Dear Sen. Obama:

I just received word that you are planning to hold a $28,000-per-seat fundraiser in Beverly Hills, and Barbra Streisand will be performing at the event. I wanted to let you know that I will not be able to attend this affair.

You see, I make less than $28,000 gross income in a whole year. I'm just a college teacher. Actually, that's only partially true; in fact, I'm an award-winning college teacher with almost 30 years of experience teaching across the curriculum, especially in subject areas like math, economics, finance, and even English grammar — disciplines where not all that many competent teachers are available. The ticket price for your meet-the-candidate night is out of my price range because what I contribute to this society is far less than the gate price for spending a few hours close to you and Barbra. That's how it works, of course: you get your rewards, I get mine; it's just that yours are better because you're a better person who knows better people who have better things to give you.

Still, you might be thinking that I could surely borrow the money to pay for a seat at your fundraiser, but that option probably isn't available to me. Last year, I wasn't even approved for a loan to get a tooth pulled; the high-risk loan company the dentist uses turned me down. Lord! but that was embarrassing: I was lying in the chair in the dentist's office when the office manager came in with the bad news. Geez, you can probably imagine how red my face was. I had to get up and leave. Fortunately, I maintained my decorum: I mean, just because the infection in my jaw was going all systemic, and I was probably not very far from the point of no return, I couldn't make a fuss about it. I am most certain that you wouldn't have made a scene, either.

Oh, that's right. You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you? You're rich.

In fact, from where I stand, you're not just rich, you're filthy rich. Putting it bluntly, sir, in terms of class warfare, you belong to the tribe on the other side of the battlefield.

So does your rival, John McCain. You say he "doesn't get it," but neither do you. Rich people don't get it because rich people can't get it. None of you rich people get it; and don't tell me that you, sir, are somehow so special, so enlightened, that you understand something that is entirely, completely, and utterly outside your world experience. It doesn't work that way. It cannot, so please spare me your phony empathy and get yourself to that $28,000-a-seat fundraiser with all those rich and famous people who share your cluelessness.

I mustn't spend much time on this letter to you because I have to get back to the task of preparing the Mother of All Head Ripping Letters to that loathsome Alaskan crab, Sarah Palin. It's taking me some time to get my hard-core paleo-conservative into full gear for that one, and I'm going to miss a lot of my liberal friends who will, once and for all, abandon me for the angle of attack I'm going to take on her, considering I'm going to blame them as much as the conservatives for what she and her family are. I'll probably lose a few more of my liberal friends openly publishing this letter to you, too. It seems some of your supporters have become the very beasts they so despised from the George W. Bush era: menacing, threatening, harassing, blind followers of their guy. That's okay. President Bush's trolls helped me get ready for yours. Your thugs might not be as meaty in the hind quarters, but they more than make up for it with the blood-curdling screams of self-righteous enlightenment they emit during mating season.

Anyway, before I get down and serious with the glad work of laying into that wretched excuse for a mess called Sarah Palin (and her husband, too), I did need to let you know that I won't be at your big-ticket fundraiser. I owe you that much, considering you might want to have a few low-lives around to show the liberal elite living in the exurbs of Hollywood and Vine just how in-touch with the little people you are. I am truly disappointed that I won't be there for you, but it's important for you to know that I'm okay with it, and you should be, too.

I'm nothing like you, Senator, and we wouldn't get along. Aside from the fact that you and your staff ignored me on several occasions when I sought constituent service, and aside from the fact that you and I both know that you're cut from the cloth of corrupt Illinois politics I condemn, we wouldn't get along just because you and I come from completely different worlds; and even though you pretend to "get it," I know you don't, and I consider people who pretend to get it wildly uninteresting to be around. In turn, you would be bothered by the mere fact that I had been able to get close to you after all the times you and your congressional staff had been so successful in putting me down, spinning me around, and turning me away. You'd also be annoyed by the way I would keep rolling my eyes every time you put on your self-important airs. You'd probably just hate it when I burst out laughing as you told the audience that a "light" was going to shine down from "somewhere" inspiring them to vote for you.

I swear, I'd try to keep a straight face, but I'm afraid there's no way. Politicians using corny lines I can handle; politicians rehashing corny lines I used to hear at Baptist revivals is too much. I wish you'd leave the religious whacko stuff to Sarah Palin; it accessorizes better with her vicious persona and church-lady pumps.

