Letter to President Obama #35 | Subject: Babies and Baby Names

Letter to President Obama #35 | Subject: Babies and Baby Names

Dear President Obama,

I’m writing because I’ve got a more personal question to ask you—I’ve reached a strange point in my life—I guess I must subconsciously want a kid, because I’ve been thinking a lot about children, and specifically, what names I’d give them, if I were to have any. Now just in case my mom’s reading this, there isn’t a baby on the way or anything, so I’ve got some leeway here, but I’ve definitely been entertaining the idea.

But it’s not like the familial pressure isn’t there. My folks want a grandkid too. For instance, you know that the family abstinence-only policy has been thrown out the window when your parents see your cousin’s new son, look at you, and sigh before saying, “What about our grandbabies?” and then hang their heads dejectedly.

Anyway, Mr. President, I’m asking you because your family seems to be an unqualified success—and because your children have great names. For me, that’s a pretty big compliment; I’m a bit paranoid about names.

I mean, there are so many ways to screw up a name. Of course, there is the general problem of initials. Consider the following ostensibly appropriate names:

Anne Susan Stewart

Frank Upton Kilborn

Sarah Heather Thomas

Paul Oliver Ortler

When these names are made into acronyms, they are all dismal failures. I’ll leave the mental legwork to you, but they all stand for various naughty words. My name is an excellent example of this—my initials (BEO) can be short for “Body Odor,” but as I learned in middle school, they are also short for such treasures as:

Butts Eating Oysters

Busty Earthling Orgy

and of course, Burping Early Orlater

Needless to say, being called such things was pretty stressful. I certainly don’t need to tell you that children love swear words. They are experts in all things related to toilet humor and they’d endlessly tease any child with such initials. (In fact, I’ve always believed that children would be excellent plumbers if they could be appropriately trained. This probably explains the success of the Mario Brothers video game franchise; don’t forget that the Mario Brothers were plumbers. This explains all the pipes.)

Of course, there are other general naming rules. If possible, avoid middle names that are old-fashioned. I was named for my grandfather, whose middle name was Eugene. It’s a great name, and one that I like a great deal now, but as a child, I got a bit of grief for it. I mean, when a kid makes fun of your middle name you and scream back but it’s an important city in Oregon! that’s not much of a defense.

This next point might seem obvious, but it’s always important to avoid names that are already famous. The name “Jesus” is a good example. Like it or not, that name is already taken. And when viewed realistically, there’s no way your child will live up to such a name, unless he’s really good at making fishes and loaves. Really good. The same goes for any of the seven virtues—if you name your kid Faith, she’ll probably become an atheist. If you name her Chastity, she’ll be pregnant at 16. (I actually saw this at a Wal-Mart in rural Minnesota. No joke.)

By extension, if you name your kid Adolf, there’s no way they can screw that up any more than it already is. The same goes for Judas. Then again, those names come with their own problems, so I’m certainly not advocating for those.

Finally, there is the problem of shoddy etymology. My first name’s a great example. It’s “Brett,” a pretty rare name. When people ask what it means, I tell them it’s complicated. By that, I mean, that my parents thought it meant “strong”; that’s how they found in a baby book. They chose this name because I was born prematurely (three months!) and I was lucky to be alive. I had a rough go of it at first; I was in an incubator for three months (chicken eggs stay in incubators for 24 days, take that chickens) and I was only 2.5 pounds. My parents wanted me to get all the help I could get, and I can’t blame them.

As I learned in elementary school, many children knew what their names meant early on. The biblically-named kids had it pretty easy, I thought; I knew like 12 Jakes by the first grade. I only went to school with one other Brett; in fact, he’s the only one I’ve known personally. Sadly for me, he was about 6’4 by the fifth grade. I wasn’t. Thereafter, I was known as little Brett.

Only later did I find out what my name really meant. I learned German in high school. I was watching some boring German-language show in class and I heard a reference to a “Sprungbrett.” The show was about gymnastics. Then the lady in the show pointed to a spring board. So I went home and got online. I searched for my name; of course, I found a lot of references to people with my name, and then I found a lot of websites in German. At first, I thought Germans really liked me! Then I realized that my name was really just a German word—so I looked it up. My parents’ initial hunch wasn’t too far off, if viewed rather abstractly—Germans would probably recognize “Brett” as something “strong”; unfortunately for me, that’s because “Brett” means “a board” or “a plank” in German. So a springboard is a Sprungbrett, etc.

