October | 2007 | McClelland Miscellanea

Monthly Archives: October 2007

October 25, 2007 · 10:50 pm

Age Distrusted, Experience Underestimated

After reading the October 18th issue of The Bridgton News I’m thinking this if your last name starts with “T” and you’ve been on the job for a while it is clearly time to take note.

Out the door locally in recent days have gone Bridgton police officer Doug Taft and Harrison town manager Mike Thorne. Expanding nationally we can add Yankee manager Joe Torre to the unemployed lot. Let’s face it, if each of them were to take off their shirts we would still see the marks of the handprints on their backs providing visual evidence of how they were “helped” to find the exit.

It can happen to any of us I suppose. Consider the senior citizen bumper sticker that states, “I was taught to respect my elders but there are none of them left.” In this day, the chances of getting respect because of advanced age and/or extensive experience are vanishing.

I believe that it is important to remember that everything in life is terminal. No question in my mind that each of these three men knew at the outset of employment that there would be an ending. The unfortunate surprise for each of these men was that they weren’t able to choose the ending time – others forced the decision.

What makes me unhappy about what has happened is that those doing the forcing were younger than the victims are and certainly much less experienced.

I read of the impact of the local twosome in The Bridgton News and I quickly sensed how important they were to their respective communities.

I overheard someone in the Market Basket in Harrison say this week about Mike Thorne, “They ran him out of town. Now they’ll find out what he did.”

Sgt Taft’s contributions on and off duty in Bridgton have been well documented over the past few weeks. No way that the, “let’s-bring-everything-up-to-the-21st-century,” crowd managing the Bridgton police department will be able to quickly replace a person of Sgt. Taft’s stature.

I look at Joe Torre’s exit with a lot less sympathy. As a Red Sox fan I am pleased to see Joe Torre forced out because I’m quite sure that the resulting turmoil will keep the Yankees where I want them to be – behind Boston in the standings and struggling to make the playoffs. No surprise that George Steinbrenner’s two sons, Hank (50) and Hal (38), who are now in charge of the Yankees, masterminded Joe’s exit. It is just one more example of youth and inexperience messing things up.

I suspect that the forced exits of Doug Taft, Mike Thorne, and Joe Torre will lead to lingering divisions, especially over the two local guys involved. No question that the wounds won’t heal very quickly from any of these cases.

I read somewhere that God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we would listen twice as much as we speak. Too bad the decision makers forcing the ousters of Doug Taft, Mike Thorne, and Joe Torre got it backwards.

( Appeared in the Bridgton News – October 25, 2007 )

Iraq Improves, Surveillance a Necessity

I read Michael Cook’s letter-to-the-editor (“Bogged down in Iraq, under surveillance in U.S. – October 8th) with both interest and disbelief.

I can always count on Mr. Cook to reveal a wide assortment of illusions that the Far Left wants the rest of us to believe.

He would have us believe that the war is a disaster – “quagmire” is his term. No mention is made of the recent optimistic report from General Petraeus. No hint that a world without Saddam Hussein is a better place for a whole lot of people.

This part was expected. The disbelief part kicked in when Mr. Cook suggested that he and his political associates are the real supporters of the military not the President. That’s laughable.

These people fool no one with their opportunistic interest in patriotism, least of all the military itself. A survey taken in 2004 among active duty personnel showed Bush favored over Kerry 73-18 per cent. I wonder what the poll results today would be with the same group if Hillary/Obama/Edwards were matched against Bush. Mr. Cook might not want to know.

The desire for peace by Mr. Cook and his friends is admirable. The problem is the price they’re willing to pay to achieve it. They are not willing to fight for peace. To them Pearl Harbor happened because of a misunderstanding with Japan. To them 9-11 was our fault. They never seem to want to accept the idea that evil exists and that we have options as to where and when we will deal with it so that peace can result.

Mr. Cook finds fault with the way we are fighting the terrorists. What he doesn’t mention is that if it were up to him and his friends we would flee the Middle East entirely. He has no concern whatsoever for what such an exit would cause to happen in the Middle East. That our early withdrawal from Vietnam was a travesty for our friends in and around that country appears to be unimportant to him.

Another source of disbelief for me was Mr. Cook’s suggestion that our government goes too far in gathering information about people traveling overseas. Oblivious to evil, Mr. Cook cannot comprehend the necessity of such action. I’ll bet he has complete trust in the millions of illegals in this country as well.

Mr. Cook closes by saying that, “soon I’ll be back in the rain forest.” I think that a better place for him might be the desert. There he could resume burying his head in the sand. Those periodic burials have apparently caused him to have missed the lessons of history and prevented him from having any sense of the real world the rest of us live in.

( Appeared in the Newburyport Daily News – October 15, 2007 )