Dear Fred Thompson,

I've been so excited ever since you announced your bid for the throne GOP nomination for 2008, but today you left me confused. Did you not get the memo? I know Karl Rove is busy these days, what with his crumbling empire and dissent in the ranks, but I'd have thought he would have at least given you the basic file to go over.

The way any decent Republican takes on Michael Moore is to simply call him "fat" and then laugh out loud. It's worked for years on all the Fox shows, and most of the other mainstream media outlets have followed suite. Even though it turns out the big loudmouthed blimp was, you know, right all along, it has remained by far the best way to deal with him: point to the obvious fact that he's fat, and his otherwise solid and irrefutable arguments are immediately, magically rendered irrelevant and somehow invalid.

But even though you smartly shied away from taking him up on his offer of a debate on health care, you had to go and argue with Moore like some two-bit neophyte about this cigar-9/11-health-travel nonsense.

What a stupid thing to do.

Next thing you know, instead of remaining ignorant and pliable, people out there will be looking up the facts for themselves and discovering that Cuba does in fact have excellent health care in spite of our decades-long effort to somehow punish Fidel by way of inflicting severe hardship on the very people that we're so mad at him for supposedly oppressing. I never did get that particular train of thought, but then no-one in the US seems to give a damn that isolating Cuba has been a profoundly flawed policy from day one. But what's worse, people may ask some questions about your stogies, too. Now, I don't care about your breaking the embargo -- we all know that It's Okay If You're A Republican (or simply a Congressman -- gotta love those perks). But what's a good Alabama boy doing smoking that imported weed? Our local stuff not good enough for you? This is making you look bad, Fred, and surely an ex-senator-ex-actor like yourself who used to milk his red pick-up truck for all it was worth in the Bubba-belt will appreciate that politics is all about appearances.

I'm worried that you're jeopardizing something potentially great here, Fred. Why don't you challenge Michael Moore to a race around the Capitol -- sure, between his extra pounds and your smoker's lungs it'd be a pretty even match, but he'll insist on bringing a camera crew and that'll slow him down. I'd be there to cheer you on, Fred, but I've got to work an extra shift to pay my doctor's bill this month... I'm sure that as a major backer of Bill Frist's HCA for-profit health network you can appreciate that.

(image from here.)