To my surprise yesterday morning, I received an email with the subject title of, "Douche????" from a name I didn't recognize at first - Thomas Ritter. After I read his email, which I'll get to in a minute, I had to backtrack on recent writings of mine, before finally searching my blog for "douche." Low-and-behold, I stumbled across the name Thomas J. Ritter - a fifth-grade schoolteacher in the state of Texas.
On December 4th, I read an article about Mr. Ritter which prompted me to write a blog about it. You see, Mr. Ritter sent President Obama a critical letter with regard to the Affordable Care Act, where he said this:
"This bill has caused such a divisive, dirisive [sic], and toxic environment ... The reality is that any citizen that disagrees with your administration is targeted and ridiculed. I hesitated to write for fear of some kind of retribution. I watched you make fun of tea baggers and your press secretary make fun of Ms. Palin which was especially beneath the dignity of the White House."
The president, even with his crazy schedule, responded to Mr. Ritter with a hand-written letter, where he wrote the following:
"I believe that health care reform will be the right thing for the country ... It certainly wasn't the smart 'political' thing! And I hope that in the months to come, you will keep an open mind and evaluate it based not on the political attacks but on what it does or doesn't do to improve people's lives. Sincerely, Barack Obama."
So, what did Thomas J. Ritter decide to do with the letter? Auction it off for a minimum of $24,000. Why would he do such a thing? I'll allow him to tell you himself:
"I am selling the letter because I am just so disappointed, and this ObamaCare bill is wrong. The president told me what he thought I wanted to hear. The letter is just words on a paper. It doesn't mean anything to me because Obama doesn't mean any of it."
I then closed my blog with this:
"Obviously it does mean something to him - $24,000+.
No matter how much Thomas J. Ritter wants to critique Obamacare, if his letter from the president sells for at least $24,000, no one in the world should be happier about the healthcare bill than him. He can whine and moan as much as he wants about it, but if it weren't for this bill, he wouldn't have received $24,000 for cashing in on a kind gesture by the president. While he may be against Obamacare's 'government handouts' for Medicaid, he doesn't seem to have a problem with a $24,000 handout to him for selling a letter which responded to his complaints about government handouts. Congratulations, Thomas J. Ritter - you, sir, are my douche of the day."
So, just yesterday, Mr. Ritter decided to email me in response to this blog, where he wrote the following:
"Do you deny that the President targeted and ridiculed his enemies? IRS smacking the TEA party around or the dopes like you that can call George W. An idiot but are a Racist if they dare question an Obama policy. Dude get out of your Temple of Obama Worship and judge him objectively on content of character. I am selling it because I could use the money. I suppose you still believe that Obama never lied 24 times to the American people about the ACA and you can keep it BS? Blind followers are still blind douche of the year!!!!!"
First off, I hope this man isn't a fifth-grade English teacher. He's lucky I didn't have a red pen handy while reading this letter. Then again, my monitor is fortunate in that respect as well. In any case, allow me to dissect this ingenious letter line-by-line.
"Do you deny that the President targeted and ridiculed his enemies?"
"Enemies?" Terrorists such as bin Laden, you mean? For some strange reason, I have a hunch he's referring to people on the right side of the political spectrum. If so, I think that's quite the striking depiction of politics in this country at the moment. When some on one side of the spectrum refer to the other as "enemies," we're in a great deal of trouble as far as a functioning government is concerned. Anyway, do I think the president specifically singled-out and "targeted" these "enemies," as you refer to them? No. Do I think he ridiculed them? Sure. When the least productive Congress since the 1940s, led by the shutdown-happy House Republicans, make it more difficult to pass a bill than for a virgin to get pregnant, that built up frustration can lead to ridicule.
I also found a line Mr. Ritter wrote to the president to be quite humorous in an ironic way.
In his letter to President Obama, Mr. Ritter said, "This bill has caused such a divisive, dirisive [sic], and toxic environment..."
During the president's first term, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
What was that about a divisive and toxic environment again, Mr. Ritter? Yeah, sure, blame that on Obamacare...
In his email, Ritter then said this:
"IRS smacking the TEA party around or the dopes like you that can call George W. An idiot but are a Racist if they dare question an Obama policy."
Ah, I see where he gets his news. If you were to do your research, Mr. Ritter, you would learn that the IRS didn't specifically single-out and target Tea Party-affiliated groups. They also targeted progressive groups.
As the International Business Times reported earlier this year:
"The latest document dump in the IRS affair includes a 2010 training presentation that instructs IRS employees to screen both 'progressive' and 'tea party' groups applying for tax-exempt status. The initial news on the IRS’ targeting highlighted the agency use key words like 'patriots' and '9/12 project' to single out conservative groups. But as Democrats have been saying for months now, Tuesday’s documents also show that buzzwords meant to single out progressive groups were included in 'be on the lookout' (BOLO). These included the word 'emerge,' a reference to the progressive Emerge America network."