For all intents and purposes, my name literally means “a piece of wood.” This led to some odd encounters in Germany. I’d show up at a friend’s house and he’d greet me with, “Hello, my American piece of wood!”

Of course, things don’t seem to be getting any easier now. It seems the Internet is no help here. What I mean is, it’d be a little embarrassing to explain to one’s child where their odd name came from if you got it from the Internet; imagine that conversation:

Child: Where did my name come from?

Parents (in unison): Um, babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com

Anyway, I’ve made a little progress in my own search; I’m leaning toward the names Oliver William Ortler and Sophia Ann Ortler (Sophie for short).What do you think, Mr. President?

Thanks, and take care,

Brett Ortler

This is letter #35 to President Obama. No response yet, but I will let everyone know. If you like them, please let your friends know and tell them to tell their friends. Also, feel free to leave comments and join my Letters To the President Facebook group here.

Letter to President Obama #34 | Subject: Food-scented shampoos, cleaning products, and shopping

Letter to President Obama #34 | Subject: Household Products and Consumer Protection

Dear President Obama,

I’m writing because I’ve heard a lot of talk about consumer protection in the news recently, and I’ve got a few questions about consumer items myself. First of all, I’ve got a general question about shampoo. I’ve noticed that a lot of shampoos for women smell like food—you name it, strawberries, apples, coconut. This doesn’t make a lot of sense; shampoo isn’t even edible (believe me, I’ve tried). It smells good, but tastes terrible, like a snack Willy Wonka was making just before he totally lost it.

Food-scented shampoos lead to strange encounters at the store too—for instance, I’ll be at a store somewhere and a woman will walk by and I’ll catch a whiff of her hair. Then I get hungry! Subconsciously, I’ll follow her for a few seconds before realizing that the object of my hunger is a human being. That’s a pretty disconcerting situation, Mr. President; there is a lot of self-guilt and shame involved when you realize that, for a moment, you were some sort of hair zombie or in the movie Alive.

Food-scented shampoos can also lead to misunderstandings at home. My girlfriend uses this crazy strawberry shortcake like shampoo; she washed her hair one night and walked into the living room and I smelled what I thought was dessert; the conversation went like this:

Me (excited): Did you make a surprise dessert for me?

Girlfriend: Um, no.

Me (still excited, thinking she was tricking me but really had made food after all): Oh. Well, why does it smell like strawberry shortcake in here? (coyly smiling)

Girlfriend: I washed my hair.

Me (confused, less excited, no longer smiling): Wait, what?

Girlfriend: The shampoo was strawberry-shortcake scented.

Me (sad, angry at the Unilever corporation): Oh, darn.

Needless to say, hair shouldn’t make me feel hungry, Mr. President; I’m already hungry enough as it is. I mean I have enough to contend with at most Targets and Wal-Marts; there’s that terribly addictive rotisserie chicken that they put right by the checkout (I bet that’s another wonderful product from Philip Morris), the veritable phalanx of Little Debbie Snacks (why is Little Debbie not fat?), and the array of candy bars within arm’s-length of every checkout.

In addition, I also have a general question about cleaning products. Whose idea was it to use sponges as cleaning implements? The idea of using an animal (and one from the ocean!) as a household product is strange—I’d never consider using a flounder as a doormat or a pickerel as a pitchfork. Part of me wonders what sponges would say about this; I guess we will never know, as we have no way to communicate with them. Then again, maybe they are more intelligent than we think. Perhaps they can read; they do spend a lot of time near elementary school room chalkboards.

Anyway, if we are going to continue the using sea-creatures-as-household-objects trend, I’ve always thought that squids and octopi would make good (and fun!) mops, and I’ve always thought we should give starfish a chance at astronomy.

In any case, let me know what you think about these ideas.

Take care,

Brett Ortler



This is letter #34 to President Obama. No response yet, but I will let everyone know. If you like them, please let your friends know and tell them to tell their friends. Also, feel free to leave comments and join my Letters To the President Facebook group here.

Letter To President Obama #33 | Subject: Hospitals

Letter To President Obama #33 | Subject: Hospitals

Dear President Obama,

In a recent letter I mentioned that I was at the hospital, as I had this reoccurring pain in my side. Well, the doctor diagnosed it as a muscle strain, but it took a while to figure that out. In the interim, I sat in the examination room wondering what could be wrong with me. I’m a bit of a hypochondriac to begin with and all the exam rooms at the hospital had these “Rate Your Pain From 1-10” scales plastered all over the place. I don’t know about you, but I find them pretty disconcerting; they’ve got these little stick figure guys depicting varying levels of pain and discomfort. The first guy looks OK, but then he’s gets progressively more unhappy, until it’s quite clear that he’s in unbearable pain.

