and carbines in that calibre and the other on an ammo can to feed my 45 calibre handgun.

Be glad I don't live in Clark county Ohio. I might get as they say, hostile.
Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom  2004-10-19 10:25:20 AM|| [http://www.slhess.com]  2004-10-19 10:25:20 AM|| Front Page Top

#15 Bugger. That was me. Using a pseudonym I was going to use elsewhere to devastating comic effect, but decided against. Ho hum. When will I ever learn?
Posted by Bulldog  2004-10-19 10:25:39 AM||   2004-10-19 10:25:39 AM|| Front Page Top

#16 I stumbled across the guardian letter writing campaign while browsing cnn.com and I’m hugely embarrassed by it. The whole concept is ill thought out, inflammatory and offensive to our closest allies. Offensive toward a nation of people who are possibly the most hospitable and friendly a Brit is likely to visit. Alas ‘Guardian readers’ are far from representative of most British people. “The Guardian Reader” - due to its vehemently leftwing partisan reporting – has become an epithet that characterises our own Looney left. Woolly jumper wearing aging hippies and rebellious middle-class students who enjoy their daily dose of establishment bashing, self-righteous reporting over a vegan breakfast.

If it’s any consolation we have to put up with these morons daily.
Posted by Englishman  2004-10-19 10:30:56 AM||   2004-10-19 10:30:56 AM|| Front Page Top

#17 Come, come Aby Anus, don't play the old circulation figures game. That's like saying Hitler must have been right because most people in Germany liked him. I think you'll find, as the UK has swung to the right, that the Guardian now occupies a position that many people could accurately describe as centrist. Anyway, this discussion must be boring to our republican friends so, without any further ado, over to Sock Puppet and all his talk about big long rifles.
Posted by Shemble Whaiger3886 2004-10-19 11:06:29 AM||   2004-10-19 11:06:29 AM|| Front Page Top

#18 AtheistSocialist:

Here is what I would say to Euro snobs like you: I don’t think Guardian readers quite appreciate just how fed up with Europe parts of America are becoming. This effort to influence our elections will only reinforce that trend.

You berate us for overthrowing Saddam Hussein while you wink at the “sophisticated and nuanced” governments of France, Russia and China who cut blood-drenched, illegal deals with him in direct violation of your much touted UN resolutions. European governments wanted to humiliate Bush and disempower America so much that they were willing to keep a psychopathic mass murderer in power to reach their goal-Turkey, Germany, France-you can look in your own mirrors on that point.

The world stood by doing nothing while wringing its hands over the tragedies in Rwanda, Sudan, etc., where HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF HUMANS DIED NEEDLESSLY. Apparently, it never occurs to you that humans might have to use force to stop people who commit evil acts. The only thing the international community appears to want to do is TALK about problems, hold out its hand for the dole, and blame blame blame America.

Do you imagine there isn’t blood on your hands when you wish the world was a better place but won’t act to make it so? Chirac says it best for you-“war is never justified”. This flawed philosophy permeates Europe, and suggests that the holocaust in Germany and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia might well have succeeded, had American courage to face down evil not intervened. The current rift in international relations isn’t due to lack of American intellect; it’s due to the international community’s consistent and cowardly inaction in the face of crimes against humanity.

We have come to view many of you as incapable of sound judgment, unethically indifferent to human suffering and too spineless to ever commit to action when words fail. Wear the smug face of the international community if you like, pontificating on those backward, stupid, ornery Americans; it will have no consequence on our choosing leaders with a solid sense of right and wrong and the courage to back it up with action.
Posted by Jules 187 2004-10-19 11:16:40 AM||   2004-10-19 11:16:40 AM|| Front Page Top

#19 Why do you always end a post with a duck and run, Shemble? Don't worry - you'll grow up soon enough. The Guardian is not only left of centre - that's not its main crime. It churns out poor quality, unbalanced, brazenly opinionated reporting. That's why most people who, given a choice of broadsheets, steer towards the Telegraph or the Times. Even lefties. I bet you know a fair few lefties who read the Telegrah or the Times rather than the Guardian. I do. Maybe your parents' friends. The Guardian's crude propaganda, written for idiots.

