A Tale of Spam

After I wrote my fisk of the "Tax Facts" political spam I decided it might be a good idea to carry my little matchstick of truth into the vast darkness of the Internet. I thought I might try to "educate" some of the hundreds of web sites mentioning the misleading e-mail.

I had a couple of minor successes but, I must admit, it's a losing battle. One of the chief problems -- aside, of course, from the sheer volume of idiocy -- is that many of the sites that link adoringly to the offending e-mail have password protected comment areas. The effect is something like a self-perpetuating echo chamber in which truth, logic, objectivity, reason, and context are never allowed to enter. Oh well, you expect such things from blogs.

Because I figured I'd drive myself completely nuts, I abandoned the insane little task I'd set for myself. Until today.

On a whim I picked up my matchstick again. Thanks to a previously unseen comment that was literally under my nose I learned that the mendacious e-mail had made it's way into the Boulder Daily Camera's Letters to the Editor. Arggh! Not only did it make it into a real newspaper -- it made my local newspaper! Double Arggh! And I didn't know about it til now. Triple Arggh!

All is not lost, however. Without this little experience I might not have found the nice note of praise in my comments and over at DugBlog.

Plus, this finally got me fired up enough to whip off a quick letter of my own to the Daily Camera. I doubt it will get published since too much time has passed. But maybe my gentle reminder will help them to be on the look out for political spam of all flavors.

At least I hope they'll be vigilant. Afterall, my opinion of mainstream media is already incredibly low. If they're just going to publish whatever inane spam comes down the pike I may as well abandon mainstream media altogether.