I joined both the ACLU and the NRA a few months ago (I’m one of those few people who thinks that the entire Bill of Rights is pretty keen), and now I’m getting bomarded with junk mail. It’s not normal junk mail, no credit card offers or that kind of stuff, this is political junk mail.
The NRA junk has been tolerable, at least everything I’ve received through them has the NRA name somewhere on the mail, and they’ve limited it to one or two junk mails a week. The ACLU stuff, on the other hand, is totally out of control. It looks like they’ve whored out my mailing address to half of Washington, DC. Just today I received:
- Official Democratic Party Survey - “George W. Bush and Congressional Republicans say they have a ‘mandate’ to advance their extreme right-wing agenda. What do you say?”
Here are the possible answers for the second question in the “Official Democratic Party Survey”:
a) $25
b) $35
c) $50
d) 100
e) other ______
Can you guess what the question was?
-
A subscription offer from “The Nation” magazine (who’ll kindly accept subscriptions from Conservatives, because they “need the education.” Har har.)
-
A letter sent to authorize the Southern Poverty Law Center to place my name on the “Wall of Tolerence” (for a donation between $25 and $100, of course. Apparently you can’t be tolerant unless you fork over some cash.)
-
An “Urgent Church-State Alert!” from Americans United - “Hang on to your wallet, the Bush Administration wants to use your money to pay for religion.” Actually, it’s more like: Hang on to your wallet, because American United’s President needs a new car!
That’s four thick-ass letters from ACLU affiliates in ONE GOD DAMN DAY! I joined the ACLU because I support their legal efforts, not to become the target of every political operative in the nation.
Thanks for letting me vent.
You might want to try adding some expletives or a nice graphic description of what you’d like to do to the people who send you all this mail. For example, you may wish them a life of endless paper cuts in places they wish to use often. Or perhaps something more gory. Goriness often pleases. Welcome to the SDMB.
Fran
I’m snickering at the Liberal side of the fence wasting all those poor trees to send out junk mail. Tell us when they start junk mailing for enviromental reasons, that’ll be the height of irony!
Francesca wrote:
Ok. I’d like to imprison them in a room with a gigantic speaker pointed directly at them. Every day I would ask them if they still want to mail things to me. If they said “yes,” I would play a sound clip of John McLaughlin screaming “Wrong!” at them. I would then blast a randomly selected Dan Quayle speech at an incredibly unsafe volume in their general direction for the rest of the day. I would be willing to repeat this for years if need be.
Saint Zero wrote:
Thankfully, I haven’t received any environmentalist junk mail (yet). If I do, I’ll make a giant paper-mache tree out of it and invite the local news stations over to videotape it.
One of the reasons for my decision to join the Republican party rather than the Democrats was because I expected all the R. propaganda to be less obnoxious than the D.'s.
I think I just got that exact same “survey” from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee! Addressed to my ex. (She used to volunteer for Planned Parenthood, and had a subscription to The Nation. Apparently, that’s all it takes.) It’s more or less a hit-up for money. I can’t imagine the survey has any usefulness whatsonone.
Picture it this way – getting a survey from the Vegan Council of America, to a vegetarian, with questions like:
Eating meat really:
A) Sucks
B) Stinks
C) Is icky
D) Is immoral
Should I put horrifically right-wing answers on it and send it back in, sort of a revenge-on-the-ex thing? sub[/sub]
At one point their cover letter says, “We are committed to a progressive agenda that leaves no one behind.” But the same letter also says, “Unless Democrats stand united in opposition to the GOP agenda – budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, bankrupting Social Security, pillaging the environment, outlawing abortion, and so on – all these radical proposals will become law.”
I don’t mean to quibble, but I thought you didn’t want to leave anybody behind? I think you just left behind the tax-cutters for the rich, the Social Security bankrupters, the environment pillagers, and the abortion outlawers.
Yep, that’s the same thing I got. I’m amazed they mistakenly delivered it to you, because on the back it says:
Registered Documents Enclosed
Hand Deliver
Delivery Priority: Urgent Standard
Validating Signature Requested from Recipient
Did your Postal Carrier get your “Validating Signature?” Did they “Hand Deliver” the letter to you personally? They sure didn’t for me. Maybe we should write to the Official Democratic Party and tell them just how bad the Post Office screwed up! :rolleyes:
I also like this part: “Our agenda is a comprehensive; genuinely compassionate one.” They’re so genuine, they have to underline it!
Somebody please come to my aid with that Jack Handy quote about trees screaming. It just seems like it’d fit so nicely here.
I don’t know why you bothered actually joining the NRA. Let THEM come to you! They keep sending my father “Free” trial 1-year memberships. I guess they figger he’s a good candidate because he’s a hunter and belongs to Pheasants Forever and Ducks Unlimited and the like. Do they count these “free trial members” in their figures when they cite how big their org is?
I go by one name for everything at work, school, etc, but I use my husband’s last name for Junior League. So now I’m getting an idea of where some of my junk mail is coming from. At least the Junior League junk mail is chi-chi junk mail. Er, I mean, junque mail.
“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.”
We’re almost there. My first year at college, the environmental interest group, NJPIRG, had a referendum. To make sure everyone knew about it, they put up fliers everywhere, all over nearly every available posting location. I can’t imagine how many trees they wasted to tell everybody how much they were doing to help the environment and how they deserved more money to do their work. The only thing in three years that’s come even close in terms of tree-wastage was Campus Crusade for Christ’s “Do You Agree With Mike?” campaign.