August 29, 2004
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I don’t write many political commentaries. I am not really very interested in politics and cannot discuss it in much depth, so I tend to write about other topics about which I have more meaningful things to say. This election is beginning to scare me, however. I am receiving a lot of political smears in the form of email forwards. All of the ones I have received are directed against John Kerry. That does not mean that there are none being circulated about George Bush. I am just not getting them. I really have no respect for people who need to mount these attacks. I am also very concerned because there are many people who believe that everything they see in any form of print must be true. In the case of email forwards, authenticity should always be questioned. A heartwarming story may be just a lovely piece of fiction even if it has vivid details and well known names, and a political attack may be just a nasty piece of libel. Unfortunately, I think these emails will reach a large audience and will influence many.
I tend to just hit the delete button when such an email pops up on my screen. My husband, however, has started answering them. He hits “reply all” and then refutes the message point by point. When he is finished, he hits “send” and off his opinion flies to all the people on the mailing list of the person who sent us the email. Now, most of those people are unknown to us. Nevertheless, we hear from many of them. Some of them are polite. Some of them aren’t. So far, we have not heard from anyone who is in agreement with my husband. That worries me a little, too.
I am very concerned when campaigning consists of personal attacks rather than respectful discussion of ideas and issues. I am even more concerned when it is done in this way, because there is no way for the other candidate to respond. The political arena is a public arena. What is said should be said publicly and replies to it should be public. That is not to say that people cannot email friends and share opinions, but political email forwards are not opinions shared friend to friend. They do not offer the opportunity for exchange of ideas and thoughtul discussion which can clarify thinking and lead to a more informed choice. They are nasty little attacks meant to reach large audiences because unthinking people hit “forward” and click on their mailing lists. No thinking process is wanted or intended. Electronic communication allows us to sink to amazing lows.
Comments (12)
I haven’t received any emails of that type. Maybe because we have heavy duty spam filters…It’s almost getting so you can’t believe anything anyone political or in the media says during an election year…
Amen Amen Amen! I have one lady that constantly sends me these until I sent back a web page debunking the emails!
Give this to your husband:
http://www.factcheck.org/article.aspx?docID=224
What a cheek sending you emails like that , it takes junk mail to a new level
The three-edited birds answer the anti-bush eMails (in my co uk email) to reply to all, and copy-pasting parts of their site of “The Church Of The Three-Headed Jesus”. The thing is do it carefully no one knows WHO pressed the reply all button. Don’t ask me how, just a programme I found once, that the reply all “comes” from the original respontend.
ie it looks as if those eMails come from the Busholics.
If you want to start a religion, pick the loonies first.
Oops! Tired. I meant the anti-Kerry eMails.
Its rather the opposite to Xanga then where to be loudly anti-Bush with as much rudeness and nastiness and denigration of his character as possible is cheered on in comments.
I’m neither pro Bush, nor Kerry as I’m not an American and both of them will stay firmly in Iraq at least for now. As far as I am concerned the difference between the two is like a change in management board at IBM, promises of bigger cubicles and pink post-it notes and that’s about it.
But then, what would I know?
Nastiness gets more attention than niceness. Look at the way those Enquirer type magazines sell at the grocery store. People are drawn to smut and tragedy for some strange reason and want to believe that crap over the truth. I think it is the rotten side of human nature. It is a sad state of affairs but thank God there are still some people who can rise above that stuff.
I agree with you. It seems like each election gets worse, like the “thought police” are looking for all those against their idea of what our country should be. It seems if one disagrees, one is “anti-American”. I thought America was based on the ability to voice disagreements…I thought that voicing disagreements was distinctly American.
I have not received many emails like that, but I’ve seen plenty of bashing on both sides and that saddens me enough…
Nancy those e.mails are like political spams !! Bushspams by the way . I dare not say anything because I am not American except that Mr Bush worries me . I don’ t know your opinion and I don’ t want to hurt you , of course .
Love
Michel
Hello!
I hope you don’t mind me stopping by, but I saw your post at Patrick’s site in regards to teacher’s salaries, and I thought I’d stop by here and post a quick comment.
It is certainly unfair how teachers get treated in regards to their salaries! I mean they definitely deserve higher salaries! They are the ones teaching our future!! That is an invaluable job!, and it should be treated as so!
Actually, in the state of Mississippi, where I live, the salary for teachers is so low that great quality teachers are having to even leave our state to find better salaries elsewhere. It’s just unfair.
Here is something I found in regards to this subject:
I’M TIRED OF THOSE HIGH PAID TEACHERS!
I, for one, am sick and tired of those high paid teachers. Their hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work nine or ten months a year!
It’s time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do…baby-sit! We can get that for less than minimum wage. That’s right……I would give them $3.00 dollars an hour and only the hours they worked, not any of that silly planning time. That would be 15 dollars a day.
Each parent should pay 15 dollars a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now, how many do they teach in a day….maybe 25. Then that’s 15 X 25=$375 a day. But remember they only work 180 days a year!
I’m not going to pay them for any vacations. Let’s see…*that’s 375 x180= $67,500.00 (Hold on, my calculator must need batteries!)
What about those special teachers or the ones with masters degrees?
Well, we could pay them minimum wage just to be fair. Let’s round it off to $6.00 an hour. That would be $6 times 5 hours times 25 children times180 days =$135,000.00 per year.
Wait a minute, there is something wrong here!!! There sure is, huh????!!!!!!!!!!!!
Okay, I’ll get off my soapbox right now about that subject.
Oh, I agree with what you’re saying in your post here, too! You’d be surprised how much email I get like that also! It’s amazing!
Hope you have a great night….
Hugs!!
Shara