I guess I am one of those "right wing" radio talk show hosts that Dusty Rhoades fulminated about in his highly entertaining April 19 column.

The column was wrongheaded and full of hyperbole. Call me a nut, though (and Rhoades already has, I guess, by inference), but a full life and a profession spent interviewing politicians (yes, including Mr. Obama) have caused me to consider extreme wrongheadedness to be highly entertaining!

Imagine my surprise and delight while visiting my parents on Easter Day as I opened my hometown paper to stumble upon some of the vilest tripe masked as satire I have read in quite some time. Normally one does not encounter such vitriolic wit outside of rest stop bathroom walls. Bravo, Rhoades.

I am not interested in matching his feeble attempt at satire by going point-by-point (though this might be an excellent exercise for a conservative political science class, if such a body existed), but one thing especially tickled my funny bone:

None of us "right-wing nuts" has ever said Obama was a bad speaker. That is, not as long as the teleprompter doesn't go on strike. I mean, have you ever heard such a chorus of uh's, um's and ah's in your life as when that screen goes blank?

Ronald Reagan could talk all day about substantive things without a cathode ray tube anywhere nearby. So could Bill Clinton. Well, Clinton could talk all day -- how substantive his talks were varied from day to day.

And neither of these men had to fill time with a Special Olympics joke. (Imagine a Republican making such a joke. He or she would have to commit honorable hari-kari before the press let go of that story.)

Pamela Furr

Southern Pines