October 25, 2005
Fan Mail We, the crack
Fan Mail
We, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are nothing if not popular. All across this lovely blue orb of ours, fans savor our erudite musings. Nary a day goes by, it seems, in which we don’t receive oodles of rumbustious plaudits from die-hard devotees of our humble “weblog.”Accordingly, dear reader, you will not be surprised by an e-missive we received from one Pam Kulig. A little while back, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” made some critical comments about Ms. Kulig’s letter to The New York Times. In her letter, Ms. Kulig asserted that taking in a savage murder and failing to cry for help or even tell anyone about the crime was routine behavior for a 14-year-old. We un-respectfully disagreed.
We must add, dear reader, that Ms. Kulig’s missive to the Gray Lady was written in the spirit of contempt for American law-enforcement and American jurisprudence. The larger point of Ms. Kulig’s missive—to the degree that it had a larger point—was that a man was unjustly behind bars thanks to the cruelty and stupidity of the American (in)justice system. As such, in our humble retort to Ms. Kulig’s letter, we proved a mite vehement. If memory serves (and it always seems to), we labeled Ms. Kulig’s letter the work of a dribbling ignoramus, or some such.
If you ask us, most youths in their early teen years are not greatly entertained by gruesome murders; we would label such a response to killing pathological. And thus we took it upon ourselves to cast aspersions on Ms. Kulig’s casting of aspersions on the American judicial system.
A few days ago, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” received Ms. Kulig’s impassioned reply to our criticism:
Hi Hatemongers,
Wow, you people are really mean. Regarding your article “Criminally Stupid” (I guess that would be me), this is about the meanest thing anyone has ever said about me that I know of.
Apparently, my letter was the one you hated the most since you really picked on it. I guess because it was the stupidest one of all. Most of the other drooling writers of the insipid letters had some sort of credentials by their names, but I am just a stupid stay-at-home Mom [sic], which came through clearly to you all. You people are very astute when it comes to knowing who the dumbest and least educated among us are. That hurts. Moronic, dribbling ignoramous [sic], that really hurts. My kids and my husband would not agree with that at all and my two girls would be very hurt by that. I am their mother and they love me and they would think you are pretty evil to act the way that you do. Can your children be proud of what you do? I would hope not. I would hope they would be embarrassed by you. Let’s hope you have no children. I think being as mean as you people are, [sic] must be a living hell. My mouth dropped open when my husband showed me your blog, what a waste of a life.
Mean people suck.
Pam Kulig
To which we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” sent the following response:
Dear Mrs. Kulig,
We’re terribly sorry that you did not enjoy our discussion of your letter to The New York Times. And we’re glad that you have such an aversion to mean people.
Thankfully, you are not mean yourself: Telling the crack young staff that their life is a “living hell” and hoping they don’t have children is obviously a very pleasant thing to do. And calling folks “evil” is pretty nice as well. No wonder you ended your missive with the shopworn hippie cliché “mean people suck.”
We must only bicker about one point you make. We assure you that we did not discuss your letter as the result of your supposedly lowly credentials as a housewife. Rather, we genuinely found your epistle the stupidest of the bunch.
Cordially,
The Crack Young Staff of THMQ
Now, we know what some of you are thinking: We let Ms. Kulig go a bit too easily. After all, this was a woman who considered the joyful witnessing of a murder to be entirely excusable behavior, but clearly found our criticism of her to be simply beyond the pale.
To be honest, though, we had little interest in responding in kind to an insecure housewife who was drudging up the nastiest things she could envision in her seemingly limited arsenal. So, hey, we treated her with kid gloves. And, quite frankly, she had a point: We were more than a tad overzealous in our original remarks.
Why don’t we learn something from Pam Kulig? Remember this lesson, dear reader: Children who don’t aid murder victims are peachy keen, but the crack young staff is evil. Put that one in your moral compass.
