Hypocritical criticism at its best

Dear Editor:Howdy neighbor! Even the bears don’t scare me, as long as a stalwart citizen, a champion of honor and a protector of children, is willing to school his inferiors about the Social Contract. Phil Burnett’s criticism of columnist Alison Berkley’s column in the newspaper and his suggestion that The Aspen Times management take a good hard look in the mirror (Letters, July 30), reminds me of the same hypocritical smokescreens spewed by other humorless bastions of society throughout the ages – mostly politicians and preachers like our modern day Georgie Porgie Bush and legions of pedophile priests. Although I’ve never actually seen an Aspen Times being read by a child, if Ms. Berkley wrote that Harry Potter is thinking of enlisting to fight in Iraq, can you imagine the repercussions? I’ve already told my daughter that I will not rest until the Dixie Chicks are in Guantanamo, but until she sees it in print in The Aspen Times, she won’t think I’m serious.Thanks Phil, for your solemnity in reminding us all that drugs, alcohol and prostitution have ruined millions of lives. Now let me remind you of something: If you freed every incarcerated alcoholic, drug-addicted felon in America today and armed them with a dependable motor vehicle, a steady supply of Jack Daniels and a prostitute navigator who is a dead-eye with a .45, and if you gave them carte blanche to run over or shoot every child, dog or patriotic consumer on the sidewalks and in the malls of this great land from Beverly Hills to Nantucket over the course of the next 50 years, they would succeed in killing only a tiny fraction of the millions upon millions of people whose lives were taken or ruined by humorless, censoring moralists such as yourself, who think that our repression should begin where your sense of humor ends.So go ahead and burn the evil books Mr. “Burnett.” Just know that you’re always going to have good neighbors you can’t force out of town who are happy to help you keep the bonfire going with piles of flags and family crests, reams of subpeona-proofed communications protected by Executive Order, effigies of Allah, Marilyn Manson, the Pope and the Dalai Lama, all the while roasting marshmallows, laughing and telling jokes guaranteed to make you wanna kill somebody. God bless America!David FrankAspen