Dear Secretary Rumsfeld,

You're weirdly hot.

You know that, right? You probably get lots of smitten lady journalists starting to ask you a serious policy question and then trailing off into "...and I'm in room 314." But I'm not a journalist! And I don't like to talk about policy issues, or even like to listen to you talk about policy issues, because I get really anxious when people argue. But somehow, when you're squinting at some hapless journalist and telling them where to get off in no uncertain terms - !

Why are you hot? It's not because you're a cute young guy. In fact, you're pretty old! Not Hollywood-old, either, actual old! Now, I know that Henry Kissinger used to say that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, but how would he know? Don't you think he was just trying to create his own reality? Is it really possible that anyone ever wanted to do it with him? With the head, and the voice, and the general resemblance to Ben Stein?

But I digress.

Once, I was at a dinner party, and a boy asked if you were generally considered attractive, because he had heard something to that effect and was trying to debunk the myth, and about five girls, in unison, replied that, indeed, you were quite the scrumptious muffin. And then we all stared at the ground, deeply ashamed of our unnatural desires. And just think, these were LA girls, girls who are vaguely convinced that our government is run by the Weinsteins.

I think it has something to do with the squinting, and with how mean you are. Girls like mean boys. I do not know why this is, it just is. The entire why and how of the history of human warfare can pretty much be summed up as: guys like to invade Iraq and get riled up and angry and stern about it, and although your politics may appall us, girls secretly like boys who get riled up and angry and stern*. Don't tell anyone. (Seriously! It could destroy the fabric of society.)

Please, for all that is holy, you need to retire so that American politics will return to its natural, unhot state. Maybe you could do a book tour and I could go see you speak and there would be hundreds of young women in the front rows, staring hungrily at you, and we'd all be deeply ashamed and slink away afterwards, refusing to meet each other's eyes.

Or, you could just take up fly-fishing.

Thank you for your valuable time, sir. I know you're a busy guy, and you probably need to get back to practicing your secret mind control techniques on George.

All the best!

*: Mr. President, I'm not talking about you. You don't get riled up and angry and stern, you get retarded. The only time you're cute is when you're really excited to go to Camp David and do some serious grilling. Girls don't have secret, shameful thoughts about your manly squinting. Your squinting is just silly.