Hate mail and other treasured Daily memories Hate mail has become a regular fact of life for us who work on the opinion page. Just about every one of us has, at one time or another, written something that has elicited the anger of a reader. And when this happens, readers are quick to let us know. This is because nowadays, in the electronic age, e-mail has made it quick and easy for people on campus to express their feelings about the articles printed in the Daily. Once in a while (read: every decade or so) an e-mail will be complimentary. But, more often than not, people write letters because we writers have done something to tick them off. This may mean that we printed something incorrectly, failed to prooofreed* our articels*, or expressed an opinion that someone contests. For columnists, hate mail is pretty frequent. It is not at all uncommon to open the paper to find an angry letter from a student challenging our stance or, occasionally, threatening our lives. But the worst of these attacks do not necessarily appear in the newspaper. As you have probably noticed, our e-mail addresses are printed in big italic letters at the end of each piece we write. So, we invariably receive gazillions of letters from the University community. These personally addressed e-mails are what you guys don't get to see. So, I thought that a great way to wrap up my years at the Daily would be to publish for you some of the funniest and most disturbing excerpts from the messages - some venomous and some praiseful - that I have received from readers over the years. Believe it or not, I've kept just about all of these e-mails because many of them are really entertaining. Just a few notes on the things you are about to read: (1) I am not making any of these up; (2) none of these spelling and grammatical errors are mine - these excerpts were cut and pasted directly from the original e-mails; and (3) you actually go to school with most of these people. Enjoy... o "If you're going to write a column about new age activists, be sure to include the ones who riot in downtown Ann Arbor and the long-winded Arabs and Jews..." o "God, every time I check in on old michigandaily.com your breaking my heart again, saying these dumb-ass things." o "To be perfectly honest Scott, I couldn't help from touching myself as I read your words... Waiting with only one hand on the keyboard, Harriet." (Name changed to protect the innocent) o "I just had one question about your column today...you're Black?" o "Incidentally, my favorite part was the bit about Jessica Curtin... ;)" o "Like Chris Rock said, 'If OJ drove a bus, he wouldn't be OJ... he'd be Orenthal the bus-driving murderer.'" o "We're you raised as cattle, or something? YOur mother teach you any manners?" o "I just wanted to send out a sincere thanks on behalf of Nekkid Mile Safety Patrol for your column today." o "I have videotaped, 'The Nude Mile,' since 1996... Putting your hand between some runner's arm and breast and making the breast flat in 1/10 second, is quite a feat!" o "I cannot comprehend the idea of any person regarding Hunter as an afficionado of love and relationships. My experiences with relationships lead me to believe that most women value men with humility and not those with immodest and disrespectable taste... The women I know would deny him faster than a freshman at Scorekeepers." So, as I finish up three-and-a-half years of writing for this paper, I have to say it's been fun to mouth off in the paper all the time, despite the criticism and that pesky racist Daily conspiracy. But leaving the paper might be even more enjoyable: No more hate, no more deadlines. And, best of all, I won't have to hear the word "token" come up quite so often. Thanks for reading. - Random shout out: I want to say thanks to a few people who have always impressed me with their work on this campus. All of you are really on-point: Sabrina Charles, Rupal Patel, JuJuan Buford, Peter Romer-Friedman, Lamont Jones, Brian Babb, Neftara Clark, Trevor Gardner, Elena Gimenez, Aisha Smartt and, of course, Brandy Johnson (BVN! Fire it up!). This is Scott Hunter's final column. He can be reached over e-mail at sehunter@umich.edu. Scott Hunter Roll Through the Soul Originally on page 4A in the 1-24-2000 issue of the Daily.