Update: You have all convinced me. Kerry is Smart. I am stupid. Happy New Year!
-- Joel
It appears that our former presidential nominee really is as stupid as the Republicans say. The latest? According tothe Washington Post:
The senator from Massachusetts and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, sent out 75,000 Christmas cards with pictures of trees at each season. The Kerrys gushed over their "gratitude for the beauty of these trees and the life they represent."
But it didn't end there.
The card came in an odd-looking envelope, one of those with a return-mail flap and instructions to send it to . . . well, to a recycling company, so "it can be made into new carpet tile."
Carpet tile?
We want a "world without waste . . . where every product either returns safely to the soil or becomes a new product."
So the card instructs: "1. Remove this panel and insert it along with the card into the envelope. 2. Expose adhesive strip and fold the flap over to seal the envelope. 3. Drop this mailer into any U.S. mailbox."
From a purely environmentalist perspective, this is about the stupidest thing I have ever seen:
Most people won't bother to send it back, so the extra paper used to produce the extra envelopes will more than outweigh (literally) the paper actually recycled from the mailbacks;
Assuming anyone actually does send the things, whatever environmental good is done by the recycling will be more than offset by the additional fuel used to transport them;
The thousands of dollars they will spend on these things could have gone to a cause that actually did more good than harm.
And of course, if you really want to save trees (wait for it)
HOW ABOUT NOT SENDING OUT 75 FRAKKIN' THOUSAND CHRISTMAS CARDS?????
Long story short -- they should have just used recycled paper and asked the recipients to recycle them at home.
Duh!!!
Where do we find these people?
UPDATE: I am not a troll (are you?). And I am not usually one to go in for criticizing our own. I also believed Kerry's "botched joke" explanation, but still think he was incredibly stupid for saying it the way he did. We have some very strong candidates for 2008 -- Obama, Edwards, Clark and others. Let's just make sure that Senator Stupid gets the support he deserves here, which is absolutely none!
I might actually ask with some justification whether all you folks ripping me a new one are trolls yourselves. Have a nice day!