How do YOU respond to the WHACKOS...

so one good thing about our work in tennessee now is that i'm not the only staff person working out of our state office

...see, we applied for a jesuit volunteer placement and our app was accepted and now we have alex working 40, 50, 60, or so hours a week to help us end this shameful exercise in futility that policy wonks call capital punishment ...

so here's how cool it is ... last thursday i'm working on a press release which will take all afternoon for me to write, edit, e-mail and start to fax out (at age 47 or 8 i work more slowly than say alex does who is 22) ...

so in the olden days (pre-jv) that's all tcask would've done that afternoon - get out the release, which hey, don't get me wrong, that's a pretty good day's work (see previous entry) ...

but with alex around the organizing, the outreach, the productivity skyrockets - here's what i'm talkin' about...there was a first degree murder trial that resulted in lwop rather than a death sentence ... and some tn bumpkin wrote a letter to the editor excoriating the jury for their unbelievable decision not to kill this mentally ill guy ...

so while i'm doing the press release thing alex composes a letter to the editor in response and sends it in ... and it gets published in the tennessean...great!only alex is 22, rather idealistic (as 22 year olds are prone to be) and doesn't realize that half the inbred population of tennessee is going to write to him explaining how we should KILL THEM ALL AND LET G_D SORT IT OUT ...

i mean, in his defense, how was a nyc boy supposed to know this ...so, he reallllllly gets into responding to these whackos in the great jesuit tradition of enlightening the populace with theological verse and rational discourse ...

well, the first counter reply says,

"While more than half of death row inmates are black, this is due to the fact that 75% of all murders are committed by blacks. Their representation of the population is not an issue least you imply that people commit crimes in proportion to their population. I would image that most criminals cannot affordhired attorneys simply that if they had the money for a lawyer they would not have the need to commit the crime. My comment that the mentally ill are the most dangerous is based that these persons are without reason and commit the worst of crimes. Can we concur that no sane person would murder children? Ed psi: BTW, I do not normally use the term "African-American" as it is not a race although used by those of color as a means of separating themselves from the whites. A true believer of civil rights would denounce this term and refer to those of color born in the U.S. as "Americans". For example, A white person born in Africa and immigrating to the United States would be "African-America."

uhhhh, excuse me for a moment while i glue the fragments of my blown mind back together ... phew, okay...

so here's my question: "How do YOU respond to the WHACKOS..."

these whack-jobs, in my humble southern opinion are not even mainstream hard-core pro-death penalty types ... no, these people have fallen off the far edge of that camp and are clinging to it by the barest of threads and should simply be ignored ...

or, if you're feeling mischievous you might send a response such as:

Kit -

If I think you must be insane and are therefore a threat all the time to society -should I execute you to save the gene pool?

Dude - you need serious help - seriously - can you or your wife make an appointment with a mental health professional today?

Seriously, if neither of you know how to do this e-mail me back and i will take the time to see that you get the mental health care you so desperately need - do it for your family - do it for your friends - do it forAmerica - just do it!

but really i think you just blow these people off - but i can't tell a young, energetic jesuit volunteer anything so we agreed to let YOU be the arbiter of how to respond...

oh yeah, one more thought ... if there is a list serve where some of our own hard-to-control supporters hang out perhaps posting the letters there and letting them haggle with each other is a possible scenario...

anyhoo - i gotta go feed the cage free hens my niece liberated from tyson farms...

<3