A news story today, which hit the front page ofthe Boston Globe, tells how former Senator Scott Brown had his name on a mass mailing that promoted conspiracy-theory quackery. He had apparently rented his mailing list to Newsmax, who in turn promoted anti-vaccine, anti-fluoridation Dr. Russell Blaylock. Brown, who is considering running for Senate in New Hampshire against Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen, was renting out the list to conservative groups to raise money for his PAC.
So former Senator Brown is now officially a spammer. Not just political spam, but crazy-ass spam that might have more appeal to his donors than to the public at large. So much for his image as a moderate.
But he's not the only Senator Brown who spams.
Several years ago, I signed one of those online petitions for Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH). I generally agree with this Sen. Brown's politics. But I'm not from Ohio and frankly I don't see a need to continue to hear every last thing he or his campaign want to put out. So when I tired of it (pretty quickly), I dutifully followed the "Click here to unsubscribe" link. And the web page told me I had unsubscribed.
I have done this at very least a half-dozen times over the past three years, and at least twice in the past couple of months.
I have continued to receive spams from Sen. Brown, with six of them in my current spambox, which deletes things after a month. The most recent one was today. So it's a bit more than weekly. Sen. Brown's unsubscribe function flat-out doesn't work. They would rather spam me than let me opt out. This is serious misbehavior, bad Internet etiquette, and bad politics. I have successfully unsubscribed from other Democratic mailing lists, but his is a roach motel.
So while Scott Brown rents his list to crazies, Sherrod Brown just can't take it when you say no. Both of them thus qualify as spammers. We should expect better from our side, though.