I’ve always felt these drawings are incomplete. I’d like to know what exactly is happening in the foreground of those pictures. There are a number of possibilities; for instance, maybe we could make each picture its own frame and make it a comic strip. For instance, in one, we could place stick-figure man into a brick-lined room, and show him entering the room with a pair of men wearing fedoras. He is offered a chair and sits. He is asked a question but doesn’t answer. Then he is tied to the chair and he looks uncomfortable. Pretty soon, in picture #4 or #5 we see that one of the fedora guys has taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves and he’s rifling through a toolbox for some reason. At that point, smiley-face man is really hurting.

We could also make each have a corollary message. For instance, the one listed above could be pretty general, like “Don’t Steal From The Mob” or it could be more specific, for hospitals in New York City say, and read, “Watch out for the Gambinos!”

Anyway, while I was waiting, I started wondering what had happened to stick-figure man, and I immediately thought of science fiction movies and specifically, the movie Alien. It seemed to be an apt reference; the guy looks fine and is at breakfast and suddenly he’s get worse and worse, until he’s a goner and an alien is loose aboard the ship.

Because I’m a hypochondriac, I started wondering if that might be what was wrong with me. (My girlfriend texted me and said it was probably a wandering uterus, which I didn’t think was very nice.)

Only later did I learn that the Alien sort of thing happens in real life. I was reading a science article about this crazy species of insects that lays its eggs inside caterpillars, and when the larvae emerge they cause the caterpillar to writhe all over the place before dying, just like in Alien. I never thought I’d say this, but boy am I glad I’m not a butterfly.

In any case, please let me know what you think about my revisions to the pain level chart; if you agree, please forward them on to Health and Human Services.

Take Care,


Brett Ortler

P.S. This is letter #33 to President Obama. I'm writing one a day (or thereabouts) and sending them. I haven't received a response yet, but I will let everyone know if I hear back from him. In the interim, please tell your friends and send these letters along.

Letter to President Obama #32 | Subject: Dreams

Letter to President Obama #32 | Subject: Dreams

Dear President Obama,

I’m writing because my girlfriend had this dream I wanted to tell you about. She dreamt that you lost the keys to the White House and you addressed the nation on primetime TV and asked for our help in looking for them. Of course, all the reporters and newscasters giggled and as you were probably expecting this, you told them that there was presidential precedent for this sort of thing. You said that President Bush had done this all the time during his eight years and that’s why the terror alert system kept changing colors.

After she told me this, it got me thinking, and now I’ve got a few questions. First, does the White House even have keys? My girlfriend and I have a bet going on this one. I bet her a dollar that it’s so high tech that it doesn’t even need keys—you probably have thumbprint identification pads and retina scanners and all that. If I were you, I’d be careful about the retina scanners; I’ve always been leery of them since I saw Demolition Man and Wesley Snipes poked out that one guy’s eye just to use it for the scanner. If the security folks insist on the retina scanners I’d recommend that they teach you a Jujitsu version of that Three Stooges move where you protect your eyes from the crazy eye poke. They probably even have special hats (you know, with eye shields!) for that; I’d get one.

If you do have keys, I bet you guys have all sorts of other security too. That makes sense. If I were you, I’d get something like those Life Alert notification things; you know, those things featured in the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercials. Except yours could play a version of “Secret Agent Man.” (As a kid, I always thought the title of that song was “Secret Asian Man.” Really!)

Then again, Life Alert isn’t a panacea either. One of my friend’s grandmas had one of those Life Alert notification things, but he lived with her and was kind of a misfit, so he always put it on his dog. This was a big dog, some Rottweiler mix and it was always rolling around and roughhousing. I hardly got to hang out with him because the cops were there every time I’d try to visit, which was a lot, like five times a week. It was kind of like the boy who called wolf, except in this case it was the boy who called fire department. A few months later, their house burned down and the dog died, so I didn’t get to go over there anymore.

Finally, I have a general question about dreams. I’ve been tuning in to most of your speeches, and I’ve enjoyed them. I’m a particular fan of your cadence, which is wonderful, and at times, it reminds me of other great speakers, particularly John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

I was listening to one of your speeches the other day and a line reminded me of MLK’s famous, “I Have a Dream” speech; I went to sleep thinking about it, and that night I also had a dream. I dreamt of little black boys and little black girls joining with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers, but in the end, they all turned out to be zombies and they tried to eat me. That was weird.

