Include me "out," please

Dear President Obama,

Yes, "We can do better" is a good message for you, Mr. President, at Tucson last night. I've been aghast by your undignified, unpresidential, Chicago knee-capping remarks to over half the American public who don't support your programs, or who are even mildly critical. George W. Bush was vilified for everything from his speech, to his ears, to 9/11 response, to two wars, to spending too much on social programs yet somehow he managed to stay above the fray and not insult us. Your disparaging remarks abroad about the USA haven't pleased anyone but our enemies and your far left, angry supporters. You, Pelosi and Reid, yes, YOU can do better (you could even read bills before voting/signing them), especially now that the people have spoken at the polls. But please leave the rest of us out of this tragedy committed by one misguided person, voluntary, by choice, who was obsessed by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a man who was known to the local police as a problem, was disturbing his college classes, and grieving his bewildered parents who couldn't control him.

In 1963, I was also thrown into that plural pronoun WE when Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy. Oh, how the press and the politicians moaned and wept over what we as a nation had become--and then they toned it down when they found out he wasn't a right wing fanatic as they first said, but a confirmed Communist. I think I also got included in that WE when John Lennon was shot by a demented man obsessed with him. Every time there's violence at the end of a gun, I get thrown into the bag with all the crazies, most of whom are either demented or leftists, and I really don't appreciate it.

This was a terrible tragedy for the families involved; a terrible blow for Tucson. It is not about a national anything--not the national conscience, not our spirit, not even about being a "kinder gentler" nation, as the first President Bush liked to remind us. Political rhetoric had nothing to do with this incident, and could be addressed at another, calmer, less distorted news cycle, a media that for the most part, got everything wrong by taking their lead from Sheriff Dupnik who opined when he should have been doing an investigation into his own failures in law enforcement.