Dear Editor,

Mr Vishnu Bisram in his prolix letter titled, ‘According to Gallup Hillary Clinton’s speech had a seventy per cent approval rating,’ (SN 16.9.08) misled readers on a number of fronts and I’m disappointed that Stabroek News published the said letter knowing that it distorted almost everything I said in my previous one.

He accused me of being disrespectful of his “Guyanese” poll sample for praising Hillary’s speech and how “sensitive” I am about positive remarks made by Guyanese-Americans about Hillary.  This is totally disingenuous. What I said in my letter was that the assertion made by Mr Bisram and his poll sample that that speech was the best one ever made was a far stretch and represented hyperbole to the highest extent. None of the headline presenters of the Democratic or the Republican conventions deserve such high praise for their speeches given at those conventions.

Hillary, Bill, and Barack all made ok speeches, but nothing compared to Martin Luther King’s ‘Dream,’ John Kennedy’s ‘Man on the Moon,’ Winston Churchill’s ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears,’ Barack Obama’s 2004 convention speech, and many others too numerous to mention.

His criteria for rating the quality of a speech is premised on how many people viewed the speech and the approval ratings the speech received. Never mind the content and delivery. Based on this assessment John McCain had a great speech because he had the highest TV ratings of any presenter, and Hillary’s speech would come in behind Sarah Palin’s and Barack Obama’s. This is the sort of opinion that I would describe as comical.

Mr Bisram wrote that I chastised him for “being a cheerleader of Hillary” without me saying what was wrong with that and without me offering any evidence to show how he was “cheerleading Hillary.”

For starters, nothing is wrong with being a cheerleader of any of the candidates (I am for Obama) but the problem is when you start to lose your objectivity as an analyst. As for the evidence part, just look up the archives of Stabroek News and I believe you will find more than sufficient evidence of Mr Bisram’s enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton.

Finally, I still believe it’s a “laughing matter” that anyone would not vote for Obama for not selecting Hillary. My original question still stands: Is it for an individual (Hillary) or for the country and their personal welfare?

Yours faithfully,
Clinton Urling