When did the UK 'swing to the right'? About the time the Guardian's circulation figures went down the pan? When was that then, mate?
Posted by Bulldog  2004-10-19 11:18:17 AM||   2004-10-19 11:18:17 AM|| Front Page Top

#20 Well, I like The Guardian. I like the Times, too, for sport and stuff, and the Telegraph is always hot on true crime and for sex stories involving servicemen and women. And I occasionally force myself to read the Daily Mail, if I need to get any of your sort of bile.

You could say, then, that I enjoy a balanced read. And it is on this basis that I call the Guardian centrist. Well, more than it used to be, anyway.

By the way, the UK's swing to the right is gradual and ongoing. Being able to recognise trends like that is a part of growing up.
Posted by Shemble Whaiger3886 2004-10-19 11:34:09 AM||   2004-10-19 11:34:09 AM|| Front Page Top

#21 Well, I like The Guardian

haha...that would mean, according to Bulldog, that you are an idiot ;-)
Posted by 2b 2004-10-19 11:37:02 AM||   2004-10-19 11:37:02 AM|| Front Page Top

#22 Golly! So it does! Well spotted, and a much valued contribution to the debate. The fact that I also enjoy elements of the other papers Bulldog mentions kind of muddies your point, but never mind.
Posted by Shemble Whaiger3886 2004-10-19 11:44:48 AM||   2004-10-19 11:44:48 AM|| Front Page Top

#23 ...the Daily Mail, if I need to get any of your sort of bile.

My sort of bile? Sounds like it's more your sort of bile. I've never bought the Mail. Used to live with a Labour and union activist who did, though. Bile! Ha! That's rich coming from you.

By the way, the UK's swing to the right is gradual and ongoing.

On what basis do you make that optimistic claim, Shemble? Because the Labour Party is seeing sense in certain areas (despite increasing the power of the state, never reducing it)? Or perhaps because you yourself are drifting ever leftwards? If you honestly think a marginal media laughing stock like the Guardian is centrist, you've got a serious perspective problem.
Posted by Bulldog  2004-10-19 11:45:49 AM||   2004-10-19 11:45:49 AM|| Front Page Top

#24 Shemble - if you read the news reportage in the other papers rather than just the true crime, sex scandals and bile, maybe you'd have more of a point...
Posted by Bulldog  2004-10-19 11:48:07 AM||   2004-10-19 11:48:07 AM|| Front Page Top

#25 Come now, let's not get our knickers in a twist about this. When you consider the US of A's 'involvement' in other country's elections (Think Chile and Salvador Allende. Think the Congo and Patrice Lumumba) a few letters from Brits to Americans are small beer.
Posted by Elmoling Grenter5116 2004-10-21 12:27:01 PM||   2004-10-21 12:27:01 PM|| Front Page Top

#26 Think current day. Hell, make that current generation. Get back to me when you manage that, K? AlG and their entire readership can fuck off.
Posted by .com 2004-10-21 12:34:28 PM||   2004-10-21 12:34:28 PM|| Front Page Top

#27 Interfering in another countries elections is plain wrong-it doesn't work and it's none our business anyway. But it's a little rich for Americans to start raising hell over this when you're interfering in e.g Belarus as we speak.
Posted by MikhailLabour628 2004-10-24 9:12:08 PM||   2004-10-24 9:12:08 PM|| Front Page Top

#28 George Sorros is, just like he is in the US election.
Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom  2004-10-24 9:36:03 PM|| [http://www.slhess.com]  2004-10-24 9:36:03 PM|| Front Page Top

21:36 Sock Puppet of Doom
21:12 MikhailLabour628
12:34 .com
12:27 Elmoling Grenter5116
09:35 Frank G
09:12 thundertaker
18:19 2b
18:02 Sock Puppet of Doom
17:56 Jules 187
17:48 .com
17:34 Snoluck Phusing8642
11:48 Bulldog
11:45 Bulldog
11:44 Shemble Whaiger3886
11:37 2b
11:34 Shemble Whaiger3886
11:18 Bulldog
11:16 Jules 187
11:06 Shemble Whaiger3886
10:30 Englishman
10:27 Englishman
10:25 Bulldog
10:25 Sock Puppet of Doom
10:23 Abu Anus









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