Frida Ghitis The Miami Herald

August 22, 2009

Frida Ghitis
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, Florida 33132-1693

RE: “We’ve Got the Rest of the World Baffled” – If you think baffledom is only found across the pond read on. A light comment on your article in today’s Miami Herald on how bad Americans are.

Ms. Ghitis,

First, do you have an uncle or a cousin whose name is Jake Ghitis?

All of my ancestors, as did my wife’s, came from Europe.

The first one to go back was my wife’s father. He was a surgeon stationed on an American warship some 8,000 yards off the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944. On the threat board that morning was a notice to keep a special watch for underwater swimmers who would attach mines to the keel and hulls of Allied vessels. The man in charge of this, a man who worked for Hitler, was Jacques Cousteau. Yup. Him. The more he told Americans how bad they were the more we loved him. The more he told us how evil we were to use plastic the more money we gave him. Ay! Calypso!

If you think Europe is “baffled” by what we do please remember that we are “baffled” by what we do.

Coco Chanel spent most of the war doing the horizontal tango with the German General Staff. Americans still buy her perfume. It’s baffling, isn’t it?

You say that every time you go into a pharmacy in Amsterdam you feel like a pair of brown shoes at a white tie ball. You reach into your wallet for some cash to pay for a prescription and the noble Dutchies say, “Tsk, tsk. She must be an American”. I know them to be an industrious people. They tossed back the sea. They gave us Rembrandt. They have fresh tulips all year long. Tell me, please, since no one pays for prescriptions there how do those drugs get into the pharmacy?

Do they have hot house plants that have monthly crops of Taxol or Carboplatin? If they do could you get some for my wife the next time you go?

I’m sorry your Canadian friend doesn’t like Rush Limbaugh. One way they can register their protest is by boycotting American hospitals. Since I live in South Florida I tell you that the Northern borders should be more secure. Les merdes du Quebec should be banned lest they be infected by Limbaugh. The Ugly American has been replaced by the God awful Quebecois. Bring back keelhauling. If you liked waterboarding you’ll love that.

Do you think we should have a speech code based on the one in Canada or the one that the European Union has?

If the rest of the world has “gained access to good medical care” why is the fastest growing section of the American medical system the one that caters to foreigners who pay cash for our services? I have a friend whose job is to arrange for foreigners to be admitted to hospitals here. Buy soaking rich foreigners she has paid for the care of countless poor people. As the dollar declines it will be come more attractive for them to come here. Perhaps we should raise hospital prices for them to offset the costs to Americans.

You say that “eyes popped and jaws dropped at the sight of Hitler mustaches painted on Obama’s face as protestors suggested the plan would bring Nazi medicine to America”. It is owed to the ledger to remind you that a lot of Nazi medicine, particularly the parts about “culling the herd”, was based on the writings of Margaret Sanger. You knew that, didn’t you?

You say “the healthcare debate has become cartoonish”. You cite, as an example, someone asking Barney Frank why he “supports a Nazi plan”. Was it cartoonish when President Bush was regularly compared to Hitler? Was it cartoonish when the New York Times called Abraham Lincoln a “baboon”? What John Adams and Thomas Jefferson said about each other would not be fit for prime time TV. Was that “cartoonish”?

It is a tradition in America, a “gift from beyond the stars”, that “free men speak with free tongues”. It never took root in continental Europe as a constantly self-renewing right. Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler never spent any time in Iowa.

I suggest that before you go into a European drug store and expose yourself to the ridicule of snot nosed Europeans, all of whom would be speaking German if it weren’t for my wife’s father and 10,000,000 like him, you visit an American military cemetery. They’re all over Europe.

Extreme “baffledom”, a disease common to modern American Liberals, is difficult to overcome. Stay there until you have recovered.





Kevin Smith