Mary Conca – 4/26/05

This page was last updated on April 28, 2005.

Carter should’ve been there; Mary Conca; Beaver County Times; April 26, 2005.

Below is a detailed critique of the letter.

“Ever since I read the letter to the editor from Velma Berger about the members of the U.S. delegation paying their last respects to the late Pope John Paul II, I whole-heartedly agreed with her that former President Jimmy Carter should have been seated with that group.”

[RWC] Ms. Conca needs to get her Bergers straight. Thelma Berger wrote the letter, not Velma.

If it was so important for Jimmy Carter to attend, perhaps Ms. Conca can explain why he chose not to attend the funerals of Popes Paul VI and John Paul I in 1978 as President of the United States.

“I was unaware that he had expressed a desire to be there. I feel that it was inappropriate for the secretary of state to be in that group. I wondered how President Bush was re-elected. We know that at election time he was not popular in Beaver County. Now, we are told that something was wrong with our voting machines and we may need to go back to paper ballots.”

[RWC] The Secretary of State should not have been in the group that went to the Pope’s funeral? In case Ms. Conca missed it, the SOS is the country’s top diplomat, behind only the president and possibly the vice president.

Ms. Conca “wondered how President Bush was re-elected” because “we know that at election time he was not popular in Beaver County.” Does Ms. Conca not know registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans in Beaver County by about 2 to 1? Perhaps Ms. Conca needs to look at a “red county/blue county” U.S. map. There are far more “red counties” than “blue counties,” even in Pennsylvania.

I don’t understand the connection to voting machines. In case Ms. Conca forgot, President Bush lost in both Beaver County and Pennsylvania.

“The omission of former President Carter was a grave injustice. I write to relatives in Italy and any Italian-English dictionary defines the word omission as a crime of criminal negligence. I like that definition better than Webster’s.”

[RWC] I suggest Ms. Conca get a new English-Italian dictionary.

“The American people are pretty smart. You know the saying, ‘You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.’”

[RWC] Can anyone explain what this is supposed to mean with respect to the letter’s topic?