On facing racism

From: Laurence Shandy
To: Alberto Gonzales, United States Attorney General
Re: No-confidence

Dear Gonzo,

So, on Monday the Senate is going to vote on whether to pass a no-confidence resolution against you. I'm sorry to see partisan politics come to this. There hasn't been such an obviously political parliamentary procedure in the congress since Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. They created a witch hunt out of nothing. Sure, all you did was fire politically unsympathetic U.S. attorneys and replace them with unqualified cronies. Someone has to keep an eye on activist judges. And sure, you lied to congress and said you didn't recall making any of those decisions. Well, that's positively Reagan-esque, if you ask me.

In the same way, an independent prosecutor violated every one of Bill Clinton's civil liberties and rights to presidential privacy simply because he got a blowjob in the oval office. So what if he bombed a Sudanese medical factory when Kenneth Starr started snooping around the West Wing? So what if he killed a few civilians while pretending to bomb Osama bin Laden when an impeachment trial was on the horizon? And so what if he arbitrarily bombed Iraq after his testimony was made public? These weren't abuses of power. These were simply uses of power. And as attorney general, you were just using your power to shore up some political support. Hell, at least you didn't kill anybody in the process.

Frankly, I believe that this congressional outrage is nothing more than a pose. They're after you because of your race, Gonzo, not because of your actions. Remember when you told Wolf Blitzer that your grandparents were illegal immigrants? Well, so do those racist, Mexican-hating Senators who killed Bush's immigration bill. They can blame as much crime on illegal immigrants as they want. Lord knows how many times I see a hazy sketch of a vaguely Latino suspect on the local news' crime blotter. But the simple fact is that these lawmakers are in the pockets of big business, and big business wants to hold on to its cheap, easily blackmailed illegal labor force. Those who would try and bring you down don't see your grandparents and people like them as huddled masses yearning to breathe free. No, they see them as their brownish lawnboys yearning to breathe through one of those dust masks. If this congress had been in session when your grandparents crawled across the Texas border, you may not even be here now. And then who would "abuse" the power of the justice department? Who would be playing politics with terror alerts? Who would be authoring torture plans?

You think that WASPy John Ashcroft could have done any of those things? That pussy called it quits over a little illegal wiretapping. But you? You know when the illegal can be overlooked for the greater good. It's in your blood.

And you'll work for a third of the salary Ashcroft did.

Mis mejores deseos,
Laurence Shandy, caballero