I sometimes judge the impact I'm having on the world by the amount of hate mail or threats I get. It's a way of making something that could be disturbing into something positive.
Plus, they make for a great scrapbook. Or a lovely decoupage side table to put my Cosmo on as I watch Glee...
I've always been surprised by people's need to contact others directly and threaten, demean, or attack them. It seems like a lot of effort for little return- but maybe I'm just lazy.
So imagine me surprise when I open my inbox to find myself deluged with over 30 nearly identical pieces of hate mail from different people around the country. Obviously I have pissed off some right-wing blogger or website who sent the knuckle-dragging hordes after me. Yet this one was a little different from the "die fag" fare I usually get.
These emails had a Tea Party flair to them.
I've written about some of the doozies I've gotten in my inbox before, from the Ex-Gay Faux "Intellectual" Conservative drivel to demands that I stop caring about Human Rights to the always enjoyable, barely decipherable religious-based attacks to the occasional anti-gay twitter stalker. They all build a wonderful picture of the fringes of society that come out from under their rocks when they feel they have the anonymity of the internet to protect them and their bigotry.
But this batch of emails is something very special. They all began in the same way:
Dear Mr. Hudson-
You should shut up. You look like a queer...
I always appreciate the warm openings of hate mail: "Dear... I hate you." Also interesting how they go right for the way I look. It's almost like they wanted to pull a Jay Leno and ask me to show them my "gay face."
And using looking queer as an insult? Sounds more like a compliment to me. The fear that fringe fundies have of men that look "too soft" or "not manly enough" is always amusing to me. It says so much about the insecurities and deep misogyny of these right-wing letter writers.
This latest missive is by far one of the more tame ones I've received. During and after the anti-gay death threat airport fiasco in Fort Lauderdale, we got tons of hate mail, both at home and at work- much of it very violent. It peaked again when we helped lead the charge against the former Mayor of Fort Lauderdale, the bigoted Jim Naugle, moving from not only letters, but also phone calls and people coming to our house to threaten us. With my husband's campaign and election, we again got calls and mail, some threatening to bludgeon us, others calling us the "scum of Oakland Park". So being called a "queer" (which I don't mind- I actually like to identify as that) isn't too big of a deal and pretty common when you speak out about LGBT issues.
But the really interesting part came after what looked like the suggested text that all the emails started with. The next lines all had some weird tea party, wildly misspelled bent (misspellings verbatim from the emails):
You shuld go back to Kenya with fag-loving Husen Obama...
Stop asking for special rights from your big goverment...
Mind youre own buisness and get out of my face...
Maybe Obamacare can cure your faggness...
And the list goes on. Of course, they were all signed "A Concerned American."
The tea-bagger angle is something interesting (although not at all surprising). I've tried to track down the initial source- an email, website or something that had me listed as an "enemy of freedom", but to no avail. I think it would be interesting to see what I've written about or said that evoked this response.
The current, popular media meme is that the Tea Party are just "average folks who care about overreaching, over-spending government." Tea Party goddess Sarah Palin always scoffs at claims of racism or homophobia in the movement, despite signs with crazy racist rants or anti-gays slurs hurled out of crowds. Yet this blending of the socially conservative "moral majority" of years past and the new energy of of the aggressive anti-government Tea Party show that they are simply two sides of the same wildly conservative coin.
So what set them off enough to copy and paste some hate mail to me? Who knows. But it certainly shines a light on them and their movement (not to mention their spelling skills).
And it makes for a great laugh in the morning.
Follow Waymon Hudson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/WaymonHudson
For a bunch of "tax experts", it's funny how they aren't on their knees thanking Obama for passing the biggest tax cut in US history. Even funnier is how they worship Reagan, yet he passed the two biggest tax increases in US history, and tripled the national debt. And their golden boy GWB outspent every president in US history, and accomplished nothing except putting America into a Second Great Depression and wiping his behind with the US Constitution.
Yeah, I'd say it's hard to treat Teabaggers like people who have credibility. Impossible, really.
YOUTUBE is now hosting a video of the chapters East St. Louis meeting in eight parts that show their leaders ridiculing SEIU beating victim and Tea Party member Kenneth Gladney, whose assailants are getting ready to be tried for their crime. Gladney, who is a black man, came in for the usual amount of haranguing that would be instantly described as racist were it performed by whites. You will see and hear three separate particular statements by the NAACP and the responses by the audience and other chapter officials. To these, ''Gladney is an Uncle Tom'' [ predicable response], ''not black enough to protect'' [ as predictable, even more inane ],and their position on the SEIU thugs who caused the beating to begin with . [these actually are on the side of the white thugs, which makes plain the NAACPs increasing vocation as race-baiter, rather than a justice champion]. But thats not all.
You will also see and hear HUFFINGTON POSTS ''reporter'' Janine Molloff openly laughing along with the NAACP Gladney roasters.
www.youtube.com July 08,2010:''Caught On Tape: Kenneth Gladney ''Not Black Enough To Protect''.
Lets not overlook the complete ignorance that you don't even know that the t-baggers don't get into social issues like gay marriage or illegal immigration. Of course that doesn't stop liars from making connections though.
If it's a hatemonger of any stripe, we can know for certain it's a welcome part of the Teabagger organization.
They just want us to wet it when they come around dragging knuckles. In Colonial drag even!
People who write hateful things are mostly cowards. As such, they're not worth fretting about.
It is the fringe loonies on both sides. Unless you think we should lump all liberals together as people who write that kind of stuff.....as you just did with the tea party supporters.
He's talking about the hate mail HE receives. What's he supposed to do? Troll right-wing web sites for things he can cut and paste to provide "balance?"
I'm sure there are plenty like Malkin who post and rant about the hate mail that comes from the left, ignoring what comes from their side. She and they are entitled to do so.
So is Mr. Hudson.
"The current, popular media meme is that the Tea Party are just "average folks who care about overreaching, over-spending government...But it [these crazed letters] certainly shines a light on them and their movement".
No it does not. Just as Malkin's letters don't shine a light on libs and their movement.
They took the name for themselves. Nobody gave it to them. It's not everyone else's fault that they didn't bother to look the word up to see that it already had a meaning, one that they might not want associated with their "movement".
''Tea bagger'' was never adopted by the movement from its first day. It was first applied to the Tea Party by a Ms. Jane Hamsher of the left winged FIREDOGLAKE beginning in early February of 2009 as a derogatory term. The national movement filed in Chicago on February 02, 2009 the name of ''National Tea Party''. [Hamsher herself, applies the modern-use origin of ''Tea Party'' to conservative Michelle Malkin beginning in the same week].
www.huffingtonpost.com Archives. February 16,2009.
As a postscript, we see the now -emboldened ''New ''Black Panther Party, which has been given its Get Out Of Jail Free Card by the hack Holder. Appearing a few days ago on BET, it's leader Malik Zulu Shabazz has vowed to combat the Tea Party at its upcoming Washington Mall rally. Having proved it's usefulness in brandishing billyclubs in front of polling places and asserting that ''we might have to shoot a few crackers'', the Panthers now angle for bigger game. They pull any garbage, and Obama will lose another ten points overnight.
They chose it and it's what they are actually doing to America., tea bagging us all.