Why a quote from Senator Obama in the ad?

Dear Editor,

I had the fortune..or rather the misfortune of coming across a GT&T advertisement in your quarterly Guyana Review publication contained in the 25th March 2008 edition of the Stabroek News, and I was rather confused and surprised that the advertisement, had a much vaulted statement from a Senator no less, in the United States, who happens to be running for President of the US.

I am just curious, I know we are all rushing helter skelter to the United States, but are we now the confirmed 53rd state of the United States and eligible to vote at the Democratic Primaries?

Or is it as a region, Guyana, Caribbean, or South American as the case may be, we cannot find one solitary intellectual luminary, poet, artist, politician or some graduant magna cum laude whose quote may be used for such marketing/PR purposes?

Surely when all is lost in this regard, what ever happened to Martin Luther King? Or Gandhi or Dante or Shakespeare? People of consequence, who have contributed meaningfully and substantially to our collective life, not a senator running for President in the United States, whose contribution is yet to be realised and seen.

Or is it simply a case of intellectual bankruptcy, in the marketing department of GT&T?

I wonder whose brilliant idea that was!

Yours faithfully,

I Persaud

Editor’s note

Our advertising manager informed GT&T’s advertising agency that we were publishing in the Guyana Review recent remarks by Senator Barack Obama on the race question in the USA and sought an advertisement in support of the space. That is almost certainly why the agency chose a quote from Obama to go with the ad.