Tuesday, June 23, 2009

An Open Letter to Paris Hilton
Written During Her Incarceration


I hope this correspondence finds you as well as you might be all through these thorny, for you, times. I see no reason to rejoice about your imprisonment. You have been denuded, both physically and mentally, and set in a chamber which is in total contrariety to the standard of living you have experienced since your childhood. This is traumatic—it would be harrowing for any person regardless of his or her economic standing. Nevertheless, I also wish that your punishment will be used as a “breathing space” prompting you to reflect upon the entirety of your life and not just what has recently emerged concerning it.
As you contemplate, you might come to the very heart-rending realization that you have been manipulated ruthlessly. And not just by the adolescent-minded paps. By a whole nation, and more, which finds some perverse pleasure either in seeing you deprived of your deluxe way of life—something most of us have not—or in revelling in a Fantasyland genuinely desiring it had what you hold. You have been set up to be the sole recipient of a whole society’s guilt complex—one which marinates desperately in a vindictive GroupThink. You now know that the paps would have been even more pruriently comfortable if you had driven your car, in a state of intoxication, into some tunnel where it would have careened off some cement stanchion leaving your body in many broken, bloody pieces. And those indecorous paps, too, would have scurried with their digital cameras to the nearest news room to haggle over the price for the gory details surrounding your death. As a Vietnam veteran, I know well what it means to be the rubbish bin of the vicious collective consciousness of the schizoid citizens of the DisUnited States of Northamerica. You have my sympathy.
I will tell you straight away, Paris, why you are the most fortuitous woman in the DisUnited States. If you mull over your past with vigour, face some exceedingly disgusting facts, and use the innate intelligence I am convinced you retain, you will find yourself in the unique position of being able to formulate a resurfacing and, after, brandish a reprisal worthy of a finally-victorious field commander. The hour has arrived for you to claim your right to be respected as any other human being instead of being gazed at as the whipping girl of a confused, fickle, and sadistic society. That accomplished, you will assume the stature of a woman of dignity and charm and serve, in the future, as an admirable exemplar for all of us to imitate.

“Sail on Silver Girl, sail on high, your time has come to shine,
All your dreams are on their way…”
Bridge over Troubled Waters, Simon & Garfunkel


Your friend,
Tony


Written by Anthony St. John in Calenzano, Italy on the First Day of Summer, 2007

Friday, June 19, 2009

Drugs

Raymond Hoffenberg, M.D.
President Emeritus of the College of Physicians of London
President Emeritus of Wolfson College in the University of Oxford
One Sherborne House
SHERBORNE GL54 3DZ
England


29 October 2001


By chance, I came upon your “Doctors under Tension,” European Review; Volume 6, May, 1998, in which you state, preposterously, the following: “Only rarely do we find large-scale participation of the medical profession in organized abuse…”

It would take about twenty-five thousand agents of the F.B.I., twenty-five thousand detectives from Scotland Yard, and twenty-five thousand investigators from Interpol to round up all the Italian physicians in collusion with pharmaceutical companies which represent a good number of European countries. Travel expenses for doctors and their wives, computers to read pharmaceutical software, dinners in the best restaurants, et alia, all paid for them, constitute only a part of the corruption running rampant. Every Italian household possesses a mini-pharmacy. Italians show off their medicines and leave expired ones in their small closets to add depth to their status symbols. No Italian comes home from the doctor without three or four prescriptions filled, but most prescriptions are filled without the doctor seeing the patient. It is arcane to see three or four Mercedes-Benz’s or BMW’s lined up outside doctors’ offices with elegantly-dressed drug salesmen—who often are seen by the doctor before the patients are!—toting their black satchels filled with “samples” which doctors use to “hook” patients. Italy is Europe’s top consumer of illicit drugs. What part have these doctors, nurturing for their patients a drug culture that begins at the cradle, in being responsible for the extravagant use of illegal drugs in Italy? How many laundered drug dollars have Italian drug addicts contributed to bin Laden?

About you, Dr. Hoffenberg, I am confounded! Do you own a stock portfolio filled with Italian pharmaceutical investments? Are you a Whitewasher of The Lily-white Medical Profession? Or, are you just a run-of-the-mill imbecile?
Toodleoo…

Anthony St. John