Richard G. Irwin
Director for Incident Management
White House
Washington, DC 20500

And To:

U.S. Secret Service

Hellllo,

I'm sitting in Lafayette Park drafting this letter in shock and awe. I'm confident that whoever was responsible for planning tonight's exercise in excess is smart enough -- hey, I've been wrong before -- to schedule things a bit more competently in the future.

Perhaps, Mr. Irwin, you're not the mastermind responsible for tonight's epic exercise in imperial grandiosity, so I've cc'd a number of your colleagues. However, in the not unlikely event that you're not responsible, perhaps you'll be good enough to forward this to the proper genius.

I'm shocked, but not particularly surprised, by the fact that the SS actually had the audacity to order the closure of several blocks, streets and half of Lafayette Park for a couple of hours simply because your Great Leader in Chief was going to the Kennedy Center. I'm awed by the fact that the SS has gone to this unprecedented extreme for no readily apparent reason.

Don't get me wrong; I don't have any problem with the Head Plutocrat amusing himself by listening to fiddles while the whole world burns -- that's probably historically kewl. My problem is that you characters went way over the top. Multiple scores of "law enforcement" personnel to exclude the public from public areas for a prolonged period of time for no reason other than to allow His Majesty's obscenely decadent caravan to tear down a block of Pennsylvania Ave? Security is one thing, but where, or is, this obsessive police-state mentality going to end? What next: tactical nukes to eliminate the pigeons from the park?

Look at it this way: your brave, patriotic, freedom loving Defender of the Faith got into his armor plated limo, accompanied by his armor plated decoy limo, his small army of bodyguards, sundry auxiliary vehicles, and all were gone within three minutes. In the meantime you spent thousands of dollars to employ other "law enforcement" personnel to bollix up traffic and exclude the public from public places -- for hours!

In the future, should you again decide to go to these unrealistic extremes, I would humbly suggest that you schedule it in a tad more reasonable manner. Specifically, if you really imagine it's necessary to disrupt the normal workings of society to insure that your Fearless Leader can get down the street without incident (NOTE: I certainly don't mean to imply that you have any sane basis for imagining that), why don't you schedule things so that you only disrupt reality for ten or fifteen minutes. Just think of the money you'd save.

Thanks for your wonderful work,

Thomas