A spontaneous rant to a loser. My letter to Rick Santelli.

[Bjorn Against]

Dear Mr. Santelli,

I read your piece on CNBC yesterday about how your on-air rant was completely spontaneous and you had absolutely nothing to do with that website that was set up to promote your tea party idea. Sure the domain to support your little tea party may have been registered six months before you took to the air but I am sure that must be a complete coincidence. I bet some right-winger was just sitting around one day and thinking to himself that he should register a website about tea parties and he had no idea about what he was going to do with that website until he heard you talk. Once he heard your idea to send tea bags to Obama to protest his plans to help people who are losing their homes, then all of a sudden he decided to use his website to promote you and he was able to spontaneously do all the programming required to get the site up within hours of your rant. The guy who runs that site must be a psychic to have known six months before your rant that he needed to set up a tea party website for this very day, because you have told us that you had nothing to do with this and we all know that you would never lie to us would you?

Of course you never tried to distance yourself from this website until yesterday after Playboy let the whole world know that the domain for the website about your rant was set up months in advance. When everyone thought the website was newly conceived you never tried to distance yourself, but now that a magazine that features naked women in bunny ears has claimed that you are a fraud you suddenly are very adamant that you have nothing to do with that website. You were about to be taken down by a soft porn magazine and you could not have such an embarrassing thing bring your career down so you had to come out and make a denial.

You tell us in your CNBC piece that you have “no political agenda” and anyone who claims otherwise is “INACCURATE” you tell us in all caps. You are Fair and Balanced just like Fox News is Mr. Santelli. You tell us that there is nothing political at all about going on national television and telling the world that Obama's plan is supporting a bunch of “losers”. You can rant and rave about how the stimulus plan is taking money away from the “ordinary Americans” who were surrounding you on the floor of the stock exchange, because we all know that stock traders with six figure incomes represent a populist movement in this country. They are real Americans you tell us, and the people who are losing their homes and jobs are what you call “losers” who should not be helped if it means a tax hike for the wealthy people who surrounded you on the floor of the stock exchange on the day of your rant.

You insist that you have no political agenda, and yet you rant about stopping Obama from getting help to the people who are losing their homes because of the actions of some of the very people who were cheering you on from floor of the stock exchange. You can call those of us who say you do have a political agenda “INACCURATE” in all caps all you want Mr. Santelli, but the truth is when you are going on the air to encourage people to protest Obama and start a “populist uprising” with a bunch of stock brokers it is very clear that you do have a political agenda.

Your political agenda however is not merely aimed at Obama, if it were I would not have such a problem with it because even though I disagree with you I think people should speak out on their opinions about the people in power. The fact is however that you aren't merely going after Obama, you are also going after the people who you so nicely refer to as “losers”.

Let me tell me about these “losers” Mr. Santelli. I have a family member who is about to lose her home right now, and I am not the only one who is seeing someone close to them in the process of losing their homes. Did this family member make some mistakes? Sure she did, some of those mistakes were even big mistakes, but she was forced to confront the realities of the world that she was not fully prepared for when she got laid off from her job a couple years ago and had difficulty replacing it. Maybe you don't see it Mr. Santelli, but these “losers” that you refer to are real people that face real problems which you corporate news “journalists” will never understand because you do not care. You will continue to stand on the floor of the stock exchange and pretend that you are working with a group that represents all Americans, and you will not bother to go out and actually meet the people who are losing their homes and jobs because you feel so much more comfortable simply dismissing them as “losers”. And you call yourself a journalist. Well you are no journalist Mr. Santelli, and your little tea party has nothing to do with grassroots activism it only has to do with corporate astro-turfing and lies. Mr. Santelli, you are a truly despicable person who pretends to speak for all of America when you dismiss our friends and family members as a bunch of “losers”. Well we know who the real loser is Mr. Santelli, and you see his face when you look in the mirror every single morning.

Sincerely,
A Citizen

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. Santelli is like Joe the Plumber (except he doesn't work on pipes and toilets)

[yourout]

3. Neither one are qualified for what they do.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. exactly

they are only been wheeled out by the sorry GOP.

[Bjorn Against]

7. What you don't think Joe the Plumber is cut out to be a mid-east war correspondant?

Don't you listen to the pundits, Joe the Plumber represents your common everyday person just like Rick Santelli is a populist and George Bush is a guy we would all like to have a beer with. Pundits are never wrong so if they say these people are qualified then we should listen to their sage wisdom.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

8. Does John McCain still keep Joe the Plumber under his bed?

(SNL) when he comes back form the Middle east?

[indepat]

4. Santelli's head is in the toilet in the minds of many even if his hands never

are. :P

[Bjorn Against]

6. He just promotes an ideology that was pulled out of the toilet.

[yourout]

2. A big ass K&R

:yourock:

[the other one]

9. You are a tool. Santelli is cool.

A 20 second rant earns a great reporter this kind of hate? Too much ado about nothing.

[FrenchieCat]

10. Santelli is a big giant asshole,

as is the majority of his co-workers at CNBC.

I thank the OP for his rant.

Little Ricky the Ranter can kiss my ass!
Hope General Electric lets his ass go!
I'd like to see him sleeping in the streets, eventually.

[Bjorn Against]

11. A "great reporter" would never attack people who are losing their homes as being "losers"

Reporters actually investigate what they are reporting, and anyone who would launch broad brush attacks on people who are already going through the great pain of losing their homes without even taking the time to learn about their situations is no "reporter".

[gratuitous]

12. Quick test for Mr. Santelli's "apolitical" stance

Instead of going in front of a bunch of do-nothing millionaires on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, let's have Mr. Santelli deliver his remarks at the unemployment office in South Central Los Angeles or Flint, Michigan. I bet he doesn't quite make it to the "Are you listening, Mr. President" punch line.

Oops, I hope I didn't go on too long.

[Bjorn Against]

13. He would never have the guts to say what he said in front of the people who were being foreclosed.

He simply pretends rich stock traders represent a populist uprising in America, and ignores the people who are actually the most deeply effected by the crash of the housing market.