Back in July 2008, when we relaunched The Magical Buffet in it’s shiny new blog format, the first article we published was “A Letter: Part One“. This was about a letter that I sent to then President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Chuck Schumer and then Senator Barack Obama about the situation in Zimbabwe. You may also recall that I didn’t get a single response, not so much as a form letter from any of them.
Then, when Senator Barack Obama became President Barack Obama I sent a new letter. This was discussed in my article “A Letter: Part Two“. All of my complaining about not getting even a form letter from before was rewarded with the lame form postcard that I received in response. In “A Letter: The End of an Era?” I shared that I had contacted Secretary Clinton about Zimbabwe, and again received no response, but I did get an anti-climatic postcard from the White House.
However, just when I thought I had hit the end of my letter writing endeavors, I had a mischievous epiphany, I could send a letter to United Nation’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon! “A Letter: Part Four” outlined my thoughts on this. As I should expect by now, no response, not even a form letter.
I’m not sure if he sent it to make me feel better, or to kick me while I was down (I suspect a combination of both.), but not too long ago my father sent me a link to Govtrack.us. Specifically a link to their page of tips for communicating with Congress, which I read. While reading it I found that they got information from The Congressional Management Foundation’s 2005 project “Communicating with Congress: How Capitol Hill is Coping with the Surge in Citizen Advocacy“. It was only 46 pages, no House healthcare bill for sure, so I read it too.
I learned a lot from these websites, and thanks to what I’ve learned, I feel that several apologies are in order. No, I’m not apologizing to my elected officials or Secretary-General Ban. They can kiss my ever widening butt. No, the apologies go to those most wronged by my whole letter writing agenda, the letters themselves.
5/25/10
Dear Letters I’ve Written to Officials,
I hope this letter finds you well. I understand that you’ve had a rough couple of years. I can only imagine how humiliating it has been for you to be put on public display and then have your communication failures also published for the world to see. Believe me when I say, you’re in no way responsible for any of it. The truth is, it looks like this is the inevitable end that most letters reach. Sad but true. To make amends for the trials I have put you all through, I’d like to make a few overdue public apologies to you and yours.
To the Letters that I sent to my elected officials – I thought the fact that I took the time to write and mail a letter would give my communication some weight, not realizing that in the last decade the amount of letters sent to Congress has quadrupled, while the staff sizes are still roughly what they were in the 1980s. Trying to declare that my letter would be read would be equivalent to announcing that Tilda Swinton (who by the way I think looks great in this clip) is going to win this year’s Fug Madness only to find out she isn’t even in the running! It seems like a given, but that’s before you realize how less Swinton-like Tilda has been as of late, and how heinous almost every actress on the CW dressed this year. So yes, in this scenario, you, my Letters, are Tilda Swinton getting lost in a sea of poorly dressed television actresses.
However, it isn’t just about the competition, because you are the finest batch of letters I’ve written in my life and I’d hazard a guess far better than any letter received on any given day on “the Hill”. I thought that the oddity of you, the fact that you were sent from a total nobody in nowhere New York would illicit a level of curiosity, that you would captivate. Yes Letters, you’re still Tilda Swinton in this scenario. What I didn’t understand was that one letter, regardless of craftsmanship, is just one single letter. How was I to know that in order for you to get any level of respect you needed other letters, coming from other people, to make it part of “a movement” and thus worthy of at least being tallied.
Before you judge me harshly dear Letters, know that if too many of you had been sent to one office, especially with the same text, you would have almost immediately been thrown away. There is a fine line that must be walked between being part of a movement and becoming form letter garbage. Even if thrown away Letters, you were probably handled with far more respect than the emails that I send on behalf of the ACLU. It turns out that many Congressional staffers assume that I’m not even the one who clicked “send” on those. And God bless the faxed letters, for they too meet a quick end.
Here we are Letters, at what may truly be the end of our relationship. I’m uncertain as to how to proceed. I’ve for so long considered you to be the superior means of communicating with elected officials, I’m not sure how to go on without you. Going forward it may be emails, although they have their downsides too. Perhaps I can hand deliver some of you at some point, it’s hard to say. Just know this Letters, none of this is your fault. It’s not you, it’s the system you’re forced to exist in.
I hope we can still get together from time to time and reminisce about our past adventures.
Love Always,
Rebecca
P.S. Letter to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, I’ve got nothing for you. I thought we were in for a good time, but alas I was mistaken. Secretly I had hoped that a couple of nice men in blue helmets with assault rifles were going to visit me and ask about my letter because, let’s face it, you can’t buy that kind of press. I think it’s safe to say that your mission was a failure, and sadly, we’ll never know how it all went so wrong.
Dear Rebecca,
As always, you are sweet and clever and funny and we in no way hold you responsible for the lack of response we got.
Clearly, we were just too difficult for those puny little minds to understand.
Perhaps next time, you could use smaller words. And write in crayon. We hear that often garners more notice.
Thanks for trying,
Much love,
Your Letters
Well, your blogs are being read! Now, how can we get as much attention as the corporation lobbyists . . . .
No one likes being ignored. But our best intentions are perhaps the saddest things left unnoticed. Yet we must
keep on, even if no good deed goes unpunished.
Poor letters… Faxes and emails!
I wonder what brings enough attention to a letter for it to be read.. Without some form of security being called of course… Lol
I hope your letters have forgiven you — they were written and sent with the best of intentions.
Peggy