I can't wait for these midterm elections to be over.
For the last six weeks, my inbox has been jammed with "urgent" messages from various congressional candidates and progressive organizations. They use a number of tricks to get you to open the email.
One thing: they try to make you think it's coming from a person rather than an organization, so in the sender box it'll read something like "Sarah Bazir" (That's not a real person, by the way. "Bazir" is just a word that got rejected when I tried playing it in Words With Friends. Too bad, too, because it was worth fifty-three points, and I'm tired of getting my ass kicked by this guy I met once when I was seven.)
They also go to great pains to make the subject lines look informal and hastily drafted by not using proper capitalization. (I was once involved stuffing envelopes for a group in the old snail mail days and told to put the address labels on crooked, because the more the envelope looked like it was done by a human and not a machine, the more likely the recipient was to open it.)
And those subject lines tend to be very negative. The research must tell them that works, because they all read like:
bad news Stephen
disaster
utterly crushed
i'm pleading
we have to talk
It occurred to me that if I put these subject lines together in a row, it starts to sound like I'm being stalked by a psycho ex-girlfriend.
utterly crushed
i'm pleading
we have to talk
why won't you answer me?
i will not be ignored
don't you love me anymore?
why do you hate me?!
you don't deserve me!
don't delete this!
don't you dare fucking delete this!
unbelievable!!
that I could ever fall for someone so uncaring, so unfeeling and so out of touch with his own feelings and believe me buddy one day you're going to wake up and realize that I was the best thing that ever happened to you so don't come crying to me when John Boehner's latest 12 million dollar ad buy helps the republicans win a majority in the senate you worthless narcissistic piece of shit!!!!!
Which frankly is really not the type of language I would expect from Elizabeth Warren.
BTW, I'm a board member of the legendary public interest group, Public Citizen, which is trying to put some sane limits on money in politics by leading the charge to overturn Citizens United, which is precisely why our inboxes are flooded.
And to that end I'm hosting the fourth annual "Stand Up For Main Street" featuring an all-star comedy line-up of Demetri Martin, Kevin Nealon, Carol Leifer, Cathy Ladman, Jake Johanssen, Suli McCullough, Wayne Federman, and Laurie Kilmartin. It's Sunday, 6:30pm October 19th, 2014 at the WGA Theater in Beverly Hills 135 South Doheny. For tickets and more information, go to www.citizen.org.
i'm pleading!