I’ve looked through all the Freud I have on my bookshelves and I can’t find anything about zombies and what they mean if they appear in your dreams. If you can help with this latter question, I’d appreciate it. I’m a bit flummoxed.

In any case, I wish you the best, and thanks for the good work.


Brett Ortler

Guest Letter To the President by Matthew Hicks | Subject: Beards

Dear President Obama,

I saw your speech in Cairo reaching out to the Islamic world, and let me tell you it made me proud to be an American. Since the speech I've been brainstorming to try and help with your outreach, and I think I've hit on a great idea. No, not burkhas on our statues: John Ashcroft already tried that. America needs to cover something else that Muslims like to cover. It's time to bring back the public figure with facial hair.

Our country has a grand tradition of prominently bewhiskered people. Two of the presidents on Mount Rushmore were carved with their facial hair. Teddy Roosevelt had a mustache that he used to help him aim at Spaniards and lions, and Abraham Lincoln had a beard that comforted him when Mary Todd was off hunting ghosts. Lincoln actually started a long trend of bearded and mustachioed presidents, and look at what presidential leadership accomplished: General Ambrose Burnside went with the "bat attacking the face" look, Andrew Carnegie built the world's largest steel company along with one of the world's most impressive beards, and John Rockefeller saved time to think up anticompetitive practices by not shaving under his nose. Today what do we have among the rich and prominent? Not much beyond Larry Ellison's baby's first beard and Governor Charlie Crist’s wife. Half the senate is hiding a bald spot yet none of them let their hair grow where it still can. Americans used to the world leader in innovative facial hair (Burnside gave us the word “sideburns”), and I believe with a little presidential leadership we can be again.

Now I remember reading once that you said you don't really grow decent facial hair. That's okay. Groucho Marx was known for his moustache, but in truth it was nothing more than greasepaint. Alright, that might be a little tacky for the president, but you encourage other people inside your administration to grow something. How about Joe Biden with mutton chops, Rahm Emanuel with an evil-Spock goatee, or Hillary Clinton with a soul patch? It doesn't need to be all of you, the idea is just to take back the public space for follicled faces. Once John Boehner is sporting a ZZ Top beard, then everyone who wants to can shave. But I bet by then they'll be loving it.

One more thing before I'll let you get back to running the free world. I know you love trying to act like Lincoln, giving speeches where he did and following the same route to the inauguration. Well Lincoln didn't have a beard when he was elected. He actually grew it in response to a letter he received. Did I just blow your mind?

Your fellow American,
Matthew Hicks

Letter to President Obama #31 | Subject: Cats, The Transportation Security Administration, and U.S. Customs

Dear President Obama,

As you know, I’ve been writing you letters fairly often, once or so a day for about a month now. But I’ve slacked off the last week or so, as I’m pretty busy, as I’m moving into a new house soon. As you can imagine, I have boxes all over the place.

Unfortunately, I also have cats. This means that my cats keep investigating every box I have, and by “investigate,” I mean they tip them over. Then they spread all of the contents over the floor and then hide in the box. They usually do this at night, so every morning I wake up, I find that my “kitchen” box is halfway down the hallway and it looks like a culinary hurricane passed through the living room in the night.

This has some unexpected consequences—because when I’m in a rush to get to work, I sometimes miss a few items. Then I’m at work and I get a phone call from my girlfriend, who reminds me (again) that it is less than pleasant to sit on the couch and then realize you’re sitting on a spatula. I always tell her that it could be worse, it could be a whisk, or something, but apparently that’s not much consolation.

In any case, I haven’t gotten that much packing done yet. In any event, to prevent this from happening again, I’d like to get my cats temporary jobs. That’s where I need your help, Mr. President; I think my cats could be a great fit for one of several government positions.

First of all, I think my cats would be a great fit for the Transportation Security Administration. As I mentioned, my cats love all varieties of packages, boxes and luggage. Sitting by the conveyor belt with all that luggage would be perfect for my cats. Dogs would be a poor choice for this position. For instance, my dog’s pretty selfish; he just investigates every plastic bag we bring in the house because he thinks there is a toy in it for him.

My cats are also really, really crabby, which I’ve concluded is a necessary requirement for candidates at the TSA. Even better, my cats are also quite suspicious, but unlike their human counterparts, they don’t discriminate on the basis of race. In fact, my cats don’t discriminate whatsoever; my cats are suspicious of me all the time. More than that, sometimes my cats are outright contemptuous. (To tell the truth, sometimes I think my cat wishes I didn’t exist. Especially when I try to make the bed when he’s sleeping on it.)

