Constituent: Misspelling "appalling"

Tip of the bowler to The Stakeholder. Fort Collins resident Joel Potter spent two years teaching freshman composition at Colorado State University as a GTA. He has a soapbox in the Coloradoan:

Today, I received in the mail a six-page, 8x10 glossy pamphlet from the office of Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, which is described as her "Congressional Acheivement Report" for 2005.

I very much dislike receiving such "reports" from members of government, regardless of the sender's party, as these "reports" are usually nothing more thanpoorly disguised campaign ads designed to plant in the voter's mind a dozen or so lovingly posed pictures of the legislator in question along with glowing, almost self-hagiographic language dealing with that legislator's alleged accomplishments supposedly wrought on my behalf.

I wouldn't mind these self-serving advertisements so much if it weren't for the fact that they are "prepared, published, and mailed at taxpayer expense" as is noted - no doubt by law - on the last page of Musgrave's "report," in the most miniscule print to be found in the entire document.

If Musgrave is so very concerned that I be kept aware of her supposed accomplishments achieved on my behalf, I would be happy to receive her "report," were it not masquerading as a selfless public service announcement (and if she were to pay for it from her own campaign coffers). I know that some Musgrave apologists will no doubt bleat that every politician does this, and that they must, in order to compete. I disagree. Just because one, or a few, or every other politician sees fit to engage in such waste of taxpayer dollars does not make it acceptable for Musgrave to do so.

But what is particularly galling to me regarding this self-promoting pamphlet, beyond my general aversion to such misuse of taxpayer dollars, is that apparently Musgrave does not care enough about such campaign mailings to ensure that the message contained therein is spelled correctly. The very title of her mailing, "Congressional Acheivement Report 2005" is incorrect; of course, most readers will recognize that Musgrave's past achievements apparently do not include a facility with language, but then, in most blatant campaign ads, such as this one, it's evidently more important to stuff it full of staged photos rather than meaningful content that might help to actually inform the electorate.

I find it saddening, and painfully ironic, that a member of the House committee on Education and the Workforce, of all things, cannot be troubled to ensure that the merest levels of basic editorial scrutiny are applied to the text of her "report." It's one thing to see a minor grammatical error buried deep in the text that even her staffers (evidently) do not get around to reading; it's quite another for a legislator tasked with overseeing our nation's education system to put her name on a report that in its very title trumpets her casual disregard for an aspect of language communication so salient as spelling.