{"id":264,"date":"2001-03-09T00:21:28","date_gmt":"2001-03-09T00:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/2001\/03\/09\/semi-mail\/"},"modified":"2010-07-06T21:00:25","modified_gmt":"2010-07-07T01:00:25","slug":"semi-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/2001\/03\/09\/semi-mail\/","title":{"rendered":"SEMI MAIL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I invited my email subscribers to respond to my writings:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;&#8230;I  read the political stuff with pleasure also but do think our President is the  President, not the &#8220;<\/em><em>President&#8221;. No matter the circumstances of his election  or how reactionary or even dumb he  might me, his position deserves respect.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><!--more-->As corny as this may sound, I consider myself a patriot. I am a strong  believer in our democratic institutions, and I understand the importance of  respecting the office, even if I disagree with the officeholder. I also think  that one of the pillars of our democracy is the necessity to make fun of the guy  at the top. With Clinton, it hurt too much because I genuinely liked the guy and  supported (many of) his policies &#8230; even as I wanted to take him behind the  woodshed and slap him around a bit.<\/p>\n<p>Bill Clinton always reminded me of the drunk uncle: he&#8217;s family, so we love  him, but he embarrasses the hell out of us at Sunday dinner.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Dubya&#8221;, on the other hand, reminds me of too many bosses that I&#8217;ve  had. You may love the company that you work for, but you know the dummy at the  top got his job only because he&#8217;s the son of the president.<\/p>\n<p>Too harsh? Probably. But sometimes, the only way to get through the work day  is to make fun of the management.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;&#8230;It  is just too easy to bash a large establishment without adding constructive  points. The negativism, no matter what side of the fence you are on,  starts sounding a lot like Rush after a while.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Ouch!<\/p>\n<p>After eight years of &#8220;dittoheads&#8221;\u009d slavering over President Clinton from Day  One, I agree that it is time for a little urbane wit. I do try to be  constructive in my criticisms, though I have trouble resisting the occasional  sarcastic broadside.<\/p>\n<p>But, please &#8230; <em>Rush<\/em>??? That gasbag does nothing but harangue his  subjects and stupefy his listeners.<\/p>\n<p>I, on the other hand, cater to a select crowd that appreciates refined  witticisms and sophisticated <em>bon-mots<\/em>&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Recently, I invited my email subscribers to respond to my writings: &#8220;&#8230;I read the political stuff with pleasure also but do think our President is the President, not the &#8220;President&#8221;. No matter the circumstances of his election or how reactionary or even dumb he might me, his position deserves respect.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4E3H-4g","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":454,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/semitrue.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}