An Open Letter to George W. Bush.

A few weeks back, you said,

"The very identity of our nation depends on the passing of civic ideals to the next generation. We need a renewed emphasis on civic learning in schools. And our young people need positive role models. Bullying and prejudice in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry, and compromises the moral education of children.

The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them.

... the Call to Action calls on the major institutions of our democracy,
public and private*,
to consciously and urgently attend to the problem of declining trust."

I challenge you, and your family members, to live up to those words in setting a good example of positive role models for the generations still coming up...

You know your father's joke about David Cop-a-feel?

Why do you continue to let him pose next to pretty women, and why must people physically touch or hug in those photos?

Every family with aging elders experiences a moment where the parents cannot continue to drive, say. And it becomes the responsibility of the children to take the keys away, to protect innocent others.

Take the keys away from your father already. Sexual assault -- the unwelcoming touching of others -- is not a joke.

"Keep Your Hands to Yourself" is a rule children learn in grade school. "Do Unto Others as you'd have done to you and yours" is another.

Would you want some old man getting handsy with Jenna, or Barbara? Well why is it acceptable with other people's daughters?

"Our young people need positive role models..."

Talk with your father already. And your mother. His unwanted touchings will not be tolerated in this New America. It's not funny now, and it likely was not funny then...

Nevermind people like Andrea Mitchell:

NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell came to the defense of former President George H.W. Bush after he was accused of sexual assault on Wednesday.

"Mrs Bush was at his side. He is in a wheelchair with Parkinson's syndrome. Really? Someone should be ashamed and it isn't '41," tweeted Mitchell, who also hosts "Andrea Mitchell Reports" on MSNBC. Mitchell's husband, Alan Greenspan, served as chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, including under Bush.

Mitchell is an apologist, trying to shame younger women. That won't fly today. Hypocrisy "in our public life sets a national tone, provides permission for cruelty and bigotry (and sexism!), and compromises the moral education of children. The only way to pass along civic values is to first live up to them."

Andrea might have welcomed touchings from older men as she came up. (She is 70; her husband, 91.)

But not every woman consents to such. (Consent being the key word.)

There are many other reasons I dislike your father, some of them personal. But I also think you ought to reconsider parading him around publicly. To me, this is pitiful, if only for the extremely shortened distance the man gets for "thowing out the first pitch". Pitiful, don't you see it?

The man spends weeks in the hospital on the taxpayer's dime, again and again and again, and then weeks later, he is positioned feet from home plate to show his virility in pitching a ball a few feet? Please: keep him at home already, and let others step up to inspire the children of the next generation.

As a son, isn't that your duty?
Maybe stop lecturing the country, and take care of business at home?
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* I can think of no "major institution of our democracy" more important than that of the private Family...

(ie/ My father doesn't "cop-a-feel" when he takes pictures alongside younger, healthy women.**

Why should yours? There are no Free Passes for privilege anymore.)

** It's simply not in his Nature. He respects Women, and always has. No sit-down talk needed in his older age...