Letter #8 to President Obama | Subject: Superheroes, Cartoons and Foreign Policy

Letter #8 to President Obama | Subject: Superheroes, Cartoons and Foreign Policy

Dear President Obama,

One of your challenges as our President is to help improve America's image abroad. So far, I think you’ve been doing a pretty good job, but I have a few suggestions that might help our country in this endeavor.

During the last administration there was an assumption that if we exported democracy abroad that the world would see the freedoms inherent in our culture and respect us because of them. But that implies imposing one’s idea of what governance should be like upon another people, and as we’ve seen in the last few years, that stuff can be tricky. So instead of exporting political ideologies or abstract governmental frameworks, I’d suggest we use two of our existing well-known exports to improve our image abroad—superheroes and cartoons.

I suggest we use cartoons for two reasons. First, the government’s got a pretty good record on cartoons. We invented Smokey the Bear, who rocks, though I’d be lying if I said that we’ve haven’t had our share of clunkers. (Remember Bert, the “Duck and Cover” Turtle from that 1951 Federal Civil Defense Administration video?) But even there, Bert was only a little radioactive pizza away from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!

Secondly, it’s not like we’ll have to invent these characters; they exist already! The Transformers, Superman, He-Man, the Looney Toons—all of these could be used to our national advantage.

For instance, consider the Transformers and our current situation in North Korea. I don’t know about you, but North Korea’s government reminds me a lot of the Decepticons. I mean, every time someone at the U.N. even mentions North Korea, North Korea’s Central News Agency publishes half a dozen rambling, angry press releases. Worse yet, the letters are so intransigent and unyielding it’s easy to think that they were composed by an evil robot. I get halfway through one of these press releases and I’m like, whatever, Megatron.

Consider this excerpt from a recent DPRK press release about North Korea’s recent attempted satellite launch:

Pyongyang, April 26 (KCNA) -- The successful launch of the satellite Kwangmyongsong-2 precisely means the victory of the might of the DPRK's ideology and mental power, will and pluck and self-supporting economy and science and technology.

Huh? I’m pretty sure the DPRK official “translator” is actually Yahoo’s Babelfish software. In any case, the end result is hilarious, and it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch for us to officially label North Korea News Agency as the Decepticons. In turn, we could refer to ourselves as the Autobots, and half of the work would be done for us. I mean, who are you going to support in the end, the Decepticons or the Autobots? It’s not even a choice--no one likes the Decepticons! (Except maybe Dick Cheney. Since his term’s over now, can you tell me, was he a Decepticon? I was always leaning towards yes, but I was never quite sure.)

In addition, not only would this improve our image, this whole endeavor would be marketable and it would seriously make C-SPAN a lot more interesting. As things currently stand, C-SPAN’s just a blur of boring old suits and ties, and the only bit of excitement is a bowtie now and again. But imagine a Senate Subcommittee filled with senators in capes and utility belts and crazy helmets. Now I know what you're going to say--you probably think that that'd be improper or unprofessional, but I don't buy it. There’s not much difference between a cape and a tie anyway. In the end, both are pretty arbitrary and pointless. Capes, at least, would add a little drama to those long, dreary Senate sessions. And they’d add drama, as they'd make escalators a moment of life and death.

And this isn’t just a national idea; each state could adopt or create their own superheroes to improve their image and drive tourism. Minnesota’s been really ahead of the curve on this—we’ve got Paul Bunyan and that guy means big bucks for cities that were smart enough to cash in on him. But why stop at a lumberjack and a silly blue ox? Consider my modest example—Midwestern Man. A resident of the Upper Midwest, he could ride a cow and use specially-hardened wedges of cheese as his shuriken-like main weapon. This would thereby highlight the area dairy industry, and he could be assisted in his good deeds by his fellow superheroes The Iron Range (featuring the iron-ore deposits in MN and MI) and his sidekick, Corn Boy. In fact, I was so excited about this idea I immediately began designing a costume for Midwestern Man. In fact, I’m wearing it as I write this.

I therefore like to encourage you to consider my proposal. If you take my suggestions, I think the world would be a better place.

Sincerely,

Brett Ortler

This is letter #8 to President Obama. Brett's writing (almost) a letter a day, though he skipped yesterday. See www.knockoutlit.org/brett.html for the rest.

