Jon Meacham & Evan Thomas, Newsweek

February 9, 2009

Jon Meacham
Evan Thomas
Newsweek
251 West 51st Street
New York, New York 10019-1894

RE: “All them corn fields and ballet at night” – Fred Kite’s rhapsodic view of the coming workers’ paradise once Socialism was in place

The Messers Meacham and Thomas,

If your statement, “We Are All Socialists Now”, is true will our paradigm - I love using words that modern American Liberals embrace – be the wildly successful Bulgarian model or the more simpatico Cuban example?

Since the Bulgarian pattern is decidedly non-euphonic I’ll go with the Cuban example.

Other than breakfast, lunch, and dinner Castro seems to have turned the corner on all the other problems facing Cuba as it enters the information age. Since he is the only man in the History of the world to have a belly ache for more than 2 years who knows what his final legacy will be? I think his contributions to long distance swimming will rank high. Some of those lads would beat salmon going upstream in a priapristic heat while dodging grizzlies at the same time. His motto of “You want to go to Florida? Swim” has stood the test of time.

But then I got to

“Remember Joe the Plumber? Sadly, so do we.”

What in the name of Robert Owen, Huey Long, Nehru, Clement Atlee, 50 years of African History, and Bernie Sanders does Joe the Plumber have to do with Socialism?

It seems to me that he tried to parlay a chance encounter into something of value for him and his. No harm, no foul. He probably should have had a copy of his tax lien in his pocket so he could have handed it to Senator Obama. Considering how things worked out he might have made it to D.C. as a Cabinet member. Your back hand swipe at him is, at the very least, typical of modern American Liberals. It doesn’t diminish your target and it doesn’t really benefit you.







Would it be smarmy of me to point out that Michelle Obama got a $200,000 annual raise – that’s $4,000 a week, every week – when her husband was elected to the United States Senate? Would it be smarmy of me to point out that her husband got a $1,000,000 earmark for her employer as soon as he got to Washington? Would it be smarmy of me to point out that when she moved to Washington her position was not filled?

Smarmy? Me? Never!

What did Joe do to piss off the pair of you?

You liked it when Senator Curley Biden – named after the smartest Stooge – talked about his blue collar roots. Biden’s blue collars are from Brooks Brothers and Ralph Lauren. Joe got his the old fashioned way: he earned them. No wonder he scared you. A real guy in the real world.

The only other parts of your article worth commenting on were “to invest in alternative energies”, “global warming”, and “smarts”.

If you had any “smarts” you couldn’t believe in “global warming”. If you want to “invest in alternative energies” try to get Bernie Madoff’s phone number.