September
2, 2012
From the inbox:
Dead
Editor,
The
band Ten Years After has a song called “I’d Love To Change The World”. Those
words of late have come to sum up my life’s goals, and are why I’m writing you
today. They say a picture is worth a thousand words; and in the world of
political campaigning, it might as well be ten-thousand.
Picture
this: a representative poses with a crowd of smiling onlookers, holding a pair
of over-sized scissors that could only be used for one thing—ribbon cutting.
Along with kissing babies and shaking hands with service men and women, ribbon
cutting ceremonies are fairly run of the mill activities for political
officials. Ceremonies such as these provide politicians with the opportunity to
get out into the community that they supposedly represent in order to mingle
with their constituents—and perhaps more importantly (for some officials), they
are wonderful photo ops. Even without any accompanying text, the image of a
politician cutting a ribbon practically shouts, “Here I am, doing something
important for my community, (re)elect me!”
Of
course, it helps if the politician present has had some hand in bringing about
the event that warrants a ribbon cutting ceremony in the first place. However,
Representative Sandra Major recently posed with a group of community members in
order to officiate over the ribbon cutting ceremony for the Prompton Dam in
Wayne County—a dam that was originally funded by stimulus dollars, which were
brought to PA thanks to President Obama and former Congressman Chris Carney.
Representative
Major herself, however, had no part in the funding nor the building of the dam.
It seems as though she was exercising a kind of political droit du seigneur—or the “right of
the lord,” (which some of you might remember from the classic Braveheart)
that allowed a feudal lord to ‘take’ a woman on her wedding night. Only in
Representative Major’s droit du representative, she seems to believe
that as long as something happens in her district, she can ride up and take the
credit for it.
Unfortunately, this is
not the first time that Representative Major has posed for photos that seem inauthentic
and problematic, once you look past the veneer of a forced smile or a large
pair of scissors. In February of this year, the Independent Weekender
printed a picture of Representative Major posing with some local schoolchildren
at Elk Lake Elementary School for the Read Across America initiative. The image
of a politician, advanced in her career, passing on a love of learning to the
younger generation would be almost sweet, were it not for the fact that
Representative Major has repeatedly supported Governor Corbett’s cuts to public
education—cuts that undoubtedly impacted students at Elk Lake and elsewhere in
the 111th distract. Though this is just one example of
Representative Major trying to garner good PR from a community event that she
did not help to generate, it reflects a trend in her campaigning tactics.
Truly, a picture is worth
a thousand (or ten thousand) words, but there are times when we need to look
past the surface in order to find out what those words actually are. And at the
end of the day, isn’t the truth worth infinitely more?
Personally, I do not want
to be represented by someone who feels comfortable taking credit for another’s
work or posing with students whose lives will be negatively affected by budget
cuts that she supported. I think it’s time for my friends in the 111th
district to elect a representative who will do more for his district than pose
for convenient photo ops, who will not only stand next to a community
structure, but also bring in the funding that could make such a structure
possible. It’s time for a change. I strongly urge the citizens of the 111th
district to send Jeffery Dahlander to Harrisburg.
Sincerely,
Thomas R. Charles
Dimock, Pennsylvania
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