Today’s column
May 9th, 2010
… is online here. I’d said in Mind over Manners that I didn’t often get questions that were directly political in nature, but that’s changed since the book came out — an unfortunate development.
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“…a political e-mail that was offensive [to someone, somewhere] and contained misleading statements and outright lies.” That’s almost redundant, isn’t it?
I’ve a long-standing policy that I don’t respond to my mother’s frequent cutesy, religious, and/or political emails in any way. (Those emails are invariably forwards from someone else, to which she’s added no content of her own.) Rarely she’ll send an email that’s not just a forward, and I try to reinforce those with a friendly response.
In this realm, the delete button works wonders for your sanity and your electronic mailbox. Don’t even read the offending email, just hit the delete button. It’s so liberating.
I wouldn’t even try to talk to the neighbor. Just delete the offending emails, don’t mention them to the neighbor, and don’t talk politics. The lack of response to the messages will speak for itself, and if the neighbor keeps forwarding the messages, just shrug it off to general cluelessness and keep deleting. IMO politics are not worth losing a cordial relationship with a neighbor.
I’ve given up trying to talk politics with most of my friends (which is sad, but I value the friendships more than I value being “right”). Even when our political leanings are generally the same, we differ on enough particulars to cause friction.
The only chain/ forwarded emails I’ll respond to are the ones warning of some dire crime or scam: in cases like that, I’ll shoot the sender a quick note that they might want to check out snopes.com to verify whether the story is true or not. (And frame the message in a way that says “Can you believe all the crazy stuff that circulates around the web? Some of those urban legends are at least a decade old!” rather than “Oh, my God, you’re such a moron for believing that crap.”)
In the even that the neighbor asks, “What’d you think of that email I sent you?” a good reply is simply something along the lines of, “Oh, I’m sorry, I should have told you–I pretty much always delete forwarded emails like that to keep my inbox from getting too cluttered–it’s amazing how fast you can find yourself with thousands of emails,” and then change the topic as smoothly and quickly as possible–first to a general complaint about spotty internet service, and then to the weather or the Red Sox.