Messages To Meddlers

By:  Rachel Marsden

As I sat down this week to write my Christmas cards, I realized that there were a few people whose addresses I was missing. Fortunately, one of the perks of being a newspaper columnist is that I can just give them a shout-out here.

Dear Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:

I just wanted to interrupt your Holocaust denial conference to wish you a Merry Christmas.

While even German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't appreciate your view that the Holocaust may have been an invention used to embarrass Germans, it's possible that most sane people just aren't ready to swallow what you're serving up. That is, a triple-scoop of crazy, sprinkled with crazy, and topped off with warm crazy sauce.

As you told Der Spiegel magazine earlier this year, you "don't want to confirm or deny the Holocaust" and "Sixty million people died in the Second World War ... But the question is: Why among these 60 million victims are only the Jews the centre of attention?"

How could George W. Bush not want to follow the Iraq Study Group's recommendations and place the future of Iraq and world peace in the hands of someone whose relationship with reality appears to consist of, at best, the odd one night stand?

If you were as passionately obsessed with eradicating cancer as you are the Jews, I'm pretty sure we'd have a cure by now. Merry Christmas, fruitcake!

Rachel

Dear George Clooney:

Merry Christmas over there in Egypt, where I hear you're really busy pretending to do something useful about Darfur.

Why are Hollywood celebrities so eager for America to declare defeat in Iraq, just so you can get back to losing the wars on poverty, homelessness, and AIDS?

The last time I saw an actor put his talents to good use for the benefit of his country, Ronald Reagan was promoting his nuclear ballistic missile defence dream, which came to be known as Star Wars. Apparently, critics in the Soviet Union found it deeply moving, particularly after its spin-off production, Able Archer, featured a simulated nuclear release by NATO.

"Horrifyingly realistic!" exclaimed one. "I almost *&$# my pants!" cried another.

Cut to Hollywood today. Cameron Diaz tells December's Self magazine that she's doing her part to help the environment by not always flushing her toilet, even as she burns through helicopter fuel traveling the few miles from New York City to Long Island for the magazine's cover shoot.

I bet Hollywood environmentalists figure that if they had wandered the Earth with the dinosaurs, they could have saved them from "global freezing," too.

If celebrities want to help, George, they should stick to something they're good at, and that will actually produce results -- like text messaging.

Britain's Sun newspaper reports that attacks on soldiers in Afghanistan have decreased since British intelligence has been sending discouraging text messages to the Taliban.

If Britney Spears can be as brutal on the terrorists as she reportedly was on KFed when she dumped him via BlackBerry, then maybe this war could be over in no time. Merry Christmas.

Rachel

Dear Outgoing UN Chief Kofi Annan:

I heard that in your final speech this week, you referred to the UN Security Council as the "management committee" of the world's "collective security system."

Hey, Kofi, if I punched you in the mouth, would you call the cops, or hold a multilateral summit to determine by what means I've been oppressed? Just wondering. Merry ChristmaHannuKwanzaa!

Rachel
 

PUBLISHED:  TORONTO SUN (December 15/06)

COPYRIGHT 2006 RACHEL MARSDEN