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Open Letter to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
December 4, 2006

Please accept my apology for this late response to the letter you sent to all Noble Americans. I believe I am one of the addressees, but my postman failed to deliver the letter to my mailbox. I would have missed it entirely had Rush Limbaugh not brought it to my attention.

Rush Limbaugh (by the way), does not like you very much. Perhaps if you met him in person, you could change his mind. It is unlikely, but you could try. Nothing changes Rush’s mind, not even the truth. On second thought, never mind. He sounds just like you.

I am somewhat concerned with the quality of your personal staff. Being the leader of a large and influential country like Iran, you are naturally entitled to knowledgeable and educated advisors. Your current staff appears to lack even a rudimentary knowledge of marketing, public relations, or the American people.

If you desire the American people to read your letter, you should not use the United Nations as a means of distribution. The American people consider the U.N. little more than an expensive nuisance and thus, pay little or no attention to it.

You should publish your next letter on the Internet. It should include a 20 percent discount coupon for some popular consumer product like the Play Station 3. With all your oil, you can easily afford this type of promotion. To validate the coupon, viewers would have to call a toll-free number in Iran to obtain the coupon activation code. In order to receive the code, they would have to correctly answer three questions about the content of your letter. You would have to vary the questions though, because cheating on tests is an American tradition.

Another good way to catch the attention of the American people is with a mass-emailing of a very good joke. The email should contain your letter as an attachment in .txt format. The body of the email should inform the addressee there are additional jokes in the attachment. This is where you trick them. There are (of course) no additional jokes, just your letter. Well ... some readers may actually regard that as another good joke.

You could also publish your views or appeals at an Internet site containing pictures of scantily clad, healthy, well-endowed Iranian women of child-bearing age in blond wigs. Configure the site so that additional photos are available only if viewers read and acknowledge your letter.

For even wider distribution of your letter, it should be available in Spanish and Ebonics. If you want American Democrats to read it you must also publish a comic book version.

See, your staff has a lot to learn. They let you down on this one.

Another thing you must understand about the American people is their inability to multitask. You’ve undoubtedly heard the joke about walking and chewing gum at the same time. That stereotype is generally true with only one exception. Americans have learned how to walk and use a cell phone at the same time. From these facts, logic dictates a conclusion that using a cell phone is easier than chewing gum. But that is another matter and I digress.

You introduce too many issues in your letter. You mention Bush; the war in Iraq; problems with Israel; terrorism; the Palestinians... We refer to this as “shot-gunning” and Americans don’t like shot-gunning. Remember what I said before. Americans do not multitask well.

You must learn to address one issue at a time. You can drop Bush from your concerns. He is similar to you and Rush Limbaugh. He will not change, even in the face of truth. Luckily, the American system of government has built-in protections for this situation and Bush will be automatically evicted from the White House in approximately two years. We have not yet discovered a way to evict Rush Limbaugh from his radio station.

Your staff neglected to inform you that our elected representatives do not listen to the people, even though we elected them. There is a phenomena in America called the “Lobby.” This is one or more special interest groups who spend literally millions of dollars each year to influence/bribe our elected officials into passing policies and legislation that favors the special interest groups (like religious zealots and large commercial corporations and businesses) over the interests of the majority of Americans.

So where does that leave us? Here are a few recommendations for you. To garner any attention at all from the American people, you must present a public image similar to the average American celebrity or football star. Right now you resemble the average New York City taxi driver trying to sell fake Rolex watches on the side. American women say you have “shifty” eyes and if you can’t sell yourself to American women, all is lost.

To that end; purchase and wear a good Armani suit. Hire an attractive female escort for all of your public appearances. Hire an American public relations firm to promote your image. Develop a well-funded lobby in Washington, D.C. to promote Iran’s interests. Forget (at least for now) important issues like war, terrorism and nuclear proliferation. Champion more popular causes like saving the whales, seals, trees and red-cockaded woodpeckers.

Your presence would be immeasurably improved if you could make a few guest appearances on American television soap operas or Oprah, but that might be somewhat difficult considering your current unfamiliarity with the English language. A good image manager would advise you to “dumb-down” a little, but you have a good start on that already.

Hopefully, some or all of this advice will assist you in your relations with the American people. I assure you that most of us bear you (and your country) no ill will. We do not know you well enough for that. You have lived a remarkable life to date and some of us even harbor a hope that you will mature and develop into a wise and influential world leader who is respected and admired instead of being ridiculed.

You need to motivate more Americans to speak positively about Iran. That means you need more American tourists to visit your country. Hopefully you will come to understand that American tourism in Iran will only increase if you bring back the fast food restaurants in Tehran. And thank you from the bottom of my heart for permitting Iranian women to be seen in public without being covered from head to toe in a hot, sweaty, uncomfortable blanket. That also helps tourism.

When you visit our great country in the future, you are welcome at my home for dinner and I promise, no fast food. Should you accept my invitation, please provide at least two weeks advance notice. I would need that time to learn and practice the correct pronunciation of your name; to be briefed by my State Department; and to obtain some good photos of the Holocaust.

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