With the latter half of his run-on incomplete sentence, Mr. Ritter decided to take a trip to fallacy town, where he provided a faulty comparison.
What Mr. Ritter and many of those like him fail to miss is being critical of a policy put forward by President Obama doesn't make that person a racist, and it would be ludicrous to imply as much. However, when people criticize the president, not for bills he's signed or ideas he's brought forth, and focus more on conspiracy theories centering around him being a foreigner, a Muslim extremist, and the like, then there's a very high probability that the speaker of those absurd comments is racist. Comparing President George W. Bush's poor response to Hurricane Katrina to a conspiracy theory centered around President Barack Obama being a Kenyan Muslim extremist would be like comparing a person's love for football to a person's love for a pet unicorn on the Planet Xenu by the name of Porky. Yeah, like I said, it's a faulty comparison. But while it would be wrong for me or anyone else to label all uber-conservative Obama-bashers as racists, it would also be naive of me to suggest that President Obama hasn't faced more racism than any of his predecessors. Let's just look at the past two presidents and the rumors which have been spread about them. Courtesy of email forward fact-checker Snopes.com, at last check, George W. Bush has 46 such emails being spread about him, 19 of which are true. In other words, 41.3% of emails centering around him are accurate, and if we take into consideration that he was in office for eight years, there was an average of approximately 5.8 such emails spread about him for every year that he was in the White House. Now let's look at Barack Obama, who has been in the White House for five years. Again, according to Snopes.com, there have been 140 such emails being spread about him, 21 of which are deemed as being accurate. Only 15.0% of these emails are truthful, and on average, 28 new ones have been circulating every year that Obama has been in office. Many of these center around his skin color, place of birth, religion, etc. Can it be just a coincidence that our first African-American president has 94 more conspiracy-oriented emails circulating the web about him in three years less time than the president before him? No, while all uber-conservative Obama-bashers can't be labeled as racists, there are definitely some whom, to this day, still try to find a reason to dislike him in an attempt to deny themselves of disliking the man from the first time they laid eyes on him.
Mr. Ritter then followed that lovely run-on incomplete sentence with this:
"Dude get out of your Temple of Obama Worship and judge him objectively on content of character."
Since I'm not a religious individual, I will have to decline on attending a service at this "Temple of Obama Worship," wherever it's located. I'm guessing like ACORN anymore, there isn't such a thing, but that won't stop Fox News and company from pretending it's present and destroying the fabric of this country. Okay, next...
The fifth-grade schoolteacher then wrote this:
"I am selling it because I could use the money."
Well, isn't that interesting? Especially considering what the man had earlier said about his reason for auctioning off the president's hand-written letter. Perhaps he forgot and would like for me to remind him:
"I am selling the letter because I am just so disappointed, and this ObamaCare bill is wrong. The president told me what he thought I wanted to hear. The letter is just words on a paper. It doesn't mean anything to me because Obama doesn't mean any of it."
Translation: "I am selling it because I could use the money." Fascinating... It's too bad Politifact.com has already come up with their lie of the year, because his initial statement could have been in the running.
Speaking of that before-mentioned "lie-of-the-year," Mr. Ritter then wrote this:
"I suppose you still believe that Obama never lied 24 times to the American people about the ACA and you can keep it BS?"
Yes, since I'm the lone member of a make-believe "Temple of Obama Worship," of course I still believe that. The fact of the matter is the president should have chosen his words differently when suggesting to people that they could keep their plans if they liked them. However, due to the cancellation notices and complaints, the president has spoken to insurance companies in an attempt to prevent such cancellations from occurring. My point is, it's quite a different scenario when a person "lies" about something and when it's brought to the forefront, make matters worse by running away from it, and quite another for that individual to try and solve the problem the "lie" started in the first place. Do I agree with how the president worded his "if-you-like-your-plan-you-can-keep-it" rhetoric? No. However, do I appreciate him stepping up to the criticism surrounding it and attempting to fix the problem at hand? Yes.
Mr. Ritter then closed his "piece" (yes, that's meant to be ambiguous) with this:
"Blind followers are still blind douche of the year!!!!!"
I had to laugh hysterically at this line. First off, he really didn't need to repeat the word "blind" in the sentence. It's quite redundant and unnecessary, and takes away from the jab he was attempting to land, which went awry.
It's not like we ever see the following headlines in a newspaper:
"Rich Man Named Richest Man of the Year!"
"Fat Guy Is Really Fat!"
"Blue-Eyed Woman with Blue Eyes Goes to Hollywood!"
Also, Mr. Ritter follows up the plural form of the noun "follower" (followers) by referring to "them" as "douche," which makes him appear to be that which he refers to others in the sentence.
The defense rests, your honor...
http://news.yahoo.com/obama-pens-letter-to-school-teacher--says-health-care-%E2%80%98wasn-t-the-smart-political-thing--222958563.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory
http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/bush.asp
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp
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