Letters: The serious isues behind making fun of Christine O'Donnell

RE JENICE Armstrong's recent column on Delaware senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell:

First, she's accused of saying nutty things. Well - she is running for Joe Biden's former seat.

As to the witchcraft, I'd rather have a witch than a Marxist in Congress - maybe she can work some magic in that evil place. (But who cares what she said in high school and college; she was a kid, and kids say the craziest stuff. If you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about.)

She has money problems? Well, who doesn't? Her house was foreclosed on? So was half the electorate's - not everyone has a sweetheart mortgage from Countrywide like Sen. Chris Dodd. (Couldn't Barney Frank get her a mortgage from Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac?)

The point about her candidacy (and beating an established Washington insider like Rep. Mike Castle) is that the people who make up the tea party are mostly folks who were never active in politics. And, like Howard Beale, the anchor Peter Finch portrayed in the classic movie "Network," they're "mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore."

Tea partiers are fed up with politics as usual by BOTH parties. They (and I) want new faces, with new answers - not the same old, tired political retreads who got us into this mess in the first place! And Castle was one of those retreads.

Besides, she can always be voted out - this isn't Russia.

America was founded as an experiment in democracy, so let's experiment some more. Bush and the Republicans let us down, and now Obama and the Democrats have done the same.

Obama and his party promised change, but all change isn't good.

The GOP congressional leadership doesn't offer any new ideas either, so it's time for new faces. Personally, I'm voting against EVERY incumbent, from state and federal races this year, to city races next year.

Mayor Nutter acts like it was the Democratic City Committee that elected him instead of reform-minded citizens. City Council, ossified as it is, stuck in the Paleozoic era, just doesn't get it! Every last one of them should be diselected.

And that goes for the corrupt dinosaurs in the state Legislature. (Too bad columnist John Baer doesn't run for governor; he'd have my vote.)

What really bothers me is the way the mainstream media have jumped in bed with the Democrats and slander, vilify and personally attack the opposition.

Yes, there are Republicans who use smear tactics and personal attacks, but they are outnumbered by Democrats and their toady media 10 to 1.

A fellow columnist, the estimable Stu Bykofsky, wrote a piece not too long ago decrying the personal attacks by the left against people who disagree with them. (You want immigration control, you're a bigot. You want the 9/11 "cultural center" built somewhere else, you're Islamophobic. You're against abortion, you're trying to enslave women.)

I'm taking Jen's column as humor, and not a serious political piece. But not every journalist has her sense of humor.

Maybe she can write a humorous column about O'Donnell's opponent, Chris Coons, and how he was a Marxist and the nutty things he's said over the years.

And talk to your witchcraft friends - maybe he has the Wiccan vote.

Keith Barger

Philadelphia