Leonard Pitts The Miami Herald

June 8. 2011

Leonard Pitts
The Miami Herald
One Herald Plaza
Miami, FL 33132-1693

RE: Tu quoque? – Some comments on the missing name in your column on the academic deficiencies of public officials in today’s Miami Herald.

Mr. Pitts,

If Sarah Palin’s Paul Revere reference – one which turned out to be correct – is proof of “intellectual mediocrity” what would you call the gaffes, phumferings, and laugh out loud statements of a public official whose singular achievement after 2 ½ years in office is not messing up the execution of Osama Ben Laden?

#1 - I have been searching for those missing “7 or 8” states that the President told us about in 2008.

#2 – Maybe in one of those missing states I will the elusive Austrian/English dictionary. Since President Obama told us that Austrian is spoken in Austria would it not stand to reason that a country listing Bach and Mozart as alumni would have produced a dictionary? As soon as I find it I will begin my hunt for Icelandic/English dictionary, the Belgian/English dictionary, and the Mother of All Dictionaries, the Swiss/English dictionary.

#3 – It may well be that “Teutonic shifts” occur in Western North Dakota or South Central New Mexico or in one of those states that we have yet to find. In Alaska they are called “Tectonic shifts”. Teutonic, Tectonic…you say potato and I say potatoe. No big deal, right? If all else fails blame it on the teleprompter.

You say that “Palin’s gaffe speaks to her considerable limitations”. What would Obama’s gaffes speak to?

The tuition at Punahou Prep, the school with a $500,000,000 endowment, the high school that Obama attended, is $17,800 [not counting fees] per year. He attended Occidental College. He was graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School. The tuitions there would be astronomical.

Sarah Palin went to Wasilla High School. She attended the University of Hawaii, Hawaii Pacific University, and North Idaho College. I daresay that the tuition at all of them would not equal one year at Punahou Prep.

Do you recall one of the arguments used when Judge Clarence Thomas was nominated to the Supreme Court?

He was admitted to and was graduated from the College of the Holy Cross and from Yale Law School because of Affirmative Action.

Could it be that President Obama, a man with as thin a resume as any candidate for President in my lifetime, is the ultimate end product of Affirmative Action?

You may recall when he first campaigned in South Florida. He was at the convention center cum hockey rink in Sunrise. He jumped towards the platform and shouted “Hello Sunshine”. Getting no response he said it again. “HELLO SUNSHINE!” It was rumored that Darth Cheney, the Vice President’s evil twin, had installed the teleprompter. Nothing was ever proved.

Is there a non-racial way to hint, to suggest, that the President suffers from “intellectual mediocrity”? Would the Word Police pay me a visit if I were to suggest that he has “considerable limitations”

Other than “I want to spread the wealth around” and “Never bring a knife to a gun fight” are there any quotes from him that would suggest he was not afflicted with “intellectual mediocrity” made worse by his “considerable limitations”?

Maybe he has them secreted away in the undiscovered state of Utopia. By the way, Utopia means “nowhere”.

Call me a cockeyed optimist but I hope, audaciously perhaps, that he never changes.




Kevin Smith