Letter from Dr. Fred Whitehead. Watch for Event Announcements at this site.

SCHOLAR, HISTORIAN
FRED WHITEHEAD SENDS GREETINGS!

November 9, 2006

Hello Mike,

Well, for a fleeting moment, I’m taken with the idea that there may yet be some hope for the Republic!! See also, along the same lines, Garrison Keiller’s meditation.

For a long time, I’ve argued that the First Law of Politics is this: Don’t Ever Make the Women Mad. The Republicans violated this law, and are paying the price.

Enclosed are a few items about upcoming events here, etc.

All the best,
Fred

P.S. – I’ve printed up a Debs speech as a brochure for a project of a friend of mine out in Seattle … It’s enclosed. Send him $1 and he will greatly appreciate it …

And thanks for posting our Freethought Solidarity Bulletin.

NOTE TO READERS
Subscribe to free editions of the FREETHOUGHT SOLIDARITY BULLETIN by email at: fredwh@swbell.net or visit at http://fredwhitehead.com/ where you can read the outstanding satirical “The Sandbur” containing rascal comments on life in the Midwest.

Some paragraphs from Keiller’s “meditations” Fred enclosed with this packet.

“One problem with Congress is that 90 percent of it is ceremonial and so little has to do with elucidation. The Honorable meets with representatives of the American Beer Can Association, the Swizzle Stick Foundation, the League of Tutu Manufacturers, and poses for photos and listens to their pitches, and then goes to the floor and proclaims Eugene P. Fenstermaker Day, and then to a subcommittee hearing to read a two-page statement praising the arts as a triumphant manifestation of the human spirit, and then back to the office to welcome 10 fat men in beanies and the 4-Hers from Hooperville, then off to the banquet of the American Ferret Federation, and seldom during the day is the Honorable ever challenged or questioned or asked to listen to anything that wasn't vetted and paid for. The Great Personage is either regarded with servile deference or heartily abused by bloggers. This is not a good life for an inquiring mind.

You meet congressmen in private and they're perfectly thoughtful and well-spoken people, nothing like the raging idiots they impersonate in campaign ads, and you think, maybe Congress needs more privacy. Send them off on unchaperoned trips to see the world firsthand. More closed-door caucuses where they can say what they think without worrying that one stray phrase may kill them.

Or maybe Congress simply needed more Democrats. We are a civil bunch, owing to our contentious upbringings. With a smart, well-spoken woman for speaker instead of that lumbering, mumbling galoot who covered for the Current Occupant, perhaps life will get more interesting. Maybe they'll do something good. It's possible.”

Link to complete letter: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/110906J.shtml