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Two Boy Scouts in New Jersey became Eagle Scouts. They believed they had a right to receive personal congratulations from the President and every governor. On their first try, they collected a George Bush autograph as well as 49 gubernatorial signatures.
The exception was our governor, Roy Romer, who has since recanted and dispatched a long handwritten epistle.
He should have stuck to his guns and remained an exceptional governor.
As far as I know personally, there's nothing especially
wrong with being a Boy Scout. (However, when I was 12, I
was through with Cub Scouts and wanted to move on to Boy
Scouts. My father forbade it. Boy Scouts don't have den
mothers. Men run the troops. There's something very wrong
with any man who wants to take a bunch of 12-year-old boys
camping when there are so many other things to do on a
weekend,
he said. At the time, I was quite mystified by
the reason he gave.)
I previously thought scouting was supposed to build character. Now it appears that the purpose of scouting is to inspire young men to set up a preposterous goal, and then whine like stuck piglets when an adult who has better things to do keeps them from attaining their moronic goal.
Their project sounds like one of those threatening chain
letters: If you send this letter on to eight people you
know by tomorrow morning, good fortune will come. But if
you break the chain, your hair will fall out and you will
be audited by the IRS.
The only difference was that
their chain letter effectively said If you don't send us
a personal letter of congratulations because we're so
brave, loyal and reverent, you'll get acres of bad
publicity.
Chain letters are nothing but a nuisance. You don't owe even courtesy to the cretins who send them; Romer's staff did more than they should have done when they sent the whiny boys a form letter which said the governor didn't have time for such folderol.
If it had been up to me to answer for the governor, I'd
have used the reply that Congressman Davy Crockett
supposedly sent to a harebrained correspondent: Please
take two running jumps and go to hell.
But since our governor has demonstrated why he will Inever be featured in an updated edition of Profiles in Courage, I'm sending him my own modest request, which you'll agree is a lot more sensible than what the scouts wanted:
Gov. Romer, I'm in charge of a special project for
the Quillen Anti-Poverty Foundation, a little-known but
vital philanthropic organization. I'm collecting
signatures, and I'd like yours, at the bottom of a State of
Colorado warrant, payable to the Foundation. The exact
amount isn't important, as long as there are at least seven
figures.
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