Dear Mrs. Obama:
A friend was kind enough to send me a copy of a letter you wrote to America’s parents, written, it appears, when you were busy hosting visitors from China as your husband celebrated “China’s rise,” and in the aftermath of the terrible shootings in Tucson. Your letter, as you may recall, was written to instruct us parents to be tolerant and to teach tolerance to our children, suggesting that if we had done this, we might have prevented the Tucson shooting.
I know the past few months have been very busy for you, what with entertaining foreign dignitaries, hosting the White House Super Bowl party, taking vacations, traveling across the country for the Tucson memorial/Obama-campaign-launch event, teaching parents to prevent mass murders with tolerance, and gaining access as part of a large group of politicians to the ICU to visit Tucson-shooting victim Congresswoman Giffords. I’m still wondering how a large group of non-family-member politicians gained that access; most hospitals are pretty stringent about ICU patient visitations. I also don’t remember you and your husband being quite so passionate and involved when more than 40 people were shot, 13 murdered, at Fort Hood by a radical religiously-motivated shooter back in November, 2009. But I do remember talk of tolerance; guess we parents didn’t do our job to prevent the tragedy in Tucson.
You, however, do not rest. In your tireless efforts to make us, as your husband described, “better,” you have now taken it upon yourself to help influence and control the portion sizes served by America’s restaurants. I believe I speak for many other American parents, who, like me, eat quite frequently in America’s restaurants and love nothing more than receiving enormous portions of food and bringing enormous boxes of leftovers home afterwards to satisfy the enormous appetites of growing active kids. With all due respect, you need not suggest that we offer them something more in keeping with your list of preferred foods, because what and how we feed our kids is our decision, not yours.
Also our decision, and one of the most personal as a parent, is the decision to breastfeed – another issue you have taken upon yourself to promote. I know it has been years since you were faced with that decision, and I don’t care to know what you decided, but I would imagine you know of women, who, for whatever reason, either could not or would not engage in this activity. What is never addressed in regard to this topic is that it can be far more difficult and far greater a commitment than many women realize. In answer to your related claim that breastfeeding prevents obesity, while plenty of scientific evidence confirms the benefs of breastfeeding on brain development, I have seen nothing linking it to long-term obesity prevention (and I have a feeling you haven’t either).
So with all due respect, Mrs. Obama, as one of the millions of American parents you are addressing en masse with your letters, your speeches and your alleged scientific conclusions, I have done just fine on my own feeding my kids; monitoring their portions of restaurant food; and, as is my right as an American (an American who has always been proud of my country), teaching them the core values of my choice. Indeed I know I speak for myself and millions of other American parents, when I say that we were doing just fine in this mission, long before we ever even heard of you and your husband.
I thus think your time might be better spent, not lecturing American parents on what we must do to ensure our progeny and their beliefs meet your and your husband’s particular expectations, but to concentrate instead on your own daughters. I know nothing about your children (apart from the private information you shared about their BMI scores), and that is how it should be. Your children and their BMI scores are, and should be, no concern of mine, and you, a self-appointed representative of the government, need not bother yourself with concerns about my children, either.
Patriotism Is in the Details
March 9, 2011 | Comments (1)In January, 2010, I wrote about my attempts to cancel my subscription to Golf Digest when they decided to feature Tiger Woods and Barack Obama on their cover. The issue in question accosted readers, from said cover to pages and pages inside, with ridiculous images of Obama coaching golfer Woods on the fine art of posing for a camera – an activity in which the current president of the United States has spent far too much time. While Woods, despite his troubles, is a golfer and would belong in a golf magazine, Obama….not appropriate on so many levels.
Well, I am happy to announce that after a year of my repeated cancellation efforts, Golf Digest has finally cancelled this subscription. We weren’t even paying for it anymore, the freebee no doubt their acknowledgement of a mistaken decision that I have a feeling cost them quite a few subscribers. But I persisted (and let them know why), just as everyday Americans are persisting all over the country, performing small acts of revolt – the small details — that are fueling the rising tide of patriotism we are seeing everywhere.
Beyond the election results, the Tea Party events and the town-hall meetings that have sent elected officials hiding under rocks over the past two years, we find testament to the fact that Americans do not intend to see their nation go softly into the dark night of the left’s efforts to “transform” this country in the details. A few examples:
Also pervasive in my own life – and in many other American lives as I have discovered – is the effect the current political climate has had on my choice of the movies I see. I am and always have been a profound lover of movies, back in the day attending once a week or more. All that changed post-9/11 when Hollywood’s true colors emerged as never before. From that time forward, I have found it impossible to see past the virulent anti-American, hypocritical rants of certain Hollywood players, despite their lacking expertise in military strategy, economic theory, historical context, or, I suspect, even high-school diplomas — no matter how great their performances on the silver screen.
Show me a trailer featuring one of these nimrods, and my kids roll their eyes, waiting for my own rant to begin, knowing that here is yet another film to be stricken from the list of those for which I would be willing to shell out cash to see. Ignorance being bliss, I carefully guard the names of those performers I love who have not yet to my knowledge spouted off about how our nation should be run into the ground.
What fuels my optimism is knowing I am not alone in my own small acts of revolt, and I encourage those who believe in this country to keep up the good work. Make decisions for the future of our nation, and let those who stand to profit or lose from those decisions know about it. God is in the details, and so is patriotism and the salvation of our country.