Frank Rich, New York Times

March 30, 2008

Frank Rich

The New York Times

229 West 43^rd Street

New York, New York 10036

RE: “You must remember this. A lie is still a lie…” Facts are hard things, particularly when you think that no one will notice that you misstated one in your column on Hillary and her uncanny ability to make Madame DeFarge likeable

Frankie!

Speaking of “misremembering” or, perhaps, “non-remembering”, maybe “disremembering”, you, in your column this AM breathe life into one of the great urban legends of New York.

And I don’t mean the alligators in the sewers.

You say “…just as the Willie Horton ads did when the G.O.P. took out Michael Dukakis”.

For the record Willie’s wonderful adventure began when he was released from prison in Massachusetts for a weekend furlough. He was not in prison for falsifying mortgage applications or for drunk driving. He was in jail for murder. He was a ferociously feral felon.

Governor Wee Mikey, and who can forget him in that tank, was in charge when Willie Boy got out. He went to Maryland where, can you believe this, he raped again. His trip wasn’t exactly like Ferris Bueller’s day off.

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse it did.

Relatives of the raped woman from Maryland went to Massachusetts to speak to Governor Dukakis. In keeping with a hard core tenet of modern American Liberalism, that being the one that says intentions, never results, count he refused to talk to them.

Now the question, the unasked question, is how did we learn about the above. You seem to say that Lee Atwater, with the approval of Dick Cheney and some Halliburton cash plus a pre-natal Fox News, ferreted out this information and swung the election to Vice President Bush.

[As an aside isn’t Willie Boy due for another furlough soon? How’s he doing, by the way? I bet he still thanks his lucky stars he didn’t team up with his cousin, Ricky Ray Rector, in Arkansas]

Let me tell you how the name Willie Horton came to be known to the American public.

It seem there was rich White boy, a lad whose first impression of Negroes was when he kept seeing the same elegant Negro man wearing the immaculate white gloves every morning. The man would nod respectfully and tell young Master Albert, Jr. that the orange juice was free from pits and that the toast had its crust removed and was sliced diagonally the way he liked it. He would ask whether he wanted ham, bacon, or sausage with his eggs. The Shoreham Hotel, where young Master Albert, Jr. was raised, was known for their breakfasts. His father, Mister Albert, Sr. was the bag man for Armand Hammer. He was also a United States Senator. Hammer was always proud of the fact that he made Leonid Brezhnev cry when he gave him a letter written and signed by Lenin. Water cress sandwiches for lunch and mango sorbet at recess would normally cause snickers at any public grammar school in D.C. but young Master Albert, Jr. never saw the inside of any public school until he was 32.

Before he invented the Internet he ran for President in 1988.

When he ran in the Democratic Primary in New York in 1988 it was he, now all grown up and soon to be going by the name Alpha Gump, who told the world all about Willie Horton. He kept giving us the details of the murders and the rapes over and over. I mean like everybody, and I mean everybody, knew about Willie’s wonderful ways.

One of Governor Wee Mikey’s campaign themes was that “competence, not character” was what counted. Heraclitus told us and James Madison confirmed it that there is only one test that a candidate, any candidate, has to take and pass. That test is character.

Soon, Hillary will be telling us that she gunned down Milosovic on the tarmac in Tuzla. She had Osama bin Laden in her sights when she was distracted by Ken Starr. She and Big Bill would give any gun owner a night in the Lincoln bedroom if they turned in their weapon. That’s why it is so safe in the nation’s capitol these days. That’s why, should Senator B. Hussein Obama become President, his daughters will attend one of the really fine public schools in Washington.

Now that the TV writers’ strike is over can you tell me when Dancing with Apprentice Angels in America will air? Get back to me, please.