Subject: Isaiah Washington column

Hey Leonard……you want some cheese with that whine?

I have no clue as to why I even bother to read your stuff……I pity your poor miserable life…how can you stand to even exist in this country when you see racism in everything you do every second of everyday? God, it must be tough living in America where some of us are different colors than black. I’m amazed you even get out of your house in any given day.

You see racism by the police …well so do we….and I’m white and an ex-cop…..we get stopped during the day time as well for reasons unknown…we get stopped by black and Hispanic officers…one of my best friends daughters was just assaulted by 2 Hispanic officers in Houston who stopped her and called her a ‘dirty rich white b****……

You see racism in the medical industry…so do we…we have to wait in the doctors offices just like everyone else while the doctor decides what he wants to do and when he wants to do it…obviously the doctors time is worth more than ours, so a wait of 1 or 2 hours is not out of line. Just learn to deal with it… We dread having an emergency in our family…no sense going to the ER room…..you can’t get in there anyway due to all of the non-white segments of our society being dealt with….Not their fault they got shot at 2 in the morning while dealing drugs, not their fault someone’s husband cut them in two because they caught them sleeping with their wives…not their fault they have OD’d on something or another. …not their fault they had to get drunk and drive and had ran into some innocent person….no, not their fault….it’s my fault for stepping on their necks and keeping pressed down. It’s my fault for wanting to make their lives miserable…..it’s my fault for what happened to your ancestors 200 years ago…..Tell me Leonard, were you ever a slave? I’d guess not, nor was any of my folks slave owners…did that make slavery right? Of course not…were we there, nope….could we do anything about it? Nope…can we do anything about what exists between you and Me….not until we get past the past and deal with issues in this world we live in, not something years and years ago.

Tell you what, you want to see racism? Try going to the post office in our neighborhood which is staffed by an all black cast….now I realize that the post office is a non-profit organization, but you’d think someone would think to treat it differently…not at our station….our wonderful postal workers are rude, curt and condescending to any and all whites but Johnnie on the spot to any black (especially female) who gets in the line….. oh, you got a certified letter ? wait your turn…..you’re black and have a certified letter? Come to the head of the line…with the explanation that ‘they’ have to get back to work…well so do we…what are we chopped liver? I drive miles away to another station where at least we get treated fairly.

You ever employed anyone? I mean hired anyone in your life? I have…thousands…the majority of which were not white…..the majority of which were good, decent people trying to make a place in this world and provide for their families…the same as I do for mine…..but I can’t tell you how many times I have been spit on, yelled at, threatened, cursed at by employees because we had to terminate them because they went to jail or didn’t come to work for days on end or drive a $25,000 truck into a pole and thought nothing of it or had an accident and hit someone but ‘forgot’ to tell us about it until the police came calling? You ever been sued by a woman whose life was saved by one of my employees when she was being held down and raped and was about to be murdered when my guy shows up and saves the day? The victim sues us (and gets a settlement from our insurance company) because ‘those poor guys who did it (the crime) didn’t have any money. You ever been sued by a mother whose 15 year old daughter sleeps with one of my employees, gets pregnant and ends up married (after the settlement) to the ex-employee…but we get sued due to our employee having sex with the young girl and paid out over $450,000? You ever had to fire someone because they came to work drunk or high and then they keyed the cars in the parking lot on their way out? Probably not.

The point of all of this? I’d still hire people…the bad apples are in every barrel of society, white, black, brown…..we have to live with them no matter what…but how about this Leonard…..next time you drift out of your cave…look around  and try seeing some good in the world instead of all that bad…you might be surprised…there’s more out here than what you think ……

Letters From North America by Peary Perry

Dear Miss Paris Hilton:

Well, to be honest with you, after the events of last week, I really wasn’t all that interested in writing anything about you unless it was cynical and sarcastic. I think most of us feel that you are a spoiled rich girl heading headlong into trouble and misery if you continue your recent lifestyle.

But, the more I thought about what to write, the more I decided to tell you a couple of things that you are missing by not living what we normal folks call the “Simple Life.”

It’s obvious to many of us out here in the heartlands of America that fame, fortune, money, glamour and the high life doesn’t bring true inner peace and contentment. If it did, then why aren’t you a happier person? Why are you in therapy and having to take a number of prescription medications? These two things alone tell me that you in spite of all you pretend to be, there must be some trouble in paradise.

So, let’s just talk about what the rest of us live our lives for and what you are missing. Sure we see the parties and the red carpet treatments that celebrities such as you and movie stars attend on a routine basis. But, having made my share of cocktail parties in the past let me ask you, do you really think they are all that much fun? Or do you go because you have to be seen and ‘everyone’ else will be there? Has it ever occurred to you that the ‘everyone’ else who might be at these events would really like to be at home relaxing instead of answering inane questions and looking as if they were on top of the world?

