I really really really REALLY wish that Dubya would stop using children for propaganda purposes. It's amazingly distasteful and appalling of him to keep pursuing this path. It's easy, of course, which is why they do it: "Aw, how cute! The children want to help!" And I understand that having children contribute somehow helps make them feel that the world is a little more safe and secure. But this is NOT the way to do it. (And purely as a side note: how do you get children to become pen pals when the one thing that is being said, over and over these days, is that the mail is NOT safe? If I were a parent in Indonesia or Arabia or Oman or wherever, and my kid got a letter from the US from some stranger or some government facility, I might well pick up the thing with some sort of tongs and burn it. And what sane parent in this country will now say, "Oh, look, a letter from Indonesia! Sure, go ahead and open it! Such fun!")
Speaking of such pursuits, note at the bottom of that article that the White House has now received over $266,000 from its previous request that children send a dollar for Afghan relief efforts. (Somewhere in the White House, there is a low level staffer cursing Dubya's very name every time they see a dollar bill.) I wonder how they plan to square this effort with a request to people to stop sending physical mail to federal facilities. "Just scan your dollar bill and send a jpeg", perhaps?
UPDATE, 10/27/2001, 12:30am: According to CNN Headline News, "America's Fund for Afghan Children" has raised over $580,000. That low level staffer no doubt has a voodoo doll of Dubya that they're sticking pins into right this very moment ...
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!