In their very nature they are thoughtless. But the one I just received was even more so IMHO. The thing is, this is one of those rare cases where the story is true, to a point. There was a letter to the editor complaining about a fly-by of F-16's one morning. There followed two responses on the matter explaining that the fly-by was part of a memorial service. What the fwd fails to do, is also tell the end of the story. The apology that followed. I'd cut and paste it, but to avoid any copyright that may be in place I'll post the link to the site and hope my readers will go read it. http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/wakeup.asp
I don't take issue with the story, it's a good story, and I think Tom McRae showed a lot of class in apologizing. Personally, I think he ought to be forgiven and not have this story circulate as it does for everyone to ridicule him, even if his name doesn't appear on the email. It's a pretty crumby thing to rub someone's nose in something after they offered a heart felt apology.
It's also pretty crumby to miss quote someone, or, as in this case, put words in someone's mouth. The tag line "Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you....Jesus Christ and the American Soldier. One died for your soul, the other for your freedom." was no where in the original letters to the editor. No one said it. Well, I suppose some well meaning person thought it sounded good and would raise emotion in the readers, so they slipped it in, but what right had they to do so?
The real thing that bothered me was that the fwd I received also had tagged on to the end some pictures and it said the way phones should be answered in the USA is press one for english, or hung up until you learn to speak english. I know it's a sentiment shared by many people in the US. But it was followed by a picture of Christ. Now you tell me, would that be Christ's attitude? Sorry, I won't talk to you, because you don't speak english in America. (I wonder if the Brits find it truly ironic that we harp on people to speak a language that was theirs before it was ours.) I don't think we should jump to the conclusion that just because we may be offended by someone's presence in our country that God would be also.
As a writer I know that there are tricks writers use to invoke the response they want from their readers. One of them is the old propaganda ploy of God and Country. It does cause a big stir in people. But a writer who is using this, also has a reason to do so. So what was the reason behind this particular quote in this particular fwd?
To keep is going. Keep fwding it. "Wow, everyone should see this!" That's what they want. Did you ever stop and think what these fwd's are really for? They're actually quite malicious. They are a form of virus. Not the kind that infests your computer, but the kind that clog up servers. As they get passed along they get bigger and bigger and take up more and more space. Some started just to see how long they would circulate. Now I'm not saying some malicious person start THIS email, but any that followed in the same pattern achieves the same malicious goal.
Also there has been some speculation that spamers will harvest the lists of email addresses from fwds. This would mean if you get a fwd from someone, your email addy is on it, you're at risk for spam. I haven't been able to confirm this, but I will soon and let you know what I find out. Still the idea that my email address is floating out there makes me uneasy. I really am trying to avoid a past that was pretty scary for me.
So here's a few tips when fwding.
1) Delete all lists of previous receivers. This will make the message smaller.
2) Instead of putting the email address of those you want to fwd the message to in the "To:" field, put them in the BCC field. This is blind carbon copy, which means I'll know you sent it to other people when I receive it, but I won't know who. This respects the privacy of your friends.
=^.,.^=
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