{"id":1379,"date":"2009-04-19T05:55:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-19T05:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/04\/19\/a-letter-the-end-of-an-era\/"},"modified":"2009-04-19T05:55:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-19T05:55:00","slug":"a-letter-the-end-of-an-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2009\/04\/19\/a-letter-the-end-of-an-era\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter: The End of an Era?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As you may recall, back in July of 2008 I sent a letter to a bunch of politicians, including a then Senator Barack Obama, about the situation in Zimbabwe. After receiving no response from any of them, I sent a new letter to President Barack Obama in January 2009, I also included the original letter. For those of you who missed some of this, visit here<\/a> and here<\/a> if you want to get caught up. Also, in January 2009 I sent a letter to Hillary Clinton in the State Department about Zimbabwe. I didn’t publish the letter on the website because I didn’t want to bore you all to tears with my Zimbabwe letter drama.<\/p>\n

However, I did promise that I would share with you any responses I receive. Well, at the beginning of April I received what you might call a reply. I was sent a post card from F. Michael Kelleher, Director of Presidential Correspondence. It reads as follows:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Dear Friend:<\/p>\n

Thank you for taking the time to share your views.<\/p>\n

Americans across the country are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security, and a host of other issues. President Obama is committed to making his Administration the most open and transparent in history, and the Internet will play a major role in delivering on that promise.<\/p>\n

We hope you will join us at WhiteHouse.gov to learn more about President Obama’s views on a range of topics, as well as his efforts to provide a window for all Americans into their government. Your voice is shaping our country’s future, and we encourage you to join us online, share your thoughts, and build a community of connected citizens that will help address the pressing issues of our time.<\/em><\/p>\n

So while some Americans are getting personal responses (Really! Here’s the link<\/a>!), I got perhaps the lamest form letter imaginable. I bet this kind of thing never happens to Perez Hilton<\/a>! Of course, I doubt Perez Hilton knows anything about the political and economic situation in Zimbabwe. Perhaps that’s not the best example.<\/p>\n

I didn’t expect a personal response, but I had hoped for something a little better than my post card. I took the time to put pen to paper because that’s how strongly I feel about this issue. I just thought that in a time where most people express their outrages in 140 characters or less on Twitter, that a well thought out letter would merit a little more respect.<\/p>\n

What’s next for me? I don’t know. More importantly, what now for the people in Zimbabwe? If only there was some way to contact an elected official to express my concerns, oh wait<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read what might be the end of Rebecca’s letter writing adventures!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/themagicalbuffet.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}