Hate Mail? James Lileks Has You Covered
Here’s an excerpt from a recent missive I received after making fun of our buddy Kos (note: I did not ask the author’s permission to print this, nor do I plan to, but I did set up my email to automatically delete any further correspondence from this misanthrope):
I stumbled upon your site quite accidentally through a quality-content challenged site called instapundit.com and noticed that you had something called jackasses and was surprised not to see the individual who I consider to be the jackassh**e of the millennium: W. Shrub. How could your pathetic little intellectually challenged site commit such a glaring and thoughtless mistake? I take it the next time I stumble upon your lame excuse for a blog you will have corrected this monumental lapse in judgement.
Progressively yours,
[Some Jerk]
Well, it’s nice to be loved.
So you can see why I would be delighted to discover that James Lileks has some tips for those inclined to send hate mail; though he, of course, wrote with his site in mind, I think his principles are good enough to stand for all of us. So, before you hit that send button, all you Chomskyites, please read this…
You know, I hate to generalize but, shucks, I’m gonna: in my experience the most vitriolic, hateful, and foul-mouthed commentary and argument comes my way via people of the Left. This includes friends of mine that are seriously committed lefties (I DO live in Massachusetts, btw) including my public education employed sister-in-law who launched an expletive laced tirade at me one Thanksgiving when I suggested some sympathy for the Libertarian point of view.
This does not apply to all, and I don’t excuse all Righties, but I’ve noticed a pattern amoung the Left-leaning among us.
One important less on writing effective hate mail that ive learned over the year IS TO SAY EVERYTHING IN CAPITAL LETTERS AND USESLOPU GRAMAR BECAUSE THAT CONVEYSE HOW TRUELY ANGRY YOU ARE!!!
I CULDN”T AGREE MOOR: INNNNNFACT I”A M VERYY AGNRNY RIGHTONWO…
Man, you should see the stuff I get!
I thought that taking the high road would keep the loonies off my trail and out of my in box. No dice.
Whenever I get a link from a big site, a tidal wave of hate mail is sure to follow.
Do you think they type that way because they’re in such a hurry and have so many messages to send that they can’t type properly? Or maybe they only type with their index fingers? The whole phenomenon of unhinged hysterical leftist rage mystifies me. What can you possibly hope to gain by sending an email like that? It doesn’t exactly engender civilized debate, and I’m with TooManySteves–are there conservatives who troll liberal web sites and send hate mail? I don’t see it. As we would have said in high school
GFGEETT AA LIPHE.
AcademicElephant, there seems to be a direct correlation between shrill rhetoric and typing skills, only 180 degrees, of course…
Heh.
While composing my previous comment, I had a thought that the typing issue might be because of a lack of opposable thumbs, but then I took it out because to imply that moonbats have no thumbs would be mean and beneath me and I’m sure it would lead to some endless debate on evolution.