An Open Letter to the President
Re: Secrecy
Dear Mr. Bush,
I hear you aren’t satisfied with the New York Times because:
One, You can’t keep a secret; and
Two, they keep doing their jobs and exposing that fact.
You seem a bit obsessed with secrecy lately. I find this worrisome. I’d like to take a moment to remind you that:
One, me being a citizen and you being a public servant, you work for me.
Two, I’m the boss, need the info.
Playing spy is fun. I know. And it’s fun to keep secrets. But don’t keep secrets from your boss. It’s a bad idea.
Whenever I keep a secret from my boss, I tend to get fired, especially when I don’t keep that secret very well.
I’m going to cut you some slack here because I notice as I look over your resume that you really haven’t ever had a boss before. You’ve mostly worked for your Dad, or your Dad’s friends, or you worked for the people of Texas who, as we all know, run a pretty lax ship. So you’re not used to having a competent boss, and maybe you are suffering from a lack of trust.
But you work for the American People now, and I know it seems like we’re not paying attention sometimes, and you can pull one over on us once in a while. You’ve been keeping a lot of secrets though, and while that’s helped you keep your job longer, it hasn’t been good for the company as a whole.
Just look at your buddies at Enron as evidence for this. They kept a lot of secrets from their bosses (the stock holders) and though it worked like a charm for a time, I think you’ll agree that their little secrets ended them up in quite a lot of hot water.
Well, we, your bosses, now that we ‘have the info”, aren’t too happy with how the stock price of America is falling right now. Freedom is down, and that’s not good for our investment long-term.
So consider this a written reprimand. No more secrets OK? Secrets are bad for Democracy. That goes for secret domestic spying (on your bosses), secret e-mail monitoring (on you bosses), secret energy policy meetings, secret CIA prisons, torture, and all that other secret stuff you know darned well violates company policy (see “Constitution”). And one more reminder: You work for us. Did I mention that?
OK. So consider yourself warned, and get back to work. Hey, how about reevaluating the company’s health care policy? Long overdue.
Yours,
The management.