No, I think if you’d ever step out of that world and into ours, you’d find there is a whole lot more to life than what is portrayed in People magazine. Have you ever helped a friend move? It isn’t the best thing to do on a Saturday, but let me tell you when it’s over and all of you are sitting down eating a called in pizza and drinking that first cold beer, it makes you proud you helped someone. Besides you know you can count on them when it’s your turn to relocate. Have you ever had your car breakdown and needed someone to drive you to work? Probably not, but it tells you who your friends are. Same thing goes for paint parties. Until you have to help paint someone’s house or have someone help you paint yours, you can’t really tell who your friends are.

I don’t imagine that you cook, since you have publicly stated that you have ‘people’ who read for you, you most likely have some ‘people’ to cook for you as well. I feel sorry for you that you probably haven’t cooked up a big pot of soup or chili on a cold winter day and invited your friends over to share and bring something. That’s a part of life I wouldn’t trade for all the galas and award ceremonies they have in your part of the world.

No, Miss. Hilton the real world isn’t about money and looks and preening before cameras, it’s about laughing at weddings and crying at funerals. It’s about being excited when kids are born and watching them struggle and grow up to be honest, respectable adults. It’s about sending cards and letters to your friends and relatives when someone is hurting or needs a few words of encouragement. Your words might be all they needed to keep them going.

It isn’t about things or dresses or cars, it’s about people and how we interact with each other while we are here on this planet. It isn’t about us being seen, but about us showing up when and where we are supposed to, because it’s the right thing to do. It’s about forgiveness when we’ve made a mistake and admitting it to ourselves and to those we’ve hurt. It’s about life. It’s who we really are, not some plastic figure created by some public relations person who could care less about us and is only interested in his invoice being paid on time.

Miss. Hilton, you have a huge amount of God-given resources available to you. You have a chance to make a difference in the lives of millions of young women by being a positive role model and caring for something and someone other than yourself. These resources are not limitless, use them well or you will surely suffer the consequences of others who were destroyed by the siren’s call of the rich and famous.

I hope you will do the right thing and decide to grow up and make something of yourself that will be remembered from this point forward rather than who you have been until now.

Letters From North America by Peary Perry

Dear Mayor Bloomberg:

I know I don’t live in New York City, but I am planning on moving up there just as soon as I can afford it. I was reading about your new program and I think it’s just great. I would like to apply now for my benefits since I’m certain you would also want to extend these to anyone even thinking about moving to your great city. I understand that Seattle is thinking about starting the same program, so I’ll have to be honest and tell you that the first one who starts sending me the money each month is going to get me and my extended family. I just need to ask a few questions to make certain I understand how your new program is going to work.

As I understand it, my kids get $300 each for doing well on any school test. That is really helpful since I am bringing my four sons as well as three others that I am in the process of adopting who belong to my dearly departed sister. I don’t think that will pose any problem do you? By the way, can you define the term ‘well’? Are the papers going to be graded on the old outdated and unfair A-F system or are you going to grade on the curve… taking into consideration our boys previous school experiences and abilities? I mean several of those kids of my sisters can hardly read or write and they’re in their teens. The last schools they attended just promoted them because they were too big to still be in the fifth grade. Rufus couldn’t fit in one of those tiny desks any longer. He was depressed over it and had to take pills for the next several years. It bothers me to see a boy his size crying.

I notice that your program gives me $150 a month for holding down a job; I suppose this applies to my wife as well, but does that also hold true for any of my boys who work part time after school? It sure would help if it did. By the way, what kind of a job does this have to be? I mean, can we just tell you we have a job, or will we be forced to actually prove it? Will we have to do some verifiable work in order to keep those checks rolling in on time?  Your plan to give us $200 every time we go to the doctor or dentist certainly will take the strain off of us having to pay those nasty old co-payments. I have asthma and my wife needs adjustments to her back several times a week, so we go to the doctor at least 10 times a month, that’s another $2,000 a month, right there. The boys are pretty healthy, so we’ll save you some money there. I would like to add that I don’t know how long that will last; they may not be able to adjust to your climate. One of the boys, Homer has bad teeth so you better be on notice, he might have to make a bunch of trips once we arrive. You do have plenty of money for these programs don’t you? I’d hate to move Momma and the kids up there and have you just pull the rug out from under us….how would we get ever get back to Texas?

I notice that you are also paying $25 each time we go to a parent teacher conference, well, to be honest, we haven’t made too many of those yet, but with seven kids in school in your program you can count on us attending each and every one. By the way, is that $25 for each of us or just one parent and do we have to stay for any certain amount of time? Those things can get really boring, if you know what I mean.

I also notice that you are agreeable to paying for any bus or subway fares that any of us might need. Might I suggest that you look into just biting the bullet and swing for us a car instead? I don’t mean to complain but the bus stops and the subway station might just be too inconvenient for us and we might have to walk to get to them. Nothing fancy, maybe some late model American car, I’d hate for you to be sending any money overseas to those foreigners.

