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Wednesday, August 24, 2011

In response to the Charley Reese Email, or 545 people? Give me a break!

A week ago I received an email that has apparently been going around for more than ten years about a reporter, Charley Reese, who is now finally retiring (funny, since he retired from this column on July 29, 2001).  He was a political columnist for the Orlando Sentinel and this email states that this was his final column with them.  

The article is famously titled "The 545 People Responsible for all of America's Woes." You have probably received it in your inbox a time or two. Of course the version you received was most likely fake or altered from the original and looked something like this.

I read this version and it seemed to me a big load of something, so I had to check it out.  Sure enough, with a little help from my friend Google and a wonderful break down of this email by Russell King, I found bunches of info on Charley Reese and this famous "last" column.  Except this wasn't his last article.  This article, according to the Orlando Sentinel, was written on February 3, 1984 with Reese making a variation of the same article in 1995.

I am not taking issue with Reese's original.  I think that he had the right to feel and think any way he wanted.  As a columnist he had a duty to write what he thought and felt.   He was not, after all, a journalist.  Columnist = subjective.  Journalist (should) = objective.  In fact, as a rant, I think it was beautifully written.  I love rants and railing against the system.  People will agree and disagree with whatever you write, just be true to yourself, I say.

What I take issue with is the idea that 545 people are actually responsible for an entire country's problems.  Give me a break.  Where is the accountability?    I also take issue with the added little bits of trite and untrue poetry, the tax list, and misleading comments  that someone added to the beginning, middle, and end of Mr. Reese's work.  I especially take issue with the 100 years ago ideal that the alterer seems to have in his or her head.  Ideal for whom? 



There was no tax list at the end of Charley Reese's article especially since most of the taxes listed were in existence 100 or more years ago.  Colonists paid taxes under the Sugar Act in 1764  including import duties on foreign molasses, sugar, wine and other commodities.   The Sugar Act did not raise enough revenue, so the Stamp Act was added in 1765.

The Stamp Act imposed a direct tax on all colonial newspapers and most commercial and legal documents.   In 1911, Wisconsin had it's first state income tax.  The income tax began in Massachusetts in 1643 by the Puritans.

Our taxes right now have not been as low since the 1950s.  Also since some of the items listed as taxed were not in existence in 1911, such as medicare and 911, of course they weren’t taxed. 
We were also not the most powerful nor prosperous nation in the world (that was England), we had an enormous national debt 100 years ago, and there was no such thing as a middle class.  There was rich.  There was poor.   According to the US Dept. pf Treasury, the US has had debt since it's inception with the American Revolutionary War amounting to $75,463,476.52 by January 1, 1791.  By 1860, our debt passed the $1 billion mark.  So much for no debt.
If you think things were so much better 100 years ago, you are probably in need of psychaitric attention and medication.
I don’t know about you, but I would never want to go back 100 years.   I couldn’t vote as woman, especially a black woman, 100 years ago.  One hundred years ago I would have no say in what happened to me or my surroundings.  Women were valued little better than cattle.  I wouldn’t be allowed an education beyond how to care for a household, so not staying at home to watch the kids wouldn’t be an option. 
Billy the Kid
In fact, education was in short supply for the entire country as survival, not learning, was what America was focused on.  Education was an unnecessary luxury really only afforded to the sons of the wealthy.  We complain about our uneducated youth yet 100 years ago less than 10% of our youth completed school much less college.   

I know we like to think our kids are getting worse but remember that Billy the Kid was a kid who died before he turned 22.  Remember that 100 years ago we considered a 12 year old boy a man ready to work, smoke cigarettes, drink whisky, and carry a shotgun.   Back then, it was okay for him to do these things, now it’s against the law.  Girls were mothers and wives by 10 and 12 and 14 with a household and four children to take care of.  Now that’s just crazy, right?  People didn’t really change. The laws changed. I like to think mostly for the better.











What we call children now, 100 years ago,  8 years old was old enough to work in a mine or factory, and  14 was old enough to die at war.   We call the kids now too grown?  Would you let your 14 year old carry a gun much less fight a war?  A hundred or more years ago, you wouldn’t really have a choice in that.    
The issue with our kids so called “dis-respect” is the same issue slave owners had  with their slaves.  Once you begin to educate them, they start getting ideas in their heads, thinking for themselves, having an opinion about stuff, maybe arguing, realizing everything told to them isn’t the gospel,  and when they feel they are a totally ignored minority, things start to get ugly.  It's called rebeling.  Kids (and every ignored, under appreciated, under represented group) have been doing that for, well, ever as far as I can tell.  If they didn't, nothing would change.
We complain about our "new" lack of morality, but where was the morality of the people hosing down and attacking with dogs peaceful protestors because of the color of their skin?  One hundred years ago it was okay to cane your wife and kids since they were seen as property anyway.  I wouldn’t be allowed by law to pick my own husband, much less have an argument with him.   One hundred years ago we locked our mentally ill, mentally and physically disabled, and children or family with mental retardations in the cellar and they never saw the light of day.  
I understand people like to look back on the past as a happier simpler time, a Mayberry time when we had fewer problems, everyone was much more moral, and everyone looked out for everyone else, but that is not and has never really been the case.  I'm sorry.  Mayberry doesn't exist.
Mayberry is like the Easter Bunny
If we really did things so much better back then, why do you think things are falling apart now?    And are they really?  How do we not see that things are progressing and getting better? If this was a hundred years ago, this depression we’re trying to pull out of would have completely wiped us out.
Each generation makes mistakes, faces difficulties, lack of jobs, war, poverty, tragedy, reality TV (back then they were called hangings).  There has never been a perfect generation.  We also have many good things that occur: new healthy births, pulling together after tragedy, desegregation, increasingly  higher standards of living,  Paris Hilton's show being cancelled.  It’s also not fair to blame all the problems of a nation of billions on 545 people. 
If we think we are failing we must realize, we all contribute.   Even Mr. Reese feels that though these people are responsible, so are we. "When you have an uninformed electorate, that's what you get." (Orlando Sentinel, Lafferty, July 31, 2011).  We all contribute to the state of the country.
Think about that the next time you leave the water running to defrost meat, throw trash out your car window, leave all the lights on in the house, drive past a homeless person with a sneer without even offering a quarter, elect to watch tv instead of playing with, doing homework with, or listening to your kids, give a cashier or customer service rep a hard time just because you’re having a bad day, treat a peer or employee poorly, drive your car someplace you could have walked, throw away a can that could have been recycled, let a penny lay,  or judge someone you don’t even know for who or what you think they are.
Hindsight wears rose colored glasses.  I know it’s “the thing” to look on the coming generations and lament on what a horrible job they are doing and what a horrible legacy they will leave their children and how we are all going to hell in a hand basket but, wow, I sure wouldn’t want to go back 20 years ago, much less 100.

If you still feel the need to complain about America and how bad and horrible it is read this first:
10 Great Things About America by Dinesh D'Souza.  Then shut up.  Or speak out.  Whatever.

It's a FREE country.
 

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