The story: A concerned constituent, Mr. Daniel Dow of the California 13th District, wrote his congressman an intelligent, thoughtful letter to express his disappointment regarding a particular vote on a resolution supporting the troops, but condemming the recent prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. The congressman, Pete Stark (D-CA) personally called the constituent back, leaving a decidedly less-than-eloquent response (.WAV format). In it, he told the constituent, “you don’t know what you’re talking about”, “I doubt if you could spell half the words in the letter and somebody wrote it for you”, and he implied that Mr. Dow, a veteran Staff Sgt. recently returned from Kosovo, doesn’t care about the enlisted troops in our armed forces.
Now, I think it’s pretty cool that someone from that level of office would take the time and the interest to personally call a constituent to discuss an issue, but… Maybe he could have expressed something other than utter contempt for an individual that he is supposedly there to represent? There was no, “I appreciate your opinion, but felt it best to vote the way I did and here’s why”, or anything constructive or even democratic about it. It kinda makes you wonder why we need to be “represented” at all, if this is the level of service we can expect.
