For what, a decade or two now? I've avoided regular electronic correspondence with some of my relatives. Sure I'd send the occasional email to organize a holiday get together, but I'd consciously avoided anything more because I knew one day I get "THE fwd". You see, they're good people, but they're afraid. They're afraid for their jobs and their standard of living. They listen to Faux and the lunatics and dopers on the radio. Yesterday, I got "THE fwd". I was sent an email and encouraged to fwd it.
Follow across the fold and I'll tell you what I did. Please let me know what you have done.
I live in Houston and my family all lives along the Coastal Bend--Aransas Bay, Neuces River, Corpus Christi Bay and North Padre Island, but we used to all live in Houston.
Whenever we get together lately, several of them are all about taxes and Obamacare and the justness of our wars. I correct them on the facts ("taxes are so high and Obama wants to raise them"--no, taxes are at a 60 year low and Obama lowered your taxes. Wash, rinse, repeat) but forebear really engaging to keep the peace in the family.
Yesterday, I got "THE fwd"
Here's the body of it, minus the link:
Hey – who wants to go to the races?? This guy is great!
The introduction to the Fox story is just as interesting as the story itself.
ANOTHER REASON TO "DON'T MESS WITH TEXANS".
It was send with the encouragement "fwd this around your office"
The link was a clip of a Faux story about a guy just outside of Houston. The land next to him was bought by an Muslim community to be the site of their new mosque. The guy buys a bunch of hogs and puts together a small race course and begins holding pig races at the same time as evening prayer.
Confession being good for the soul, I must say that part of me found that to be funny. It's a part I'm not proud of though. The guy has the right to do whatever he wants to on his land. In my opinion he is mocking his neighbors' religion and that's not something to glorify--it's borderline hate speech.
So what to do? This is the email I'd been dreading getting because I knew I wouldn't be able to ignore it. I did two things:
1) I replied "What would Jesus do?" to my good Christian relative who sent me the email.
2) I looked for who originally sent it. It came from an @nasa.gov address. What, my tax dollars were being used to promote this? I looked up the public affairs officer for NASA and sent the email back to the original sender, copying the public affairs officer. My email read:
name,
Do you think it is wise to use your tax payer funded email account to distribute hate speech? You have the freedom in this country to think and say and email whatever you please, just don't use tax payer funded resources to do it.
public affairs officer name,
What action will NASA take?
I sent those two emails yesterday morning at 7:20 am. I got a reply from the original sender, copying the public affairs officer @ 8:34 am. Here it is:
I want to apologize for the e-mail I sent from my work computer. I did not mean to offend anyone with it. I have been counseled by my supervisor on the proper use of IT resources and will not do this again.
No answer back from my relative.
The next time I get any tea bagger email, I will look for the original sender. If they sent the mail from any business or government address, I will look up the public affairs officer of that organization and do the exact same thing again.
What would happen if we all did that?
What do you do when a family member sends right wing hate and insanity to you?