|
|
David Spates The grand scheme finally Someone once told me that if your work doesn't
make at least one person mad, you're probably not doing it very
well. For weeks I thought I wasn't doing this very well. I've written my past few columns with an ulterior
motive. Primarily, I write my column for myself - if someone
else happens to enjoy them, so much the better. I like to express
my points of view, and writing a hack piece like this is a lot
cheaper than psychotherapy. But as I said, many of my more recent
columns have been a part of a devious plan. My plan was to get someone irked enough to
write a letter griping about my column. I thought it would be
an easy task. I thought wrong. After weeks and weeks of casting
my line I didn't get so much as a nibble. Nothing. Nada. Not
even a cowardly anonymous e-mail like the one I got from some
glue-sniffing moron irate because I poked fun at the Ku Klux
Klan earlier this year. But the wait is over, and all it took was
to attack some aged crybabies who didn't want to pay taxes for
schools. In my last column, I wrote about a retirement community
in Florida that refused to pay school impact fees because no
school-aged children live there. The Florida Supreme Court sided
with the retirement community, and I was incensed at both the
court and the retirees. And so I took some shots at the retirees in
an effort to illustrate my contempt. I used phrases like "coot,"
"Geritol-popping crowd," and "overfed double-wide
dweller." I think refusing to support educational funding
is worthy of my rage, but as I said, there was an agenda at work
as well. Shortly after the column appeared in the paper,
I got an e-mail taking me to task for my "language is getting
your point across." The woman who sent the e-mail started
by agreeing with me that everybody should pay their fair share
of taxes. She also wrote that "older people have an obligation
to a younger generation, which includes not only financially
supporting better schools and good teachers, but volunteering
in schools and agencies which work to help children." However, the writer took umbrage to my attack
on the retirees. "The words you use pretty clearly reveal
your contempt for old people in general," she wrote. He shoots, he scores! Although I disagree with my critic's assessment
of the column, I'm utterly thrilled that she took the time to
sit in front of her computer to put her thoughts into writing.
It's a delight to any writer when there's confirmation that someone's
actually reading your stuff. It easy to forget that when
you don't receive any input. I've been craving that input for quite some
time. My quest for reader protest began in March when I poked
fun at the Academy Awards. I figured with our society's preoccupation
with celebrity, that column would surely move a reader to the
keyboard. It didn't. Then I decided to play what I thought would
be my trump card. I wrote that a convicted child rapist and killer
shouldn't be put to death. Nothing. Then I wrote a relatively gross column about
eating meat. Nothing. A column poking fun at NASCAR? Nothing. That
one I couldn't believe. I jab at NASCAR - in the South, mind
you! - and get no response. I was baffled. Until I got the e-mail criticizing my attack
on the Florida retirees, I was beginning to wonder if the Tuesday
opinion page was somehow not getting printed on the press. It
turns out our press is working fine. By the way, everything I write is what I honestly
believe. I wasn't faking it just to stir up reader angst. Apart
from some comic exaggeration in regard to stories I tell about
my wife, everything you read here is the straight skinny. In closing, I'd like to say that I in no way
hold contempt for old people in general, as my beloved e-mailer
wrote. I do, however, hold utter and complete contempt for those
old people in Florida refusing to foot the bill for education.
I make no apologies for my acrimony and insults toward that group.
This is an opinion column, and I'm not going to pull my punches.
What those people are doing is loathsome, and they warrant verbal
attack. |