We Get Mail

by

by von

How do you know that you’ve arrived?  You get mail like this:

Untitled_2

Thank you for your perceptive comment! I accept on behalf of the entire ObWi crew:  each and every one of us "fags, fag sympathizers, and/or feminazis" thanks you for your contribution.  Indeed, the care that you put into your short note, the way that you phrased your threat as a statement of mere "belie[f]" — well, it really shows a knack for this kind of thing.  You’ve done this before, haven’t you? 

Still, the decision to use your real name — your very-Googlable name — was probably a mistake. And your note does show a definite lack of vision.  For instance, what of us who are both fag sympathizers and want to privatize Social Security?  I realize that, living where you live, the vargaries of US domestic politics may not be of much personal interest. Still, it doesn’t take much to toss in a "heartless fag sympathizer" for the von-man.  And surely you can find something more to say about Charles:  he has an entire website dedicated to hating him (Hating On Charles Bird, doncha know).  Can’t you give him a shout-out too?

62 thoughts on “We Get Mail”

  2. “Lamentably it won’t be me or anyone I know”?
    Well the good news is that they will be crying at my funeral!
    🙂

  5. I don’t think it was well directed. Just aim a rocket and call whatever it hits your target. 🙂

  7. congratulations!
    if i’d received such a letter, i’d share my good fortune with the good people down at my local police station. no point in keeping such good news bottled up on the internet!

  8. I thought the term was ‘fag enabler’. How odd though, this must be the least offensive blog I’ve read. Anyway, congratulations for stepping up the internet popularity ladder 🙂

  9. Me, I’d forward it on to the abuse handler of his IP, noting that it probably violates the Terms of Service.

  10. Congrats! You guys have earned it!
    I think that the email is more poignant than perceptive. I’m imagining an islamofascist, a feminazi, and a fag hater sitting around, lamenting the fact that they are all living on borrowed time, and that they will not be able to do everything that they might have wanted to. I can see the two men, looking longingly at the feminazi, but recognizing in their heart that they cannot both kill her (and that, most likely, neither will), and it brings a tear to my eye. A single tear.

  11. I got hate mail like that once – about seven or eight years ago, I think – from someone who was fool enough to send it from his work address.
    I was actually upset by getting it – it wasn’t a death threat as such, just a tirade of fairly vile abuse and a wish for me to be sexually assaulted if anyone could stand doing it.
    But then it occurred to me to search on the @part of the e-mail address…
    …and I found I could forward the e-mail on to his manager, with a polite note saying I didn’t appreciate getting e-mail like that from his company, but I was sure he would deal with it.
    People usually aren’t that stupid these days, but I tell you, it turned getting a hate-note into something to grin over when I thought about what he’d be walking into at work next day.

  12. People usually aren’t that stupid these days

    Never underestimate the potential for stupidity.

  13. Before you get too crazy with the reprisals, though, bear in mind that return addresses can be spoofed.

  17. I regret that I can only lay claim to the rainbow-hued mantle of the fag sympathizer. Still, I suppose it makes a good enough target.
    I echo kenb, it would be good to check the headers.

  19. Just aim a rocket and call whatever it hits your target.
    Am I the only one reminded of Mort Sahl’s poke at von Braun’s “I Aim at the Stars?” To wit: “But Sometimes I Hit London.”

  21. I know I’m being slow, but I just realized that it was probably my post that triggered that email. Funny that on a multi-partisan group blog, one of the conservative posters triggers the anti-gay hate mail. I feel so Andrew Sullivan. 😉

  22. Eh, crazy mean people probably don’t read the site with any real attention, enough to know you’re a conservative. Or it came from a non-partisan nitwit.

  23. kenB: Before you get too crazy with the reprisals, though, bear in mind that return addresses can be spoofed.
    I was able to be certain that this wasn’t the case, but you’re right: before taking any action, one should check twice and check again.

  25. Before you get too crazy with the reprisals, though, bear in mind that return addresses can be spoofed.
    That’s why the address is redacted — though a google search does turn up a great deal more nonsense from our secret admirer, which is largely consistent with the above.

  26. Before you get too crazy with the reprisals, though, bear in mind that return addresses can be spoofed.
    I agree with this statement, but I don’t see any problem with posting all the other header information. While there may be a slim chance the patrician who wrote that ditty may have spoofed the email address, there is no chance that mind was capable of spoofing the IP route. I know, because I’m currently working on a my manifesto to Malkin inwhich I force her to eat a bucketful of movie theater popcorn with real butter followed by a 70’s fro-size cloud of rainbow cotton candy under the threat of lashing her with strawberry flavored Twizzlers. Yeah, I know, I suck at the invectives, but at least I know networking enough to be sure that she won’t be able to find my candy ass.

