Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right

Since then, this letter has remained my benchmark for civility and tact. The rest have been worse. Join me, on a tour of the best of my hate mail. (Note that errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, logic and manners are theirs, not mine. Enjoy.)

James Miller Miller on Tap

Most of the letters I get are of the following variety: "I read your article thinking it was going to be a funny piece on crisping. Instead I became more and more offended as you blatently stereotyped several groups. You mentioned that you wrote it with the risk of perpetuating a few stereotypes and incurring hate e-mail - well doesn't that alone tell you that it shouldn't be written. I am sick and tired of opening up the Daily and reading idiotic articles and letters!"

"This University should be a place where anyone can break stereotypes. Everyone should be able to do what they want without being lumped into a group. Your article has insulted the intelligence, interests and life plans of whole groups of people. Even worse, it has publicaly contributed to the very thing that keeps this campus segregated - asinine stereotypes! I am all for freedom of the press, but please consider how what you write affects others. The pen is a powerful tool - why don't you use that power to help make this University a better place for all."

Translation: "Boo hoo. You made fun of someone or something that I like. I think college should be like a great big expensive summer camp for the emotionally fragile. You should use your tiny column in a college newspaper to make everyone join hands and sing. Whoops! Time for my thorazine!"

These next gem was in the same letter, in response to a column with a few good-natured jabs at the School of Natural Resources:

"While I found your column today funny, I also found it about as dangerous and insidious as the Nazi propaganda machine. Not to boast or anything, but I have a professionally measured IQ of 162. (Yes, I can prove it)." Bet the dames come a-runnin'.

This next letter was written by an Ohio State student who stumbled onto my piece about pornographic screen savers, while surfing the 'Net for the real thing. Vintage Buckeye wit:

"You bitch ass mother fucker, I came to this site to find some sweet screen savers, not the bull shit you had to write which no one in the world gives a fuck about."

Few columns triggered as much savage e-mail as the "anti-techno" article. It was predictable, lots of cheerleading for the "really cool, underground British DJs." You know, the geniuses. This next letter speaks for all of them better than I ever could. Never has so little been said so badly:

"You call techno soulless, and yet have no problem listening to the pure crap that is Led Zeppelin. Techno music has a lot of soul and feeling: artists like Tricky and Portishead have songs which can wrench your gut with the power of human feeling contained within them. The only part of me that moves to a Zep song is my legs, getting out of the room. Believe me, the expieramental spirit of Bird and Hendrix is much more present in techno than it ever was in the bloated and shitty arena rock of Led Zeppelin. Hopefully, by millenium's end we will end the forgetting process spawned by punk and I will never have to here the derivative and crappy "Stairway to Heaven" again."

This next young lady is apparently the Oscar Wilde of Long Island. Observe how she eloquently defends the fatherland:

"I invite you to come to New York so that a whole bunch of us "spoiled brats" can kick the shit out of your fat ass, you hick. That article was a disgrace to what I used to think was a reputable paper. Find something else to bitch about other than New Yorkers, like your fucking boring life as a hick in the Midwest, shithead."

In response to my defense of tobacco advertising, the public-health crazies came out in force. Witness this violation of the Hippocratic Oath in the making:

"When I'm a physician in a few years, and maybe people like you who threw our education and help back in our faces come in with lung cancer and there is absolutely nothing I can do for you, maybe I'll feel a little less sorry for you. Will you still think you're smarter then? I doubt it."

At the end of the day, somehow it's all worthwhile when someone you have never met wishes you a fatal, painful, incurable illness. My parents are so proud.

- James Miller can be reached over e-mail at jamespm@umich.edu

04-01-98