The decline of the quill

Yesterday, Saddam Hussein's lawyers released a 5000 word letter the former President of Iraq penned while in prison. In the letter Saddam asks America to leave Iraq and predicts our overall demise. His prose is described as "rambling."

I can't blame Saddam for writing rambling letters. What else can you do when you are in prison?

I like to think Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has better things to do with his time. But Ahmadinejad also wrote a lengthy letter to America, President Bush in particular, back in May. At first there was hope this gesture would trigger a detente between the two nations.

It turned out the letter was simply "rambling."

Bush never wrote him back, so yesterday Ahmadinejad tried to make a new pen pal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In this latest letter he asks Germany for advice on dealing with "Zionism." Which is like asking OJ for advice on dealing with marriage. German officials are busy translating the whole of the letter.

Early returns center around the word "rambling."

Back here in the States the police in Columbine just released all the documents seized as evidence in the aftermath of the tragic school shooting that took place there in 1999. The pages reveal shooter Dylan Klebold as a letter writer with an over-developed knack for details.

There was a time the paper letter was the only way to communicate with someone who wasn't close enough to speak to. Technology has been chipping away at the letter's predomination so relentlessly that in past decade letter writing has been reduced to the eccentric, the elderly and the erudite.

Now, it has become clear the letter is on the verge of entering a new, unfortunate phase. The letter will soon be the exclusive domain of prisoners and madmen who like to expound on the mundane.

This needs to be considered if one has the urge to practice the oldest form of long-distance written communication.