My Open Letter to Ann Romney

by Sherman Yellen

Dear Mrs. Romney:

You seem the kind of woman who can speak plainly and would not use code words to describe the nature of your husband’s campaign. But there was something about that expression, “taking the country back “ that you have been using on the campaign trail, something that makes memore than a bit uneasy about the future if your husband should win the coming Presidential election.

Are you Romneys planning to take the country back from the Supreme Court that regards corporations as individuals, and thus allows your campaign to receive millions from corporate lobbyist groups? Or are you planning to take it back from the homeowners whose houses are under water as a result of the unregulated banks? Or are you going to take it back from the 99 percent struggling to keep a job or find one? Or the schoolchildren sitting forty and more in a public school classroom with insufficient supplies, struggling to learn?

Are you planning to take it back from the President’s health care program, modeled on your husband’s health care plan in Massachusetts, so that health care will be returned to the insurance companies as a gift? Are you planning to take it back from those who allow their dogs to ride with them inside on a car trip, and would think it madness to have a beloved pet tethered to a roof for days on end? Do you plan to take it back from the scientists who have established global warming as a fact, -one we are now facing with heat waves in the Northeast, and blizzards in the west. Or are you planning the take back of the reproductive rights of women which your Republican congress and governors are so ready and willing to do.

I hate to imply this, but I must ask, are you planning to take it back from those members of minorities, like our President, or the Hispanic population, people who have had the audacity to seek a place of power in this country, and who did not grab it, inherit it, or degrade themselves for it by pandering to those who have it all and want more? Or are you and your party taking it back from the poorest and giving it back as the lowest tax rate on the richest, assuring the best education, housing, and employment for the wealthiest, the world made safe for their own kind, and only their own kind? As a student of history I find your choice of words a little scary since the National Socialists in Germany claimed they were taking their country back from the Jews, and the gypsies, and the others who were defenseless against those who wanted it “back.”

Please advise. Just what are you and your husband, and the Republican party planning to do with the rest of us here in America when you take it back from all of us?

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Sherman Yellen, screenwriter, playwright, and lyricist, won the Emmy Award for An Early Frost, a ground breaking drama about AIDS in America.  He was nominated for a Tony Award for his book for the musical, The Rothschilds.  Sherman's other plays include Intimate Strangers, a biographical drama about Sinclair Lewis which was produced on Broadway, and the drama December Fools, produced by the Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex in New York.  Sherman's new musical, Josephine Tonight!, tracing the early life of Josephine Baker, is currently playing to great acclaim in Washington, D.C.  Sherman's screenwriting has won him two Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, the Christopher Award and he has received a lifetime achievement award in Arts and Letters from Bard College.