![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thatcrazycajunA letter of mine responding to this column by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's resident right-wing commentator, Jim Wooten, got printed in today's dead-tree edition. Since they have a 150-word limit on letters to the editor, it got severely edited down; the abridged version can be found by scrolling down here. Should you care to read the unexpurgated letter, it lies back of the cut.
Nobody likes to be told how they should be living their lives, or how they could have avoided mistakes, by someone who has not done much better than they on the same front. I know Jim to be an educated, well-read, man, so I assume he is familiar with the Biblical injunction not to worry about the splinter in someone else's eye before you've handled the 2x4 in your own. And it is quite understandably difficult to believe anyone as wealthy as Bloomberg is can offer much insight into the needs or struggles of those in poverty; he is a self-made man, granted, but was hardly what most of us would call poor even before he founded his financial news empire. (I should know; I was an NYC resident when he first ran for mayor, and voted for his Democratic opponent.)
I also know Jim to be quite willing to criticize hypocrisy in politicians and public figures with whom he disagrees, so I challenge him to be as fair-minded as he would ask of us liberals and Democrats when evaluating the policy proposals of politicians on his own side--or anyone else--who have failed to get their own houses in order before opening their mouths. And if you're going to scapegoat single parents as the cause of any social problem (the "Murphy Brown" attack that got former Vice President Dan Quayle in such trouble, you'll recall), you have business to make sure you aren't living in a glass house of your own before you cast the first stone.
———————————
Jim Wooten complains, in his column published today, that mentioning the wealth and marital status of New York's Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a "gratutitous insertion" and "unrelated to the issue he addressed or the content of his remarks." Nothing could possibly be further from the truth; when one is using the public soapbox to lecture others on their moral choices, his or her own such choices are absolutely relevant. Nobody likes to be told how they should be living their lives, or how they could have avoided mistakes, by someone who has not done much better than they on the same front. I know Jim to be an educated, well-read, man, so I assume he is familiar with the Biblical injunction not to worry about the splinter in someone else's eye before you've handled the 2x4 in your own. And it is quite understandably difficult to believe anyone as wealthy as Bloomberg is can offer much insight into the needs or struggles of those in poverty; he is a self-made man, granted, but was hardly what most of us would call poor even before he founded his financial news empire. (I should know; I was an NYC resident when he first ran for mayor, and voted for his Democratic opponent.)
I also know Jim to be quite willing to criticize hypocrisy in politicians and public figures with whom he disagrees, so I challenge him to be as fair-minded as he would ask of us liberals and Democrats when evaluating the policy proposals of politicians on his own side--or anyone else--who have failed to get their own houses in order before opening their mouths. And if you're going to scapegoat single parents as the cause of any social problem (the "Murphy Brown" attack that got former Vice President Dan Quayle in such trouble, you'll recall), you have business to make sure you aren't living in a glass house of your own before you cast the first stone.
