I always enjoy the issue of the Glen Rose Reporter newspaper where all the letters from kids to Santa get published. (I liked the one where a kid wanted, among other things, a cash register full of money). In this same issue, there was a response to an editorial that Whitney White-Ashley had written a week or two ago in which she wrote about Bush getting hit with a shoe at an Iraqi press conference, and wrote about it in a lighthearted manner. That didn't sit too well with one local resident, who obviously wanted to ream her out because she felt that laughing at the president is disrespectful. Among other things she said "You wait till Obama gets in and then see what you think about your freedom" and intimated that White-Ashley's editorial is a source of creating a nation of disrespectful children who, in maybe reading the paper, would be prompted to become disrespectful *even for our president*. (she also put in a dig against those ungrateful people of Iraq, who for some bizarre reason, just aren't on their knees (my words) thanking us daily for invading their sovereign country and continuing to occupy it even though the WMD stuff was 0).

I'm guessing that if that letter writer came here and saw the big foot squishing Bush on the side of page, she would be throwing up her hands AGAIN in horror at the sheer disrespect shown to, gasp, a president.

Should be no surprise that I completely do not agree. Bush or any other president is not the King. He does not hold all power and require that all kiss his feet, his ring, brook no disagreement with him, and certainly never speak up against him. He is also not the Pope. Those are the only two types of dignitaries (well, maybe dictators, too)  in the world whom some believe are beyond any kind of criticism.

Does the writer believe that when Bush decided to invade Iraq even though he had not made a case that it actually posed an imminent danger to America that no one should speak up? And that, having been proven wrong, no one would say anything about his ill-considered choice that continues to put American lives in danger and away from their families? Does Bush or any president engender respect when he decides to break the law and spy on Americans? Nixon didn't. People made fun and continue to of that paranoid suspicious man and the phrase "I am not a crook" has passed into common vernacular. Perhaps Bush should not be disrespected even though he has gutted the criminal justice system, bypassed geneva conventions, tortured and renditioned people, and continues to try to attempt to hold people without benefit of trial, including American citizens, in Gitmo.

It's not as if Bush is president within a vacuum. From the very start of our country, every single president has been disrespected, both by constituents and others in government. Heck, go look at political cartoons or read some history books on the criticism and lack of respect for leaders of this country. Here's a political cartoon about Lincoln. I suppose in the writer's world, there is no place for an author such as Mark Twain, who used satire as a tool.

From Biblical days, there has rarely been a welcome mat for the bearers of unwanted messages.... The abolitionists are honored mostly in retrospect. They were 'despised and ostracized, and insulted,' Mark Twain wrote -- 'by the "patriots"': 'None but the dead are permitted to speak truth.'

If the writer actually believes that others deserve no disrespect, I hope she loudly and often spoke out against the inflammatory and racist comments from John McCain and Sarah Palin... but I don't recall seeing any letters to the editor during that time which thankfully has ended without those two in office.

Thank GOODNESS we live in this country where no one is supposed to be above anyone else, and where we can hold our leaders to account, including enjoying it when others in the world also see the actions of a George Bush for what they are. And it's in the best traditions of the newspaper business for editorialists to speak their mind, even if others (obviously) disagree. Kudos to White!

P.S. I'm not suggesting that everyone run around disrespecting each other. But a person in office is a servant to the people and respect has to not only be earned but kept. Not with Bush.