Smallville's Answer to Bill O'Reilly

Today I sent an email to a neighbor man, asking that I be taken off his homegrown email list -- which generally consists of dubious news stories a la Obama birth certificates or other forms of incipient racism and/or politics of the Fox news variety. For awhile I had an email filter that would send his stuff directly to the trash, but then he changed his email address and the messages started appearing in my in-box again. Today I decided I'd had it. But I was polite. He's a neighbor, after all -- not a close neighbor but someone I run into sometimes in town. Despite that, he gave me a mini-lecture on not being closed-minded and admonished me to "be pleasant." He also said I should just use my delete key.

I should have unsubscribed a long time ago -- though there never was a subscription to begin with. (My email was just one he culled from other emails that circulated about a local issue a couple years ago.) To be truthful, I pitied him a little bit -- because he used to be very politically active, locally, and served on the council and school boards and such, and he's both famous and infamous, depending on your viewpoint. 

But there's never any actual content to these messages he sends. It wasn't that we disagreed politically (which is fine and good). It was that 99% of the stuff he'd send was urban legend that seemed to suit his particular world-view -- despite being utter crap.

And I was worried that I'd hurt his feelings!

I see how patronizing that was of me. Sure, he's old now -- but that doesn't mean he's some kind of weak nellie. He's still hanging in there, sending out emails at least a couple times a week, staying on top of local and national news (at least as presented on some fringe sites, all of which seem to have badly rendered American flag graphics), and still an asshole. Shame on me.

Comments

[Janice Wagar]

I have a cousin who constantly sends me anti-Obama, anti-Democrat crapola. I'm too timid to tell him to knock it off--and I only see him once a year! It's probably wise to stay on the good side of somebody within rock-throwing distance.