Helen from Hurstville

There's a daily giveaway newspaper here, the Mx, and if I get the train home from work I often grab a copy to read. My train journey is one stop, it takes about two minutes, but that's usually enough.

There's a letter in there today, from Helen, who (if she exists) lives in Hurstville. That's a suburb of Sydney that's about as appealing as it sounds. She writes:

VOTERS don't care who former Secretary of State Colin Powell is going to vote for, or who former Secretary of State Colin Powell thinks voters should vote for. Voters choose who they want, not who former Secretary of State Colin Powell wants them to vote for. That type of pressuring should be illegal.

I'm trying to put myself in her shoes here, and it's not easy. Let's assume this is a real mail from a real person - Helen, who lives in Hurstville. As opposed to a university student with too much time on his hands. Somehow she's managed to get very upset about Colin Powell endorsing Obama, and I do notice that each of the three times she mentions Powell she calls him 'former Secretary of State Colin Powell', which is nice, at least. If a little clumsy.

She starts with "Voters don't care..", and then there's "voters choose...". By which I'm guessing she means that she doesn't care, and she's happy to generalise from there. (But of course the whole point is that she does care, otherwise she wouldn't be writing this, surely.) And which voters is she talking about exactly? The ones in her street? Other people stuck in Hurstville? More worryingly, is she under the impression that she and her neighbors are going to be voting in the US Presidential Election?

And then the final desperate flourish. "That type of pressuring should be illegal." She's seen a 15-second thing on the TV news about Powell endorsing Obama and she's feeling like she's being pressured. (I'm discounting here the possibility that Powell showed up at her house and kept badgering her about her voting intentions in some inappropriate way.)

Speaking of the US Presidential election, my sons will both be eligible to vote in 8 years time. So look out.