  27. I can see the two men, looking longingly at the feminazi, but recognizing in their heart that they cannot both kill her (and that, most likely, neither will), and it brings a tear to my eye. A single tear.
    You were at the Obsidian Wings Christmas party too?

  29. But, LJ, one can be a fag sympathizer and a femiNazi at the same time. It’s a bi- thing.
    That, of course, is a choice. It’s got nothing to do with nurture.
    My favorite part is the passive-voiced assassination talk. “Somebody oughta, not me, mind you, and certainly leave my mother out of this, but somebody oughta, you know, take things into their, not my, hands, and I use the term “hands” loosely, especially hands with fingerprints, not that I have hands, and my mother is perfectly handless.

  30. I kept reading it as him (I assume) being sorry for NOT being or knowing the killer.
    He sure didn’t leave much to hate for the islamofascits of this world, did he.

  31. It’s not so much that, it is the notion of our faithful correspondent attempting to assemble the strongest majority possible ‘If I could just get the like fags but hate feminazis demographic, I’d be set!’
    von, can you tell us what country we are dealing with here?

  32. Perhaps he’s just a fan of Stephen Crane:

    A man feared that he might find an assassin;
    Another that he might find a victim.
    One was more wise than the other.

    Seriously, though, this reminds me somewhat of the scene in Taxi Driver when Martin Scorsese, playing a passenger, has Travis pull up in front of a building where the passenger’s wife is cheating on him and describes in great detail what he plans to do to the cheating wife.

  33. You were at the Obsidian Wings Christmas party too?
    We’re “fags, fag sympathizers, and/or feminazis,” remember? It’s a holiday party.

  34. Von, if you forward it on to me, I’ll ply you with wickedly expensive Scotch.
    For sufficiently small values of “ply”, that is.

  35. “That’s why the address is redacted — though a google search does turn up a great deal more nonsense from our secret admirer, which is largely consistent with the above.”
    However, the number of people who can spoof headers is, these days, proportional to those who send such mail, small.
    Hell, the number of people who know what a shell account is, or that their chosen e-mail reader or webmail reader, can show or not show headers, or who know what headers are, is relatively small.
    Post all the headers, please. There’s absolutely no reason not to.
    And, yes, people who make death threats — which is what that is, deserve to be reported to their local police, as well as their ISP, and, if possible, their employer.
    Please post the full headers, von. If nothing else, consider that you would be helping others who may have heard from this asshole in the past, and that you would be helping those whom he threatens in the future, because the info would then be googleable and in the public record.
    Please post the full headers. It’s literally a public service.

  36. “Von, if you forward it on to me, I’ll ply you with wickedly expensive Scotch.
    For sufficiently small values of “ply”, that is.”
    I sincerely believe that, at some point, someone will give you Scotch.
    Drinkably.
    It might be me, or someone I know, but someone will give you Scotch (a democratic socialist, maybe, or just someone who likes bloggers, blogger-sympathisers, and people whose names start with H).
    This is fun…

  37. Actually, ajay, I may have opportunity in the very near future to make good.
    Von, the Bosendorfer Lounge at the Grand Bohemian has a rather decent selection of single malts. To be honest, though, I was going to buy you a drink anyway.
    The above one-sided conversation has embedded in it certain assumptions that, if untrue, may just make me a bigger horse’s rear than I was last week. But this is a lot like the rest of my life in that respect.

  38. Sorry, Gary, I don’t feel technically saavy enough to determine which headers are relevant and which are not.
    Von, the Bosendorfer Lounge at the Grand Bohemian has a rather decent selection of single malts. To be honest, though, I was going to buy you a drink anyway.
    Slart, your offer is accepted. Although I might stick to wine/beer and, the way this court is (admirably) chopping down the case, it may only be a two week trial.

  39. “Sorry, Gary, I don’t feel technically saavy enough to determine which headers are relevant and which are not.”
    Just cut and paste the whole thing. Why would you want to hide any of it?

  40. Just cut and paste the whole thing. Why would you want to hide any of it?
    I don’t want to slander a guy if it’s an error, and there’s a strong possibility that releasing the e-mail w/ the header will not be meaningful to many people if the e-mail is spoofed.

  41. Mi>von, can you tell us what country we are dealing with here?
    Sorry, LJ, country of origin must remain top secret. I can reveal, however, that the country is located in the Northern Hemisphere of the Americas, is not Mexico or the U.S., and has a significant (but not majority) French-speaking population. Oh, and it shares a border with the US. And it’s to the North.
    Other than that, however, my lips are sealed.

