Reader responds to Larrivee's letter

To the Cigar,

I am a person not easily amused by the world of politics and political preaching; as President Ronald Regan once aptly described, "politics is the second oldest profession."

Though I look with passive contempt upon the political world because of all its boisterous, emotional serfs, I have had occasion to allow myself to be entertained by the more impassioned advocates in the political zoo. They allow themselves to, in what I'm sure had the best, most-honorable of intentions, let their enthusiasm, and the perceived reasonability of their messages, get the better of them - effectively writing passages that could only be considered by the authors themselves to be rational or even sensible.

One such casualty was a letter I read in yesterday's Cigar, entitled, "Reader Pleads with Students." In retrospect, I am astounded either that someone had the shamelessness to submit such a politically-charged piece on such a somber day of remembrance, or, acknowledging that the author did not have say in the date of publication, that the Cigar chose to even publish it; after all, barring the aforementioned significance of the date, the only difference between Sept. 11 and Sept. 12 is 24 hours.

My review of the letter: It was short (good thing, too), and reminded me of the days in middle school when providing substance in a political essay was optional.

Though it was obvious that the letter was going to jab at my persuasions, there was nothing immediately "objectionable" about the first paragraph, besides the idealist, Disney-esque "I'm not in a popularity contest; I just love America" message.

Little red flags went up, but all in all I thought, "I can 'dig' it, let's see what you've got."

The second paragraph began with a quite-certain theme: "Your party played a mean trick on you all." Given Sen. John McCain's scoffing at my conservatism throughout his campaign and his support from most of the Republican brass, I was about to say "damn straight."

Reading the rest was like sinking in tar. The verbiage throughout it was lacking and reminded me, again, of middle school.

Usually, I have to sit and wait while the author takes pains to present "facts" or "references" to try to convince me that his cynically-liberal statements are not just regurgitated talking points; but Peter Larrivee's piece had the peculiar uniqueness of not bothering to try to convince me of anything or even to try to sound compelling-just a "jargonized jumble" of mainstream liberal ideas that I've heard a million times before, but in which I have never found enough substance to buy into.

Paragraph three crushed any hope of redemption with the intriguing insinuation that the reason for all the horrible things Republicans did in the second paragraph was "Because they don't care," and that "they just want to win the contest. They care about wealth and winning elections." The first sentiment that popped into my head was the "popular-cynical" one: that all politicians, barring the few, true, statesmen left in the political breed of Americans, cared only about wealth and winning elections.

"Most of the Republican leadership is composed of billionaires, and OIL billionaires. They're making money at OUR expense" was one of my favorite parts. No political letter-to-the-editor is complete without some Marxism.or some derivative of the word "billion."

Next, Mr. Larrivee reestablishes that he is talking to the Republicans in the audience-going so far as to emphasize, in capital letters, that he is talking to Republican "PEOPLE," though he doesn't specify to what other class of organism he would otherwise be talking.

Paragraph five was an anti-climactic pre-conclusion, which attempted to summarize everything in the preceding four paragraphs. Nothing new - and certainly nothing exciting - though it did end with an interesting cliché lead into the last paragraph: that he was not asking us to vote for Barack Obama (oh, really?) But that he was asking us not to vote for McCain. To some self-hating Republican who bought into the original concept of the letter, that sounds reasonable enough. It is, of course, not so. Every absent Republican vote for McCain is an effective vote for Obama.

Also, taking into account that McCain and Obama are the only viable candidates in the race, I didn't understand for whom Larrivee would have us vote-perhaps we're to write-in JFK.

It had the passion, but it lacked the mortar. "These liars and thieves fooled us all"-no, sir; you are fooling yourself.



Frank LiVolsi