Anti-Obama Mailings... for Me? You Shouldn't Have!

I don't know what mailing list they're using, but a bunch of desperate social conservatives have been depositing their junk in my mailbox for the last week or so. Here's what I've gotten:

A voter's guide from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life. Endorsing Michele Bachmann (as well as McCain-Palin), of course.

An odd postcard from Americans for Job Security in Alexandria, Virginia. This one is pretty incoherent -- it warns me that Obama will bring back Jimmy Carter's energy policies, but it's not very clear what it means by that (something about the windfall profits tax). Then on the other side, it says: "If you don't vote, Earth Justice and other left wing environmental groups will have their way!" After which it quotes the Sierra Club's Carl Pope, as if his words were bad: "We're better off without cheap gas. Every civilization has its blind spots... Our own folly is cheap fuel." I guess since I agree with Carl Pope on that 100 percent, they've mailed their postcard to the wrong person.

Then there's the worst one of all: a glossy direct mailer from the Republican Party of Minnesota promising to give me the "full" story on Obama and Bill Ayers. On the mailer side, it says, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." This quote, with no textual attribution, is juxtaposed to a photo of Obama, with a photo of Ayers below.


On the opposite side, the mailer promises me the story on Ayers ("Terrorist. Radical. Friend of Obama."), set in a typeface called Algerian... perhaps they chose the font because Algeria is a Muslim country. It wouldn't be the first time a bad designer chose a font based on its name.


Inside, though, the piece doesn't deliver much, repeating the three connections everybody has already heard as if they were new and shocking: Ayers hosted a "campaign launch gathering" for Obama; they served on two boards together (during which time they -- shockingly!! -- "created by-laws together for one" board); and they live in the same neighborhood (the mailer implies this makes them part of the same "social circle").

No mention, of course, of the fact that a number of Republicans served on the same boards and probably live in the same neighborhood.

I hate to think of how many trees were wasted to make these pieces and send them to hard-hearted progressives like me. I'm less sorry about the money they wasted on postage and printing, since that creates/maintains jobs in the community! See, this kind of junk mail does have an upside.