Published: November 19, 2008 09:10 am         

Letters for November 19, 2008

After 8 dark years, we now have hope

Tom Sears is depressed about the election, doggone it! Join the club. I’ve been depressed for eight years!

Sears is upset because people bashed Bush. Those criticisms were earned. When Clinton left office, the budget was balanced, the economy was good. The senseless Iraq War brought billions of dollars of debt with nothing to show for it. Gas and grocery prices skyrocketed. Because of Bush’s trade agreements, everything we buy is “made in China.” His administration’s deregulation created our present financial crisis.

I’m thrilled to have a new president who has already been welcomed with respect by world leaders, unlike Bush, who became an international laughingstock. I’m proud to have an intelligent president who can string more than two sentences together without mispronouncing the words.

For the first time in eight years, I feel safe with a president who’s not a gun-toting warmonger. I’ve never been so excited to vote, so emotionally invested in an election. Obama has impressed, inspired and moved me to tears.

Sears is perpetuating president-bashing by smearing Obama before he’s even taken office and had a chance to prove himself. Sears implies wrongdoing in Obama’s fundraising. Nothing illegal was done. Obama simply raised all that money because Americans think he’ll do a wonderful job. They feared our country wouldn’t survive another four years of Republican leadership.

I overheard someone say, “Obama, you didn’t get my vote, but you’ve got my support.” McCain advised, “It’s time for both parties to come together to support the new president; no one likes a sore loser.”

Mr. Sears, please follow McCain’s lead. Stop the slander-Obama-campaign. I’m optimistic, as are 70 percent of my fellow Americans, that this strong, dedicated man will solve the multiple problems Bush caused. It won’t happen overnight. We must be patient and supportive.

Margo Graham
West Davenport

Unfortunately, Sears is all-too-real

Last winter, I wrote a letter where I hypothesized that Tom Sears was a fictional character Star columnist Cary Brunswick made up. No one, I argued, could be that diverse from reality or so monumentally ignorant as to hold the world view that this man espoused in his columns.

While Tom Sears is, indeed, real, his cartoon value and buffoonish (and boorish) prose has gone past shelf-life use dates. His views, while retaining preposterous historical (add hysterical) revisionist nonsense, are now completely irrelevant, especially in light of the recent national elections.

It would be easy to attribute to Republicans in general an “immunity to logic, an allergy to facts and obliviousness to irony” (this is a line from a TPM blog and an arrow I’d as soon leave in my quiver. I wouldn’t want to seem ungracious.) but there is little question that Sears fills all three qualifications _ and thereby drowns out legitimate conservative/Republican voices. Sears presents an inviting target to lampoon or make disparaging remarks about, but what do this outlander’s columns actually add to public discourse?

Aren’t there more-cogent conservative voices that could add real weight to our political values and a genuine dialogue between those on the left and the right? Or is he a genuine representative of the moral and intellectual vacuousness of the conservative movement?

Why foster the lunacy of this intellectually hapless man and promote the shallowness of his views any longer? Otherwise, be honest enough to admit that these columns serve no purpose other than to generate discord _ and letters like this one.

W. Pool
Otego