  42. “Oh, and it shares a border with the US. And it’s to the North.”
    And here I was about to suggest Cajun Country!

  43. “I don’t want to slander a guy if it’s an error, and there’s a strong possibility that releasing the e-mail w/ the header will not be meaningful to many people if the e-mail is spoofed.”
    Von, if you post the headers, and say, “can anyone out there tell me if this looks spoofed or not?,” you’re clearly not slandering anyone. You’re providing information helpful to protecting others. If you choose to withhold that information, which is certainly and obviously your right, you are withholding information that might protect others.
    It’s like someone not being willing to go to court to testify about what they say in the dark of their rapist, because of fear of slandering someone due to an imperfect description. Other victims won’t get the benefit of your — clearly labeled for what it is, non-slanderous — testimony.

  44. Sorry, LJ, country of origin must remain top secret. I can reveal, however, that the country is located in the Northern Hemisphere of the Americas, is not Mexico or the U.S., and has a significant (but not majority) French-speaking population. Oh, and it shares a border with the US. And it’s to the North.
    It wasn’t me.
    C’mon, you were all thinking it. Or maybe Spartikus.
    Is it from Alberta, Von? It has an Albertan accent.

  45. It wasn’t me either. Considering I’m one of those (semi)fags AND a feminazi, I’m probably on the list of worthy candidates for extermination. Oh, and I have brown skin (eek!), which I’m sure renders me objectively Islamofascist (by way of Scotland/Bermuda:P)

  48. A coincidence. Canadian by way of Scotland/T&T, but with no brown skin…

    When the brownshirts come a-marchin’ I’m sure they’ll take your pale complexion into consideration (you evul fag-lover, you!!!1)

  49. I don’t want to slander a guy if it’s an error, and there’s a strong possibility that releasing the e-mail w/ the header will not be meaningful to many people if the e-mail is spoofed.
    The amount of consideration and protection you’re extending to this guy is baffling.
    If you’re so concerned about the email address, post all the header info sans anything that resembles [angryvirgin]@[mommasbasement].com and all will be good–you’ll shut up me, and that other pest Farber, and all the other angry virgins in momma’s basements will think your a swell enough guy to keep corresponding.

  52. Hil, I also think there was (still is?) a notion kicking around that those Western provinces were going to be the 51st state. Type Alberta or Calgary and 51st state in Google, you’ll get lots of fun stuff

  53. Just out of curiosity, what makes you Canadians pick specific places for this to be from?
    Nobody say anything! Retreat to the Glittering Caves of the Constitutional Monarch!
    Inside baseball: Alberta, and specifically Calgary, is the bastion of the current incarnation of Canadian conservatism. Which, unlike past incarnations, is even more infused with wingnuttia. Some say they out wingnut American wingnuts. See Adam Yoshida.

  54. what makes you Canadians pick specific places for this to be from?

    Alberta is the closest Canada has to a ‘bible belt’, with a sizeable number of residents who subscribe to socially conservative ideology. The province is home to the infamous Prairie Bible Institute (full disclosure: I have family involved with the faculty, to my everlasting embarassment), not to mention the so-called ‘Calgary School’ of conservative political theory (one of the ‘members’ of the Calgary School, Thomas Flanegan, is considered by some to be the driving force behind the political career of current Canadian PM Stephen Harper.)
    Of course, this doesn’t automatically mean that any bigotry eminating from the Great White North originates from Alberta. But, to me at least, comments expressing eliminationist sentiment towards feminazi fag-lovers sound rather familiar (and no, I don’t make it a regular practice to attend family reunions in Three Hills;-)).

  57. Even I hail from a specific place. I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if hilzoy hails from a nonspecific place, though, even though she tends to be rather specific in most matters.

  59. And, just then, the Fredonia national anthem wound its way between my ears. Too long it is since that’s been played. Again! Again!

  60. I’ve thought for 30 years that BC would make a fine state — fine enough to take the rest of the provinces along with it. Canadians tell me how different they are from Americans, but then usually shut up when I ask if British Columbians are more different from Californians than Texans are from Vermonters. The former Canadian provinces could continue to have commonalities, as they wished, like our New England states, or Old Confederacy. Sure many Canadians like Americans are insufferable, but you’ll be surprised how quickly that’ll pass once you join up.
    More important is whether Andrew watched the top of the ninth from the Trop last night, and whether he thinks we can possibly get back into first place playing like that game was played.

  62. Andrew doesn’t have any TV where he is currently deployed, so he doesn’t see much of anything. Suffice it to say, however, that I think we have no shot at the AL East and only an outside shot at the Wild Card as things currently stand.

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