Now, there is a downside to employing cats at the TSA. There is the problem of catnaps.

Even if the TSA thing didn’t work out, I think my cat would be a great Customs Agent. I mean, other than the general curiosity and grumpiness, my cats are also very clever; I mean, there’s no swindling a cat. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I could get my dog to bite his own tail if I gave him enough treats. Not so with a cat.

I think this characteristic would be a benefit for the Customs Agency. For instance, if someone were trying to sneak a few dozen cases of Labatt’s Blue Beer across the U.S.-Canada border without paying the required taxes, my cats would see right through that. Once, I tried to trick one of my cats, Xerox, into thinking that I’d put extra food into his dish, but I’d really just moved some from his sister’s dish (Peanut) into his. He looked at both dishes, back at me, and then he literally shook his head “no” three times. If he could have reported me to some sort of authority, he would have.

Finally, my cats also have the chutzpah to stand their ground and turn offenders and rule- breakers in, if necessary. I have personal experience with this—I was coming back to the States from Canada, and I was bringing a whole bunch of fruit back from Vancouver. I didn’t know that certain foods weren’t allowed across the border, so according to the rules, the Customs people had to seize it as contraband.

If that were me, I wouldn’t be able to do this all the time; I’d probably be too nice about it and let them go. Instead, the border control person, who looked a little like a cat, seized my food. For a moment, I thought she was going to eat it in front of me. She didn’t, but I’m still pretty sure they never have to bring in lunch to work. Jerks. To be sure, I have no doubt that my cat would have done the same thing.

So please consider my cats for the TSA or the Customs Agency; if they have jobs, maybe I can get some packing done.

Thanks, and take care,

Brett Ortler

This is letter #31 to President Obama; I was writing one a day for about three weeks, but slowed down the pace a bit because of the problems listed in this letter. I'm sending all of these letters to the President; I'll let you know if I get a response. If you like these, please let me know and tell your friends. Thanks.

Letter to President Obama #30 | Subject: Patriotism and Religious Symbols

Letter to President Obama #30 | Subject: Patriotism and Religious Symbols

Dear President Obama,

As you know, I’ve been writing you letters fairly often, once a day for about a month now. But in the last few days I haven’t written much at all; I have a pretty good excuse—I was in the emergency room for most of Wednesday afternoon. As it turns out, I’m fine, but it took a while for the doctors to find that out. In the interim, I hung around at the hospital for a while, and I read every good magazine that they had—two copies of Smithsonian and one of National Geographic. After that, the only magazines left were things like Good Housekeeping and Ladies’ Home Journal, so I reluctantly started reading those. I don’t remember which magazine I was looking at, but I was taken aback by the cover of one of the magazines, which had the phrase “God Bless America” prominently displayed on the cover.

Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against America, or God, or God blessing America. On the contrary, I think it’s quite clear that God has done so, and quite abundantly. The phrase just seems to be a little obvious—it kind of goes without saying. And it seems like an unnecessary addition; I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever wished for the converse—for God, or any other deity for that matter, to damn a particular nation. Now that I think of that, it’s a little disappointing that I haven’t. It would be kind of fun to yell out “God damn you, Swaziland!” in the break room or have “Shiva, please destroy Iceland!” emblazoned on a button or a bumper sticker.

Then again, I don’t have any real beef with the phrase, it’s their magazine; they can put whatever they want on the cover. I’m writing this because those covers made me think of the fish symbols that some Christian folks put on their cars. I’ve always been disappointed that car dealerships only offered a few different choices—the fish symbol, the Darwin one, and the fish eating the Darwin symbol. That seems like a pretty limited selection to me, and certainly not one representative enough to cover everyone’s religious and metaphysical beliefs. So I went to my local car dealership and asked if they had any other symbolic options.

I started out with the big three monotheistic religions, thinking it was my best bet. I asked if they had Christian symbols, and of course they had the fish and the anti-Darwin fish (which has no teeth, oddly). I then asked if the symbols got more specific. The salesman was confused. I told him that I was Catholic and wanted an outline of the Pope’s hat or maybe the Popemobile for my car. He said they didn’t have that. I was surprised, and so I thought they had only one symbol per general monotheistic religion. So I asked if they had the crescent moon symbol. He didn’t know what I was talking about, so I told him it was Islamic. He looked like he was going to call the police. After that, I didn’t bother asking whether he had an agnostic question mark or a symbol for Rastafarianism; I simply asked if he had other biblical symbol options, like the burning bush, Jacob’s ladder, or David’s sling, or maybe even a sheep, but they said no, they just had the fish. I asked if they had chips, but they didn’t get it.

