That address on the bottom of this column? That is the pathetic, confused death knell of the once-proud newspaper industry, and I want nothing to do with it. Sending an e-mail to that address is about as useful as sending your study group report about Iraq to the president.
Where does this end? Does Philip Roth have to put his e-mail at the end of his book? Does Tom Hanks have to hold up a sign with his e-mail at the end of his movie? Should your hotel housekeeper leave her e-mail on your sheets? Are you starting to see how creepy this is?
I get that you have opinions you want to share. That’s great. You’re the Person of the Year. I just don’t have any interest in them. First of all, I did a tiny bit of research for my column, so I’m already familiar with your brilliant argument. Second, I’ve already written my column, so I can’t even steal your ideas and get paid for them.
Huge portions of my e-mails come from people who haven’t even read my article. They’re just assuming, based on a headline or an excerpt on a blog, that I’m unpatriotic or irreligious or lecherous. Sure, they happen to be right, but it would have been nice if they had clicked on my column and moved me up on that « most-read articles » list.
Ha ha! Nice rant! I wonder how many journalists amongst those who get an amazing amount of annoying mail, fantasize about writing a piece like this?
Found via Josée Blanchette.
the amusing thing is that the link to the Opinions page is full of exactly the kind of people he doesn’t want sending his opinion to him. if he is smart, he didn’t even consider reading that opinion page. and if his editors are smart they will ignore just about everything left there. when it was requiring of effort to leave your opinion with a columnist, newspaper editor, congressman, etc. but writing a letter, people thought about what they were going to say. the wingnuts had their crayon written letters tossed in the trash. but now the internet is full of the wingnuts but they all believe their opinion is valid and valuable. they don’t think about what they are writing and they just leave it.
i can remember, back in those pre-internet days, those days when people thought about their opinions before they brought them to the world, there were call-in radio shows that seemed to gather all the wing nuts together. they could yell for their 2 minutes (or less) and we got a chuckle from them. now we have to read them everywhere everyday, or we have to stop reading.
but then again, i only read a bit about his article and didn’t think an iota about what i was writing here…