Letter #5 to President Obama | Subject: Revision of our National Symbols

Dear President Obama,

I’ve been thinking about your promise to change the culture of Washington, and I’m with you; I think we need to change how Washington works. But how can we do that if have the same old national symbols? I’d therefore like to propose a few revisions to our national iconography. I’m writing to now to get the first word in, as I’m sure this process, like anything else in Washington, will be inundated with lobbyists, special interests, and all sorts of other folks wanting to make their pitch.

First of all, I don’t think the eagle is the proper symbol of the U.S. I mean, with all due respect to the eagle, isn’t the eagle a bit of a jerk? I’m from Minnesota; every once in a while you’ll hear a story about a hunter out and about in the woods and suddenly an eagle will swoop down and steal the hunter’s hat, or his dog, and fly off with it. Mr. President, that’s theft. More than that, on The Great Seal the eagle is armed—it’s got a whole clawful of arrows! That means our national symbol isn’t just a jerk, it’s an armed jerk. That’s a little like having The Predator as your national symbol. (If we wanted our symbol to be an armed jerk, why not pick Ted Nugent?) Now I know what you’re going to say—I know the eagle has an olive branch in the other claw, but I’d be willing to bet that’s just a bit of avian sleight of hand, it’s probably got a knife bundled in there.

Now I can understand why we picked the eagle, it’s a pretty cool bird and we didn’t have many other options. I mean, as wise and sage as our forefathers were, they weren’t exactly prescient when it came to birds. I mean, Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be the national bird. That would have been ludicrous. I mean, imagine how that would have turned out: all the countries that don’t like would be having Thanksgiving at every protest, and their GDP would probably skyrocket, thanks to all the anti-American turkey and cranberry sales.

Even my home state of Minnesota made a mistake in choosing its state bird. Our state bird is the common loon. I’ll grant you that the loon is an absolutely beautiful bird, but Mr. President, have you ever heard a loon call? Having a loon as your state bird is a little like having a raving, wildly-cackling crazy person as your state bird. Or to use an example from popular culture, it’s a little like having Heath Ledger’s Joker as our state bird; loons make every tent-camping excursion a little like a horror movie. I think that’s why Minnesotans are so stoic, especially about winter—we’re not worried about the cold—we’re just worried the loons are going to come back. Loons are scarier than winter. (Thank goodness loons aren’t armed!)

And what’s with our national motto: E Pluribus Unum? That’s Latin for “out of many, one.” I don’t know about you, but that seems a little creepy to me. It sort of reminds me of The Borg from Star Trek and their line, “Resistance is Futile.” And if you take it literally, it makes it sound like we’re building something, like we’re all Legos or something. I have no problem with that metaphor (I love Legos!), but what we’re building is never specified. Maybe we should finish the thought. Perhaps it could be:

E Pluribus Unum, Unus Nex Astrum (Out of Many, One Castle)

E Pluribus Unum, Unus Moenia (Out of Many, One Death Star)

E Pluribus Unum, Unus Populus (Out of Many, One Nation)


Now granted, I don’t know Latin, so I had to use the Internet to get these translations. So you might want to get them checked first. Anyway, I suggested the first one because it seemed appropriate if we were continuing the Lego brick analogy. I suggested the second one because it’d really make our coinage a lot cooler, albeit a little creepier. And if we wanted to go to the creepy route, we could really amp up the creepiness. Perhaps we could put the national motto in a text bubble (like in cartoons) and have an artist sketch in Rod Serling from the Twilight Zone. This, coupled with the Death Star reference, would make things really spooky. Once the Treasury released these, we could send these coins to our enemies, and I think they’d get the point. And if that didn’t work, we could upgrade the armament for the tough-guy eagle and put him on our coins. We could give him an Uzi, or maybe put him in a tank, with a helmet.

With that said, I don’t think we need to change the national motto altogether; it just needs a little revision. But if we do change it, we should be careful; we don’t want to end up like Wisconsin. Its motto is apparently bibo ergo sum, which is Latin for “I drink, therefore I am.”

In any case, I hope you take these important points into consideration.

Thanks for reading.

Sincerely,

Brett Ortler

This is letter #5 to President Obama; I'm sending one a day. You can see the rest at www.knockoutlit.org/brett.html