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An Open Letter to Valerie Jarrett and Susan Rice
We are in the midst of a tragedy in which we have all played a part. It can go on and on and on, or somebody can write the end of it. I have concluded that only you can do that, and if you can, you must. For the good of the country, please instruct Joe Biden to issue a full and unconditional pardon to Barack Obama for any crimes he might have committed against the United States as President.
It won’t be an easy thing to direct of the sitting President. No doubt he’ll have objections. He’ll point out that he’s clearly the better politician, having dwarfed his former boss’s best showing by 800,000 or so votes. Why should he, after lending his record-setting campaign talent to Obama twice, once again step up for the man? When does it end?
Bring Eric Holder to the meeting. No one embodies “team player” better than Holder. When two New Black Panther Party member’s voter suppression prosecutions were dropped, who lied to Congress to protect the administration’s political operatives? When the administration got caught spying on James Rosen, who lied to Congress despite having signed off personally on the warrant used by saying he recused himself in order to make the matter look like an a-political security operation? Who not only lied to Congress about knowledge of the Fast and Furious Operation but, when caught “in error,” lied in his correction? Operation Choke Point, refusal to prosecute big donating financial institutions — he’s a good guy to have in your corner, and not just when you’re in a mood to kill an American citizen without trial.
I am neither condoning nor defending Trump’s tweets, nor Obama’s. For good or ill, I suppose they’re just a sign of the times. But then I don’t use Twitter for any reason, and am thus saved having to care. That being said, I do wonder how past presidents might have comported themselves on their own tweets.
I confessed to my seven-year-old son recently that when I was his age I was usually out in the street playing with toy guns and eating a pack of candy cigarettes a day. “Where were your mom and dad?” he asked. I told him the truth: “Entertaining in the den with real guns and real cigarettes.”
As a kid from a rural agricultural community, I entered UC Berkeley slightly to the right of Barry Goldwater. But I was to leave in 1970 just to the left of Eldridge Cleaver.
I dreamt last night of my childhood. Richard Nixon loomed large.