Dear Bill,

          You don't know me. But I think I know you. You're the guy I've been laughing at for over 35 years. I say your words when I want to cheer myself up. Your "two wine-os on the subway" have given me comfort whenever there are things that happen which makes no sense at all. I can always say to myself, "Well, sport, ya can't lock badges and steigerbroveridges genaiazen naiazen." I had to ask myself "why there is air?" I feel fat Albert's pain. I know who you are. Or so I thought.

          Then, one day, out of the blue, I hear you use a phrase. I know you had something to do with the creating of it and it causes me pain. You created the Hyphenated American.

          That one term, "African-American," would do more damage to the American dream as we all knew it, than any thing else in my memory.

          It played well for the NAACP and the other associations for the preservation of poverty pimps. It was supposed to be an empowering term for the seemingly hopeless undercurrent of America's poorest and most downtrodden, we were told.

          Instead, it gave a voice to an evil that may, eventually, ruin America.

          Those of us who believed in the dream were people like Martin Luther King and Joe Blow. Most of us just wanted to get along. We believed in the great stew pot that was America.

          But this phrase, this worm, was now let loose and people felt they had a right - an obligation - to be special in their misery. Since then, every two-bit grifter with a "cause" has suckered the willing mainstream press into thinking that they have some special beef. It was a signal to the left that they could march over America, hearts bleeding, with victim consciousness.

          Some of it revealed real problems, but I have a sneaky feeling that they would have been revealed anyway.

          I had to live with it. So did we all. Only with the ascendency of conservative media have the common people been able to throw off the yolk of the leftist media and pseudointellectualism of liberals and realize the logic and facts which make up their antithesis.

          And, yet most of us are not conservative. Not really. Most of us dwell in that world which says we are our brother's keeper. We call ourselves moderates, too, but we aren't. We're closer to being civil libertarians than anything else, but who wants to be associated with a bunch of marijuana-smoking, end-the-government, nut-jobs in the party with the same name - or worse - the nut-jobs of the ACLU? Not me.

          Along the way to understanding all of this, I came to forgive you, Bill. I saw through the fog of emotions and recognized that you are a good man with only the best intentions. I've also come to realize that there are a bunch of African-Americans in my state of South Carolina who are so eaten up with lies and popular myths about pink people, that it will be a very long road before we or they can get back our American dream.

          You know what I'm talking about. You've railed against it yourself, lately. You've said people have to take responsibility for their lives. But not just that. People have to ignore the remnants of stupid bigotry. You've pointed out that here are entire groups of people, who come in lots of colors, not just pink and brown, who stand guard to protect us from these jackasses. They can call us pink people "nigger-lovers" and brown people "unkel toms" all they want to, but we can have their dusty butts thrown into the deepest jail under Union county if they so much as pretend to burn a cross in our yards or "march" on our lawns.

          You also know that this freedom from evil was not so 30 years ago. But what the poverty pimps want us all to forget is that even if the symbol happens today, the symbol player will get jail time. Now, I'll grant you that it will take longer to get rid of the African-American bigots, because they have institutionalized themselves. But they'll eventually be ignored, too.

          You know these things I am writing are true. You know all about the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. You know that there are brown demagogues as well as pink.

          But because of the damage, we can't wait until we all melt together to be stronger - we can't wait now - to completely trust each other. Yes, swords and plows are stronger when the metals are melted together. That's what makes America. And the recent immigrants from Africa have more purpose in their hearts than those who use their one-time captivity as a crutch. But even they're not stronger than they will have been, when they become melted into the pot. But we can't wait anymore. WHAT WE HAVE TO DO NOW, IS PRETEND TO HAVE ALREADY MELTED. That means the so called leaders (all sides) are going to have to get into another business or start leading the way into the forge.

          What you did was awful, Bill. It wasn't what you wanted. It wasn't what you intended. But you did it, and it happened. And things will not be the same for a long time to come because of it. You know there are people out there who do not want us to melt together. Their political party depends on it. They talk about reeds standing strong together, but then, they keep the reeds apart from other reeds.

          I wish I could wave a magic wand. If I could I would put a spell on America where the Jessies' and the Calypso Louies' words of hate and separation would be forgotten. Where people of all races could see the goodness in the heart of the majority of pink people and the brown people. Where a good ethnic joke brings a laugh and not a a lawsuit.