Letter 2 America for August 8, 2015

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     A week ago, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times wrote what Paul Simon might have referred to as a "desultory philippic" about the unlikely pair of Hillary Clinton and tom Brady, the delinquent quarterback of the New England Patriots.  She analogized the apparent transgressions of Brady in what is now being called "Deflategate" (gate now being the designation for a scandal of profound import in the American vulgate) to Hillary Clinton's email server contretemps, which raised two  of my hackles, albeit her piece was less about Brady than about the prospects of Clinton and the others, Republican and Democrat alike, for the two party's presidential nominations.  Still, the nominations are more than apt as topics for a New York Times editorialist, though Brady's smashed cell phone and Hillary's now blank basement server are hardly appropriate technological bedfellows, but even that isn't my hackle raiser. What infuriates me is that both are still the topics of conversation not just for people who think football is important, but for people who think that contrived political issues are too.

     As to Brady, if Dowd, among the hundreds and thousands of others who presume to tell us what is important every day in print, in the electronic media and on the internet...people like me, I must concede...has something important to say, the name Tom Brady shouldn't be involved.  He plays football, and now he won't be playing football for the first four of his teams games next year.  That makes him neither an anti-hero nor the anti-Christ, nor of any consequence at all really.  He is just some dumb jock who did something stupid and of little or not moment in the cosmic scheme of things.  So, hackle number one is that there is still conversation about his trivial breach of what passes for ethics in a game that rewards hitting other people hard enough that they can't get up.  Put concisely, football doesn't matter unless you are one of the thousand or so gland cases and steriod freaks who get paid a  million dollars a year or more to parade around in tight pants, perform ridiculous, bombastic, boastful rituals of conceit in the end zones of stadiums in cities all over America that the tax payers have been suckered into subsidizing by forty or fifty industrialists with too much money and not enough scruples. Dwelling on it is  nothing but self-aggrandizing by fans of a "sport" for people who are bored with the important things in life and need an excuse to drink beer at noon time on Sunday.

     As to Clinton, it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who has followed her career that she is sufficiently haughty to think she can make up her own rules.  The fact that she kept her official emails on a server in her basement outside the scrutiny of her adversaries and friends alike, and apparently did so despite the contrary advice of even Bill Clinton's advisors, is  only the most recent evidence of her  hubris...and her incompetence.  That's my second Dowd-inspired hackle.  No one talks about her foolish decision.  Everyone talks about her imprudent one.  It wasn't imprudent...at least that wasn't the cardinal trait of her decision not to communicate officially within official channels.  The salient aspect of her decision to have all her email communications--professional, private and secret--all in one place whether that place was private, official or secret.  If she was afraid that people would find out some of what she was saying, she should have kept those things private...on a server in her basement, perhaps.  But in order to preserve her right to keep that stuff private, she would have to have done her official communications where they could be overviewed by the Republicans in congress, her colleagues in the State Department or even by Dowd's New York Times.  If she had, she could then have claimed her civil right to privacy barring probable cause to believe that she had broken the law such as would justify a search warrant. That protection is good enough for you and me, and it should have been good enough for her.  Then, if she were involved in something really nefarious, prurient, kinky or otherwise kinky, she could have used a third server with another account  that she wiped clean every night, which she could later claim was just a spare that she never used if perjury were within her repertoire. I'm not saying it is, but if it were.

     My point is that if Hillary's reliance on secrecy or pragmatism bothers you, considering her past and her proximity to various questionable events, you can't possibly be taking her candidacy seriously anyway, so who cares about her basement server.  And if you are enough of a pragmatist that none of that matters because you presume that her intentions are noble even if her methods aren't, who cares about her basement server.  But if you care about competency in the White House...if you care about judgment and prudence in the person who plays such a large role in running the country as a president does...Hillary isn't your choice anyway, if for no other reason than her decision to do all her emailing on her basement server.  All I can say in the end is, Go Bernie.

Your friend,

Mike 








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This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on August 8, 2015 2:41 PM.

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Michael Wolf published on August 8, 2015 2:41 PM.

Letter 2 America for August 3, 2015 was the previous entry in this blog.

Letter 2 America for August 10, 2015 is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

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