12/16/2007

You probably won't get a card from the Bushes -- chicagotribune.com

And according to this article I guess I have bragging rights... being
one of the 1%

You probably won't get a card from the Bushes -- chicagotribune.com: "You probably won't get a card from the Bushes
By Patrick T. Reardon Tribune staff reporter
December 14, 2007"

The White House recently announced that George W. and Laura Bush are sending out 895,000 Christmas cards this year. That means one of every 128 American households will get one.Not mine, I suspect. And probably not yours.Still, that's an awful lot. It means that if you fly somewhere this month, the odds are one of your fellow travelers on the trip out or back is a White House card recipient. In first class, I'd guess.

It means that if you're at the mall, a goodly number of people among the hundreds swirling in and out of stores have gotten or will get the cards. That number, of course, will be somewhat lower, say, at the Sears on Lawrence Avenue in heavily Democratic Chicago than at the Sears in the Oakbrook shopping center in deeply Republican DuPage County.

But why send the card to just some people? If you're going to make it something of an official act (as opposed to doing a private mailing to close friends and family), why not make sure every American gets one?The way it is now, the Christmas cards -- which have been dispatched in large numbers from the White House by Democratic and Republican presidents going back more than a quarter-century -- are an exercise in exclusion. Their message is: This 1 percent of the population is worthy of a card, and the other 99 percent of us aren't.

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