Dear Editor,
In his letter captioned ‘According to Gallup Hillary Clinton’s speech had a seventy per cent approval rating,’ Vishnu Bisram stated, “With regards to why as many as half Guyanese-Americans will not vote for Obama would require a lengthy dissertation which is not appropriate in this short response. For now, we simply have to accept as fact unless some would consider it to be fiction that a large number of Guyanese will not vote for Obama. But I know what I found in my informal survey of hundreds of Guyanese.” What! This is another example of Mr Bisram extrapolating the opinions and preferences of his narrow circle of acquaintances to the larger Guyanese diaspora. The overwhelming majority of Guyanese Americans in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, in Atlanta, in Tennessee and many other regions of the USA, support the candidacy of Barack Obama. I have not met one Guyanese American who did not envision hope in the presidency of Obama. Who are these people Mr Bisram talks to, and where do they live? As a pollster, can he provide us with a demographic breakdown of his sample population? I called people in Brooklyn, in the Bronx and many other parts of the US, but none of them ever saw or spoke with Mr Bisram. Which stealth population pulse is he tapping to come away with these amazing conclusions?
Mr Bisram’s argument that many Guyanese would not vote for Obama because he did not select Hillary Clinton as his running mate is indeed comical. Many Guyanese and other supporters of Hillary Clinton are trotting out that straw argument in order to obfuscate their real antipathy for Obama’s candidacy. But like Mr Bisram, I reserve the right not to get into that now, because this subject too would require a long dissertation that is inappropriate under the circumstances. Suffice to say that, unless you are replicating the mindset of the adult audience cheering on Hans Christian Anderson’s emperor in his invisible garments, you probably are not likely to accept that compos mentis Guyanese Americans who belong to the Democratic Party will proverbially cut off their political noses in order to spoil their political faces. Because, in effect, that is the essence of Bisram’s conclusions, ie, they are saying, “I ain’t voting for Obama because he reject Hillary for vice-president.” Yes, there are Guyanese American supporters of Hillary Clinton who are miffed because she lost the nomination, and probably will not vote for Obama. But fifty per cent, c’mon now! Sorry Bisram, there are too many little boys in the reading audience who, like the youth in Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, are not reluctant to point out the nakedness of your metaphorical emperor.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
