Those Chain Emails? You Probably Don’t Want to Send Them to Me.

So I got another one of those emails yesterday, from someone who should know better than to forward stupidly offensive things to me.  This one was titled “How the Heck Did That Happen?” and featured a series of photos of bizarre roadway accidents … followed by a picture of President Obama being sworn in to office.  Har-de-har-har.

Now, I know the easiest thing to do in these cases is to simply delete the offensive email.  But because I don’t want to receive ANY of them in the first place, I’ve adopted a habit of responding – to the entire email list.  That way, the person who forwarded it to me in the first place makes sure to never make that mistake again, and they probably get removed from the list, so I’m doing them the favor of saving them from reading stupid things that they might actually end up believing.  So I responded to the entire list thusly:

For anyone still wondering “how that could have happened”, it’s like this:  after 8 years of piss-poor governance, the MAJORITY of people in this country decided that maybe it did matter after all whether or not the guy in charge has a brain.  Which is why this president won by the biggest margin of any presidential candidate in the past 20 years.

That’s how it happened – the last guy screwed up so royally that an indisputable majority of Americans were able to overcome their latent and not-so-latent racism and vote for a black man.  Get over it.  Unlike our last president, this one didn’t have to cheat to get into office; he won fair and square and you lost.

Several hours passed, and then I received this response from one of the people on the list:

Another typical liberal tactic is to present information as fact when the information is not accurate. Obama actually won by the biggest margin of any NON-INCUMBENT presidential candidate in the past 20 years (depending on where you look Obama won by 7%, Bush 41 won in 1988 by 7.8%) the following link is one sight to find this info) Since 1988 (20 years from the 2008 election, for those that can’t do math) a non-incumbent won 4 times, of those 4 times 3 elections were between two non-incumbents, not really a very impressive statistic for Obama.    http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/obama-popular-vote-margin-largest-ever.html

Typical.  I didn’t even bother deconstructing his “incumbent/non-incumbent” bullshit smokescreen; I just responded, again to the entire list, with this:

People who can’t do simple counting probably shouldn’t talk about “those who can’t do math”.  Start with 1989 and count to 2008 – feel free to use your fingers.  See what you end up with.

Finally, upon checking email this morning, I find this response from the woman who had originally sent the email to the entire list:

I don’t know who you are – That comment had nothing to do with racisim. sorry you can think that if you want.  It makes no difference to me if he is a black man as you say. I am speaking of him as a president. …..Getting rid of the National Day of Prayer????? Yeah he’s a great man

Again, I didn’t bother with her claims that her email had nothing to do with “racisim” or even RACISM for that matter, though I think she doth protest too loudly.  Instead, I responded with this, again to the entire email list:

Unless you can’t pray without it, I fail to see what difference it would make.  I seem to recall that you folks had no great love for Jimmy Carter, who was probably the closest thing to a true Christian who ever occupied the office, so let’s not kid here.

Besides, it’s not true.  The National Day of Prayer remains on the calendar. 

“Thou shalt not bear false witness” is one of the 10 Commandments, you know.

Perhaps you should check what you hear from Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck a little more closely before you spread it around.  And instead of making false claims to try to put yourself in the light of being an aggrieved Christian, act like one instead.

So this is where things stand at this moment, about 12 hours after I received the original email.  I’ll update as the day goes on and I receive more emails, or until everyone on the list blocks my replies.

I know, it’s not nice to make fun of the mentally handicapped – but if nasty people send nasty things that end up in my email box, I reserve the right to mock them in front of their family and friends – because they’re not doing them any favors by sending them bullshit lies in the first place.

Update:  Well, glory be.  I just received the following (private) email from the woman who sent the original email to the list.  I suspect she availed herself of Teh Great Gazoogle and discovered that the National Day of Prayer has not, in fact, been cancelled:

Jenn – I want to apologize – I don’t usually send political stuff out. I meant no harm in fact it was part a compliment because Obama’s did really accomplish a lot to become our President.

 

Though I don’t agree with some of the  things he does, I also didn’t agree with a lot that Bush did.

 

I hope you won’t lump people together for certain beliefs like when you say “you folks”. People all have their own opinions and view points. That’s what makes this a great country.

I support Obama. He is our President.

Hard to argue with any of that – in fact it almost makes me feel bad for my response to the list for her last email.  I’ve written her back (also privately):

I want to thank you for sending this.  I have a tendency to get overly upset about things like this mostly because so many people DO NOT act in good faith when it comes to political matters.  Clearly you are not one of those people.  So if I was offensive or insulting in my response I’d like to apologize as well.

I actually wrote a bit more after that in explanation of my frustration that there is so much in the way of misinformation, lies, and outright craziness floating around out there, but this is the gist of it.  I think it’s pretty clear that she had been under the impression that a lot of the things she was hearing were true; my response, though harsh, apparently helped to correct that.   So maybe there’s some value in this type of thing beyond me just having some fun.  Perhaps, try as I might to be a very bad and mean person, I do a little bit of good as well.  Who knew?