Tuesday, October 14, 2008

the political email forward, dividing families since 1996

I sometimes wonder who my parents think that I am. They sent me an email forward the other day that sorta blew my mind. Basically the gist of the email was wondering "where did Barack Obama get all of his money?" The email was just the height of well-thought-out, reasoned thinking. Citing damning facts such as "he had Pakistani roommates in college" and "he went to Columbia and Harvard law school" and "his advisor is Valeria Jarrett and she was born in (cue sinister music) Iran! (gasp!!)" I suppose the email wants the reader to believe that Obama is a Hamas-funded sleeper agent that will kill us all in our sleep if we elect him president.

While I understand that the majority of these types of fake news emails are just political effluvium, designed to shock and anger, "OMG - could Barack Obama be accepting tainted, evil, Middle Eastern MONEY??", I am still somewhat perplexed when my own parents send me this shit. I consider my parents to be pretty smart people, maybe a bit encapsulated by their own world views, but who isn't? My family trends conservative, but not fundamentalist. So when I get this kind of email from them, an email that relies on racial prejudices and fear mongering to try and prove a link where none exists (the email even states, "Why haven't the media picked up on this?!") I never know what an appropriate response is. Then the horrible thought came to me: this is a no-win situation.

If I respond, here are some possible outcomes:

1.) i further convince my parents that I am now firmly entrenched in northeastern conspiracy against 'merican values, god, and liberty. They decide, after much fist shaking at the sky, that their only daughter is dead to them. The funeral is lovely, closed casket of course. The obit write up focuses heavily on my time spent working at the RNC and my love of state's rights. They start a scholarship in my name at Baylor and make a large donation to the McCain/Palin ticket in my memory.

2.) i further convince my parents that I am now so far into slimy liberal territory that my sense of right and wrong has become horribly corrupted. My dad dusts off his special forces camo belt, complete with grappling hook, cyanide tablets, 12 inch bowie knife, and signed print of Ronald Reagan and sets out to rescue me from myself. He rappels off the roof of my row house at 3am, but neglects to factor in the anti-theft bars over our windows. After failing to light his portable welding torch, he retreats, only to show up on my door step the next day with a cloth soaked in chloroform. When I come to, I am strapped down in a room while water is dripped slowly on my forehead to the tune of "Yankee Doodle Dandy". A continuous montage of flying fighter jets, waving flags, smiling white children, and gutted deer plays on the ceiling over my bed. After 6 days, I finally bite off my tongue and choke myself to death. My parents have a lovely funeral, closed casket of course, and my obit mentions that I admired John McCain so much that I spent the last days of my life in imitation of his POW experience. My story is used to catapult McCain/Palin into the White House. Four months later, Palin slips wolf poison in McCain's Metamucil. The nation is forced to buy its own rape kit.

3.) My parents are finally completely convinced that I am being held against my will by rogue journalists from the New York Times, Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. They imagine the horrors that await my every belabored breath as I am forced to write such obvious lies in defense of a man that any true terrorist hating American must despise. They weep as they picture me, barely able to choke down a cup of steaming fair trade coffee, the warm reusable ceramic mug my only warmth in the cold, barren, modular workspace, the Lawrence Weiner and Richard Serra sculptures menacing from gallery-lit alcoves. In this horror-scape, my parents picture me helpless, heavily guarded by free range chickens outfitted with razor sharp cockspurs and small PETA hoodies. My eyes reflecting the dim light of my Mac book, foxnews.com permanently blocked. My parents begin to recruit other parents whose children went out "there" to the godless northeast for school and never came back. At first a small group, ten, then twelve. The group, called "Save The Future USA" or STFU, is featured on the local cable news channel then picked up by an angry talk show host and launched nation wide. STFU grows like a cancerous tumor, lobbying for the immediate return of illegally held offspring, as well as the abolishment of the estate tax and a return of the 15 cent McDonald's hamburger. STFU eventually becomes the most powerful lobbying machine in the history of the United States. Running the behemoth consumes my parents until they entirely forget that I exist. In 20 years, my mom will find an old report card with my name on it. She'll wonder why the teacher misspelled my brother's name.

4.) My well reasoned response actually convinces my parents to vote for Obama. Obama wins Texas by two votes. Global warming is suddenly reversed, peace settles on the middle east like a fine dust, someone discovers how to make a non polluting energy source from discarded coffee cups, plastic containers, and used condoms. Previously extinct species spring back into life. A 65 million year-old pterodactyl collides with Sarah Palin's helicopter while she is out wolf hunting. A small but tasteful memorial plaque is dedicated to the pterodactyl. A vaccine is created against the common cold, the flu, and fundamentalism. The scourge of dryer lint is eradicated. Everyone shakes hands and makes up in Africa. Vladimir Putin wins the last season of Dancing with the Stars and reality t.v. fades into oblivion. My parents stop sending me ridiculous politically themed forwards thus ending the only communication we ever had. The years pass, the world secure, peaceful, prosperous, but I never talk to my parents again. Without something to argue about, it turns out, we had nothing to talk about at all.

So, there you have it. I suppose I'll just let this particular email slide.