An Open Letter to Writers of Open Letters: To those who feel compelled to address the world from Facebook, Twitter, and email chains, TEDDY WAYNE has a message: No one is listening, least of all Luther Vandross. [TheMorningNews.org]
posted by Fizz on May 23, 2011 - 38 comments

My Right Wing Dad is a new-ish and rather informal blog that aims to provide "a chance for folks to examine the unrestrained rhetoric that is quietly passed from in-box to in-box in America," by hosting a collection of the emails that form an often untraceable and unacknowledged part of public discourse in the U.S., especially on the Right. Tagged by category (for example: God, college, flag, liberal, and World War II), the amateur archive presents a range of colorful opinion, not all of it strikingly accurate, and some of it offensive. In efforts to understand liberal and conservative habits of communication, it may be worth considering the role of forwarded email in the electoral process, and the reasons that the forwarding of email is popular among some people, and whether this behavior tends to correlate with particular political opinions. The emails hosted on MyRightWingDad may in any case be enlightening, unless you're already on the forward list of someone in the know.
posted by washburn on Aug 15, 2007 - 105 comments

"You have the audacity to call me intelligent.” We covered Spongebob promotes the gay here. Now comes an amusing coda: a catfight between the Dobson forces, who started an anti-media email campaign, and Keith Olbermann, who printed and ridiculed said email. Dobson's people claim victory because Olbermann spent so much time on them, and Olbermann, a trifle defensive about the secular media, makes more fun.
posted by CunningLinguist on Jan 31, 2005 - 85 comments

I will not forget the liberal media who abused freedom of the press to kick our country when it was vulnerable and hurting. This is just one of the lines of text in a recent email forwarding. The piece is attributed to one Ed Evans, MGySgt., USMC (Ret.). Google turns up page after page of the exact same text. It's being plastered all over the internet, repeated hundreds of times by hundreds of people. By what means does something like this become so ubiquitous? If a person wanted to create this sort of buzz, how would they do it? How do you combat such a tidal wave of jingoistic hooey?
posted by pejamo on Sep 18, 2002 - 49 comments

A Clarification -- Dave Eggers wants to expose the process, "By reprinting your correspondence to me I hope to illuminate the journalist's mind: how a writer starts by telling me he is a fan of my work, supports my company's endeavors, etc, then writes a snippety little thing full of sneering and suspicion." so he's posted ALL of the email correspondance he had with david kirkpatrick before this unflattering piece was printed... and after.
    "I think it's important that our exchange be published. It's the only remedy commensurate with the impact you enjoyed with your original piece. I want your friends and family to see it, and to say 'David, ew.'"
    Meanspirited all around, but can you blame him?
posted by palegirl on Feb 22, 2001 - 43 comments

the news versus e-mail news Is this link, an article about spreading news via e-mail and the net, an example of my present posting?
posted by Postroad on Jan 29, 2001 - 2 comments

This story of a whiz kid who vanished raises all kinds of questions. Sufiah, a 15-year-old student at Oxford University, disappears; then, her father receives an e-mail, supposedly from her. The e-mail claims that she ran away from her father's abusive high-pressure learning techniques; the father claims that she must have been kidnapped and brainwashed. The police aren't sure how to handle this situation, as there's no way to prove that the mail is really from the daughter. Finally, the father has called in the media to present his side of the story, since Sufiah has threatened to go to the media with hers.
posted by harmful on Jul 6, 2000 - 11 comments