Needless to say, I think this is an area where American automakers could certainly take the initiative and beat the competition. Specifically, I’d like to have a Noah’s Ark symbol; I’d put that on my car. Maybe just the outline of the ark with a pair of giraffes’ heads peeking out of the top? (Though in that story I’ve always thought that Noah would have made the giraffes little umbrella hats—I mean, if he didn’t that’s not very nice. 40 days of rain would get pretty old if your head was sticking through the roof.)

I just thought of this—if the 10 plagues of Egypt could be encapsulated in car-symbol form, that’d be pretty sweet too.

Finally, it’d be nice if the automakers made those symbols a bit easier to remove. One of my pals, an ardent atheist, bought a used car and a nice one at that, but it had one of the fish symbols on it. Like I said, he was an ardent atheist, but he was even more particular about keeping his car in immaculate shape. This led to some odd meetings—people would see the symbol and think he was quite religious and then invited them to church or tried to discuss Scripture, and he’d have to try to explain the situation. In this respect, it was sort of like a pass code, but he didn’t really belong to the club.

In any case, let me know what you think about these comments and thanks.

Brett

Letter to President Obama #29 | Subject: Presidential Public Service Announcements

Dear President Obama,

I’ve got a question about public service announcements. Every once in a while, I drive by this billboard with this strange public service announcement on it—it says Leadership: Pass it On. I don’t like this billboard. Every time I drive past it I immediately signal the wrong way with my blinker and begin swerving.

I’ve seen others like it, and I’d like to know, is the government responsible for these? If so, can we please stop funding them? I saw one a while back that essentially told me not to swear, and I never wanted to swear more in my life! And boy can I swear! (For a while, looking up swear words was my job. Really! I researched swear words in about 30 languages for a multinational corporation to make sure that those bad words didn’t appear in their products.) In the process, I learned how to tell someone to “have no cow!” and to “get blind at celebration time” in Rwandan. Anyway, so I drove past this sign and I started swearing, and the guy in the car next to me did too, and I think the school bus driver behind me did as well (though that probably just comes with the territory.) It was sort of like that movie Pay it Forward, but with curse words.

And it’s not just that these billboards are pretentious, they seem to indicate that the “negative” emotions are totally worthless, but I couldn’t disagree more. Every emotion has its place and time. For instance, I think a giant advertisement featuring Marvin the Martian with the tagline, Anger: Sometimes it’s funny would be a great fit!

Anyway, I’m not just angry about the weird values billboards. There’s another sign just off the highway by my apartment that bothers me too, but I don’t know if it’s by the same people—it’s a little blue highway sign that just reads, “Concentrate on Driving.” Let me tell you, I’ve never wanted to hit anything with a car more in my life! Every time I drive past it, I want to start texting and swerving and playing chicken with oncoming traffic. Mr. President, can you please call the Isanti County Department of Transportation and tell them to change this sign? If I call, they’ll probably hang up on me. But you could probably make it happen.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against Public Service Announcements, generally. I just think we could be doing a better job. I think the current ads are ineffective and self-defeating. I’d like to encourage you to create Public Service Announcements based upon various U.S. Presidents. To be sure, the presidents represent all sorts of virtues as well as a variety of cautionary tales.

For instance, we could feature William Henry Harrison in an ad for the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control. You know, he was the 9^th president and the one who gave that really long inauguration speech (two hours!) in the rain without wearing a hat or a coat. Then he died of pneumonia on his 32^nd day in office. That PSA has already written itself—we’d just need a picture of Henry Harrison looking deathly ill with one of those speech bubbles: If it rains, don’t forget a coat!

And of course we could feature President Taft in anti-obesity PSA. We could show a picture of his giant bathtub along with the tagline: Don’t eat that burger! Or you might need a bathtub like mine—and it could hold six people!

If we really got into the swing of things, we could even co-opt the likenesses of various presidents to support various contemporary causes that didn’t exist during their time. For instance, we could feature George Washington in a PSA for climate-change awareness, but the tagline would be a little more esoteric. Something like: Turn off that wood-burning stove you young lad! It’ll pollute the phlogiston or whatever it was they thought the air was made up of back then.

Of course, this might be going a little too far. But you get the general idea. In any case, I think the Presidential PSAs would be far more effective than the current approaches.

Thanks for reading.

Brett Ortler