Look, sir, here's the thing. That $28,000-a-seat gig you're doing is where you belong. It's who you really are: you're a rich guy who grew up rich. You never knew unfulfilled needs, much less unprovided wants. Beyond basics like food, shelter, and safety, you got what you got because you were from a well-to-do family. Kudos to your mom for being choosy: that second one of hers, Lulu Soetoro, was a stroke of genius. It's no wonder where you learned how to work the circuit.

You got your food, you got your shelter, you got your safety, you got your sense of place in the world, you got your road to self-actualization. Even academically, guys like you just about always finish on top: somehow, it's you rich kids who always seem to be full of talents, just bursting with potential, regardless of how mediocre you really are. The Kennedys, the Bushes, the McCains, and thousands of other kids from fancy families: you all get the gate pass to specialness that regular kids rarely even know exists. I'm a college teacher, and when I teach at the private schools, I know better than to give students like you anything but the "gentlemen's grades" lest I suffer unspeakable, if behind-the-back, vengeance from administration. You're like the star athletes I've taught at the big public university, except that I could get away with flunking one or two of those dumbbells every decade. Not your kind, though: rich kids have rich parents who pour the money into the swollen coffers of the alumni fund. Daring to do anything other than join the parade tossing high grades, honors, awards, and top praise to kids from rich, powerful families is an invitation to career suicide.

So it goes. The poor live their lives at the behest of economic, social, intergenerational, and cultural forces that are only infrequently, randomly surmountable; rich kids like you, on the other hand, get to choose your adversities. John McCain, a rich but mediocre man, walked in Hell for five-and-a-half years. That does not qualify him for President; neither, of course, does it speak to a trivial man and a trifling life. You, a rich but mediocre man, have placed yourself in the same path of the great harm for which men like Martin Luther King, Jr. paid with their lives. That does not qualify you for President; but, again, neither does it speak to a trivial man and a trifling life.

However, neither your own risks at the hands of maniacal racists nor John McCain's suffering at the hands of sub-human torturers has much to do with what this country needs. Whether it be John McCain's thorough absence of understanding of how badly injured this nation is right now or your disingenuous pretense of knowing what it's like to be a common citizen of that hurting nation, it is simply unconscionable that your respective parties want us to believe that you two are the best America can offer its electorate. You are not.

At the very least, I hope to God you are not. If you are, then this republic is at its end. While it might grovel forward of its sheer size and residual power for another century or more, as the Roman Empire did in its decline, if you two are the best hope we have for leadership, then I shall be able to lie down to my eternal sleep knowing with certainty that America will be at the burning pyre of the dead not long after my ashes have gone cold.

I wish that either you or John McCain would step aside for greatness; unfortunately, you were both raised to believe it is you bearing greatness when, in fact, your mutual claim to the estate of fine destiny was bought and paid for long before you stepped up to the podium of public power.

I won't be at your $28,000-per-seat gala event, Senator. You go, though. Bask in the fawning light of the many others whose greatness is the pre-paid gift that blinds them to their own mediocrity, even as it causes them to labor under the illusion that they possess that which cannot be bought. For most of the attendees, the folly of their delusion means nothing, for they will never be more than confetti at the circuses their handlers hold for the commoners. For you, the folly of the lie that you somehow "get it" will be the continued parade to the grave of this nation even as you vow to deal with the misery being visited upon this country's backbone of citizens. That vow of yours comes from a place of irreparable detachment; as such, it is every bit as hollow as the promises uttered by the corrupted, addled man who stands as your opponent.

Go to that big-bucks event, Senator. Have your fill of the shallow people who gladly pay more than I make in a whole year just to be close to you. When you're finished with being in the midst of your kind, hurry back out to wade for a while into the masses of people who will listen to you tell them that you "get it." People are gullible, and they're particularly gullible when they have so few reasons to hold onto hope. Walk among the lower classes, sir. Tell them you "get it." Lie to them.

Who knows? Despite all your efforts to deal only in photo ops, showpiece programs, and staged platforms for your own advancement, maybe someday you'll run into me. I'll be the person who tells you to your face that you're nothing but a mediocre rich kid all grown up and ready to pretend you're not clueless.

That, or I'll just start laughing. It's a bad habit I have when I get too close to mediocre messiahs.

And by the way, Sen. Obama, if you have the chance while you're at that $28,000-a-seat party, could you get Barbra Streisand's autograph for me? I have no use for it, myself, but I can sell something like that on eBay for enough money to get another tooth pulled before the infection underneath it kills me. I might even have some left over so I can buy gas to get to work.

Bless you, sir. Now, please go back to your $1.65 million mansion. You're taking up space down here on the lower level.