Flippin' Idiots. Gosh!

West Valley View – January 11, 2005

Token gesture from a token president
by: Justin Doom - staff writer

After first ludicrously proposing only $35 million in tsunami aid, before increasing that amount to a sturdy sum of $350 million — a figure that could still rise — President Bush found a way to top himself.

The president, clearly albeit belatedly, realized his chance to score some good publicity for America, not exactly the world’s most well-liked nation at the moment, and decided to donate $10,000 of his own money. Bush, as quoted in a Reuters news article, asked “every American to contribute as they are able to do.”

Bush’s personal fortune — not including his family’s immense wealth, and not taking into account that as president it’s not as though he pays rent or utility bills — is estimated at $13 million.

So, I did a little math. Bush’s contribution is equal to .00077 percent of his overall wealth. It would literally be like me writing a check for $3.

That’s all he was “able to do”?

Is it better the president gave something rather than nothing? Absolutely. But there’s something disgustingly wrong, not to mention unfathomably shortsighted, with Sandra Bullock ($1 million) and Steven Spielberg ($1.5 million) each donating at least 100 times the amount offered by the leader of the free world.

Given the chance to hit a grand slam for global goodwill, Bush grounded out to the pitcher.

=======

Now for my response:

Token gesture from a token president? Why not just use the headline “I hate Bush and nothing he does will ever make me happy”? It seems to me that this might be a more accurate representation of View staff writer Justin Doom’s take on political issues.

What bothers me most is not the fact that Doom is against Bush or his policies, but that he publicly speaks of our president with such an absence of respect. Like it or not, this man has been elected to a position that should command public respect from American citizens on all sides of the political spectrum. I would think that, at the very least, a paid writer for this community newspaper should be able to show some small amount of consideration to the man who leads our nation.

Now to the issue of Bush’s apparent stinginess; I am sure that Mr. Doom took a good look at the personal contributions of others like Kofi Annan, Jacques Shirac, John Kerry, and Michael Moore in order to make reasonable comparisons to Bush’s charitable giving. Something tells me that Doom never got around to this. I, for one, would love to see how they stack up to each other.

If Bush was trying to buy his way into the hearts of the European Union, I’m sure he might have put up more cash. But something tells me that he simply made a personal contribution from his family to a number of suffering families on the other side of the world – and I am certain that is a “token” that they appreciate.

Michael Gray
Avondale