Tongue-in-Cheek or Serious? WashPost Prints Letter-to-the-Editor Comparing Sequester Layoffs to Iraq War Dead

Ken Shepherd
March 9th, 2013 3:29 PM
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One has to hope that Mr. Jack Crawford of Silver Spring, Md., is pulling some sort of prank on the Washington Post -- as Rush Limbaugh would say demonstrating absurdity by being absurd -- because if he's serious, his 42-word March 9 letter-to-the-editor is the most overwrought missive I've ever read in a serious major newspaper.

Published along with two other letters about the Post's "Hyping the sequester's drama," in the Saturday paper's "Free for All" mail bag feature, Crawford expressed his "hope" that the Post "will publish the pictures of all the people who lose their jobs due to the sequester" much like the paper "did with the soldiers who died in Iraq." "Martyrs should be held up for public approval of their honor," he concluded. [see screen capture below]

For what it's worth, Post editors included two other letters, one by a Mr. Richard Williams of Woodbridge, Va., who claimed to be a federal employee who "can see why the rest of America thinks it's about time [the Washington, D.C. area] got a dose of reality" by experiencing some of the belt-tightening most Americans in the private sector have had to impose on themselves in the past few years.

The other epistle was penned by a Rebecca Samawicz of Vienna, Va., who complained that the Post lacked a "special section" full of "tables of facts and figures, and reaction from the whole of the country" regarding the sequester. It's hard to tell exactly, however, Ms. Samawicz is opposed or in favor of the sequester, although in context her letter seems to indicate she believes the Post's hype about the sequester was much ado about nothing.

P.S.: My colleague Tim Graham points out a letter to Time magazine from July 2002 regarding President Bush's call for the establishment of a new Department of Homeland Security. The writer, one Jack Crawford of Silver Spring submitted what is obviously a tongue-in-cheek missive:

Mucking about with federal agencies will do nothing to ensure our liberty. Just bring back the Department of War, and turn it loose. The best defense is a solid offense. JACK CRAWFORD Silver Spring, Md.