POLITICAL EMAIL FUN ... BE WARNED!!

I am not a political person. That does not, however, prevent me from voicing my opinion when asked or voting in an election when required. Unfortunately, it also doesn't prevent family, friends, family friends, and strangers from sending me emails promoting their own or condemning others' political views.

One such family friend is pretty right wing. And by pretty right wing I mean extremely right wing. He is an educated man. A medical professional. And not all bad. Sometimes he "accidentally" puts me on his email lists. Below is an email thread that did not start with me, wasn't intended to find me, but as you'll see, I got involved.

Opinions are one thing, ignorance is another. Lucky for me, both tend to be funny.

So these emails are laid out somewhat in chronological order. I added some commentary in brackets.
My email is number 3, but keep reading.

(1) ORIGINAL EMAIL SENT TO A FAMILY FRIEND (intelligent, medical professional) FROM ONE OF HIS FRIENDS:

-----Original Message-----
From: ****@mindspring.com>
To: *******@mindspring.com
Cc: *****@aol.com
Sent: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 6:55 am
Subject: (no subject)

> Mitt Romney and Obama are walking in DC,
> discussing issues, when they come across a homeless
> man in a doorway.
>
> Romney pulls out his wallet, hands the man a business card,
> says " Stop by at this address tomorrow, and I'll see about
> getting you a job." He then hands the man a $20 and says
> I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow."
>
> They walk on a bit further, and chance upon another
> homeless person. Obama says "I know how to fix this."
> He gives the man directions to the nearest Welfare office,
> reaches into Romney's pocket, pulls out $20, takes $15 for
> administrative costs, and hands the man $5.
>
>
> NOW YOU KNOW the difference between a Conservative and a Liberal !

[MY COMMENT: not a terribly original joke. It's been around for years, just replace the names of the Conservative and Liberal and there you go. Somewhat funny. Non offensive.]

(2) EMAIL FORWARDING ABOVE JOKE FROM FAMILY FRIEND (again, educated medical professional, family man, church goer) TO MYSELF AND APPROX 10 OTHERS I DO NOT KNOW WITH THE FOLLOWING PREFACE WRITTEN BY SAID FAMILY FRIEND:

---
***** <*****@aol.com> wrote:

that milato wants to raise the tax rate for anyone making over 200K a year to 50% and pay everyone on the lower end of the scale $1000 a year to keep the economy stimulated. if he is elected the country will be come a communist/muslim state with a non productive 5 year program.

(3) MY RESPONSE:

>From: Tom OKeefe
>To: <*****@aol.com>, etc .... [yes i hit REPLY ALL, on purpose]

>Subject: Re: Fwd: (no subject)
>Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 11:19:48 -0800 (PST)
>
>I think racism, especially poorly spelled racism, is
>delightfully refreshing when lightly sprinkled upon
>the delicate pastry of political debate. (MULATTO is,
>I'm fairly certain, the term you were going for, and
>yes, while it was an official census category up until
>1930 (thank you Wikipedia) these days its pejorative
>(especially when used to show displeasure for someone)
>which is understandable as the term also means "small
>mule" and was used by slavers to describe certain
>options on particular models (again, thank you
>Wikipedia)).
>
>That being said, thanks for the laughs (thought the
>joke was pretty funny), but please leave me off this
>Huckabee mailing list in the future.
>
>Big kisses.
>
>Tom

[MY COMMENT: I made my point, I think. I was even kind enough not to mention to whole communist/muslim state .. cause how could THAT happen?? Communism doesn't allow religion .. right? But his lack of logic, or facts, or anything intelligent to say, was merely secondary to his racism]

(4) EMAIL RESPONSE FROM ONE OF THE RIGHT WINGNUTS (WHO I DONT KNOW) ON THE LIST

> From: "T** K******" <***************@msn.com>
> To: tmokeefe3000@yahoo.com
> Subject: Re: Fwd: (no subject)
> Date: Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:11:47 +0000

Who the fuck are you?
And why are you e-mailing me?
And please, keep your kisses to yourself, homo.

[MY COMMENT: This guy is a doctor. Yep. Looked him up. Fought every urge to respond to him, even with a simple "HOW BOUT A HUG DOC?" just so he would know that I know who he is. I didn't because I don't want to burden my family friend's business relationship with this jackass.
This email is frightening for a variety of reasons .. obviously angry about my email, perhaps because he has racists leanings of his own. His ignorance is pretty clear ... "who the fuck are you?" , "why are you e-mailing me?"- maybe if he read the email he'd find his answers. While he may not know who TOM O'KEEFE is, he could look me up, like I looked him up. He'd also be able to put two and two together and realize my connection to the sender or at least realize there was some connection. This is a doctor people. A DOCTOR. How about the fact that he sent this angry, stupid, homophobic email to someone he doesn't know ? I could do many things with it: send it to the hospital he works at; publish it on the web with his name and e-mail address, cause I figured that out; or send it out to my friends who are, in fact, gay and are not, last I checked, racists, and who would love, I'm sure, to flood his inbox with many, many dirty, dirty things. I've done none of these things. Yet. Frankly, he's not worth the effort]

-----------

What does it all mean?
I'm still figuring it out. It is frightening, the ugly opinions that people have. Ugly not because they are different, ugly because they seem based on ignorance and fueled by anger. I'm not anti-conservative here ... cause I've known some liberals to do the same .. no not be racists or homophobes (probably lose their liberal card) but to react to opposing views with rancor, with anger, with ignorance. Why are people so threatened by those with opposing view points? My head is still spinning here. Especially because I find this email exchange to be pretty damn funny, and was hoping this post would easily supply the yuks ... not so much. So I'll let it go for now.

Just wanted to share.