Oh, yes before I forget it…..just be thinking about how they work the housing in Seattle. You might want to think about this while you’re at it. In Seattle they are offering people a free place to live as long as you stay drunk. They figure it only costs about $11,000 a year to pay for housing for the homeless (me, the wife and our kids) and it costs over $100,000 a year to put us in jail or any other facility to dry out. The only requirement is that you have to drink a lot. I don’t now, but might have too, if I want the housing allowance. I don’t know how the little woman feels about this, but I’ll ask.

Thanks for developing your new plan. I salute you and the city leaders of Seattle as well. Your forward thinking just shows you that the government can indeed take care of us from the cradle to the grave. Makes me proud to be an American.

I’ll be in touch and let you know when I arrive.

Thanks.

Dear reader….the above is no joke…both cities are sincerely looking at these programs…sad isn’t it? Who pays for this kind of nonsense? We do, that’s who.

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Letters From North America by Peary Perry

6/30/2015

Dear Gunter:

Sorry I haven’t written in such a long time but getting something out in written form   from here in the Texas gulag is getting more and more difficult each and every day. I hope this reaches you. I have trusted the delivery to a close friend who is risking his life by helping me, but he believes the rest of the world should know what is happening here in the United Socialist Americas (USA).

I don’t know how much news the rest of the world is getting but I can bet that what you are receiving is not accurate. As you may recall back in 2007, before the elections of 2008, conservative talk radio was under attack by both the Republicans and the Democrats for ‘having too much influence over the American public’. This came as a result of the protest by the conservatives over the immigration bill favored by both houses and then President Bush. Apparently the voice of the people rising up in opposition to a bill they disliked was entirely too much for the sitting congress and the President. Former Senator, now Senior Senator (SS) Trent Lott made the statement that “Talk radio is running America…We (Congress) have to deal with that problem.” Most of us at that time didn’t realize that listening to the radio, no matter what your political ilk happened to be was a ‘problem’ to members of the congress. We just thought it was our constitutional right. Apparently we were wrong. Then when Senator Clinton became the president and took office in 2009, the first thing she did was to abolish the old two party system and establish the Repubicrats as the only recognized political party in this country. She originally wanted the party to be renamed the Democans, but this name was already trademarked by a porta-potty manufacturing company in Oklahoma who refused to give up their rights.

SS Trent Lott was appointed to head the Senate side of the legislature and as such teamed up with President Clinton to pass legislative action to ‘balance the airways’ under something called the ‘fairness doctrine.’ Former Senator Clinton, you may recall was reported to have made this comment some years ago…”They (conservative talk radio hosts) are nothing but right-wing extremists. We’ve got to have a balance. There’s got to be a legislative fix for this.” So, you may have heard that all radio and television programming has to be approved by a special committee headed by former Senator Diane Feinstein BEFORE ANY programming was allowed to be broadcasted. As you may well expect, the right wing talk show programs closed within a month after not being able to get any topic approved for discussion. Surprise, surprise!!! Rush moved to Mexico and is operating out of some 500,000 watt pirate station that covers most of the country. Sean Hannity moved to a peninsula off the coast of Russia and is doing the same. Michael Savage refused to leave and was assassinated a month or so later. Neal Boortz is still in hiding. All radios and televisions had to be turned in and retuned in order to receive only government approved broadcasts. We are allowed to watch re-runs of “I Love Lucy” and “Mr. Ed.” I heard we may get “Gilligans Island” and “Car, 54…where are you?” in the next couple of months. One can only hope.

All of the nation’s newspapers were taken over by a monopoly consisting of the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. President Clinton and SS Lott pushed the legislation through by saying that the ‘economies of scale’ were in favor of mass production of the news by being able to distribute the nation’s papers  in multiple languages (now required) to a broader audience at a lower cost.

The current People’s Congress (that’s how they like to be called these days) abolished the United States Postal System in favor of e-mail. They have taxed e-mails and are able to monitor their content for so called ‘terrorist activities’ and potential ‘criminal enterprises’. Their justification was that e-mail is much more efficient and the post office was constantly losing money each year. Written letters such as this are prohibited and punishable by a lengthy prison sentence administered through the ‘ Peoples Courts’ which have been permanently set up in each voting district in the nation. Now that immigration is no longer an issue, violators of the US Postal Act of 2010 are being housed in the detention centers which were originally designed for illegal immigrants.

My wife and I had been thinking about leaving for Mexico, but since they erected a fence to stop Americans from fleeing the USA, that option is out. Canada is not feasible either as they have established a bounty for information on any illegal American immigrants caught inside of their country. Canada also has adopted a ‘shoot on sight’ policy towards suspected illegal immigrants.

We do have one possible option. Since the death of Fidel Castro in Cuba and the formation of their new democracy, more and more Americans are trying to float their way to freedom. The Cubans are welcoming us with open arms and promise to help any and all who come there to move to other so called ‘sanctuary’ countries who have agreed to take us in.

Life is very strange, isn’t it?

Until next time….

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