Dear Editor:
In her column on Friday, Elaine Cochran used some 20 condemnatory words in laying her own singular judgment upon those deemed as lesser persons. She used a handful of glowing words – including “patriotism” in various forms – with which to clothe herself and others from what would have been otherwise their condition of nakedness.
Cochran starts out paragraph eight with “I find this disgusting.” What is disgusting is her patronization and condescension in action of “fallen U.S. soldiers” when she prostitutes what they fell for – everyone’s freedom, democracy, faith in others and the future – while allegorically spitting upon the fresh graves of 1,100 WW II veterans who now are dying at that rate every day. Added to the daily total is the approximate 500,000 who died during the war, many buried or lost in all parts of the world. None of those nor the survivors had the objective of solidifying freedom for Cochran in 2002 to make a mockery of anyone else’s freedom whom she deemed to be lesser than her on her personal scale.
If Bush is everyone’s president, even the protesters had a right to be there, even more so if it was a “Republican political rally.” When is a constituent to address his or her president if he only comes to town to speak at a “Republican political rally?”
Cochran spoke of “wrong place and wrong time” as applied to others. She should have been in the “right place at the right time” on both Wednesday and Friday nights of the week just past. Don Hewitt, producer of “60 Minutes,” was engaging the public via calm discourse prior to receipt of the Algur Meadows award on Saturday night. In response to a question, he stated that Bush had not made the case for invading Iraq to the American people and no invasion should take place unless that was done. The audience in unison, not after one or two had clapped hands, gave generous applause. Hewitt is a WW II veteran as were most of the males in his audience. In the same vein, Georgie Ann Geyer, columnist in The Dallas Morning News, took note of her travels around the United States speaking to individual citizens and found no overwhelming support of invading Iraq in the percentages voted by the Congress.
Cochran said, “our strength was revealed when almost the entire coliseum of God-and-country loving patriots drowned out the bad seed by chanting ‘U-S-A.'” So the rest of us love neither God nor country, are not patriots and apparently could not be according to her level of acceptance, and are a bad seed passing on such to following generations. When next Cochran prays, I hope she will explain to God the difference between a Pharisee and a Publican (not to be confused with Re-Publican, of course) and seek some blessing for us.
Bush came to Dallas not as president but as a partisan political shill who shrilly called for “yes men and yes women” to do his bidding in the Congress. The democratic stool for this nation supposedly was intended to be three-legged – Congress, the courts and the administration. The church body politic and lobbyists are trying to add a fourth and fifth leg except that it is more likely that the Congress and the administration have given up their legs to these late-comers. If such an analysis seems far-fetched, just look at the cartoon crown on Bush’s head in the Friday edition of the paper.
Marvin C. Steakley, Sr.
17-year SMU retiree
