When Republicans Attack!!

It all started out so innocuously. My mom gave my work email address to some relatives (let’s call them the Holbecks) who wanted to put together a distribution list for family news. I would have preferred that she give my personal email instead, but mom is kinda new to the world of email and I’m sure such considerations were outside of her realm of experience.

Well, they sure aren’t now.

The forwarding of bad jokes and puppy pictures was inevitable, I suppose. And I was prepared to put up with that to some extent. But then came an email from a cousin with an audio attachment called “The Ballad of New Orleans.”

It was vile garbage, full of references to government checks and looted Nike sneakers, and the racist message it contained was loud and clear.

At that point, my brother, my sister and I all responded back saying, basically, “I thought this forum was for family news. Please do not send any more attachments like this. And because I could be held accountable by my employer for what you send, please delete this work email address, and use a personal one.”

Some family background is perhaps in order at this point. The Holbecks reside mostly in rural Nebraska, and also in various other red state enclaves in the US. Now, I didn’t grow up in NE, although I DID grow up in a similarly bigoted and regressive shithole in rural Indiana.

But unlike so many of my classmates, friends, and neighbors, I had the good fortune to be born to intelligent and tolerant parents. Parents who worked for Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign, and whose whole world changed when he was murdered. Parents who risked the wrath of our redneck local police and held NAACP meetings at our house in the 60’s. I remember when I was a little kid, being allowed to stay up just long enough to meet our guests, and then falling asleep looking at the cop cars parked outside my bedroom window.

I know, the phrase that springs to mind is “bleeding heart liberal,” and to that I say: HELL YEAH! I suppose I have the same sort of affection for that phrase that Jeff Foxworthy fans have for the phrase “you might be a redneck if…”

I am grateful every day of my life that my parents enabled me to overcome the fear and stupidity that I encountered from the white people of my hometown. And I am sad every time I think about my junior high girlfriend Sylvia, whose mom would not let her sleep overnight at my 15th birthday slumber party; a situation my mother was at a loss to explain to me at the time. All she could say was “to some people, certain things just aren’t done, honey.” And I remember being threatened with violence by some boys at school when I wanted to bring a black date to the Snowball Dance (and no, I am not making that name up). And I look back with weariness when I think about my high school friend Tori, a beautiful and sweet girl who became a cheerleader against all odds, only to suffer the humiliation of racial epithets yelled at her from the bleachers.

But back to Nebraska…

After my parents divorced, my mother moved back to her own childhood hometown in NE, and thus began my uneasy relationship with her side of the family. Visits to my mom’s house were always an exercise in patience, which frankly has never been my long suit. I found myself continually weighing the risk of alienation against the shitty feeling of swallowing all your principals for the sake of a family harmony. But the only thing I knew for sure from growing up in Indiana is that if you don’t speak out, then your acceptance is taken for granted. So I have learned to say, nicely, “please don’t use that word around me” and other like utterances. And the effect on the NE relatives had been mostly positive, and I took the resulting teasing about being just like my mom with a smile.

But now this.

I continued to receive the occasional infuriating email garbage in the forms of diatribes on the persecution of Christmas-celebrating Christians in America, and jokes about what an ugly cow Hillary is, blah blah blah. It was then I decided on a new strategy: to “reply all” to each offending email with a file or URL or even a sentence or two with my own point of view, adding that if they found it objectionable, then perhaps they could understand my position that we just stay off the tricky subjects and stick to family news.

I got two kinds of reactions, 1) people who told me I was full of shit, and by the way I sure didn’t inherit the Holbeck sense of humor, and 2) people who told me to lighten up and show some tolerance, and by the way I sure didn’t inherit the Holbeck sense of humor.

Tolerance. That’s pretty funny. Somehow, though, I don’t think they meant to be ironic.

See, tolerance is a one-way street for a lot of them. They want it but they can’t give it. They think there’s no harm in the occasional racist joke, but become infuriated when I poke a little fun at Jesusland.

So, after the latest email cartoon, this one a portrait of President Clinton pushing Monica’s head down under his desk (how fucking tired is that by the way?) and yet another request from my brother, sister and I that we 1) stick to family news, and 2) please not use our work email addresses, this is the response I got from a cousin:

Why did you give this email address if it is your work? You and your brother have some serious anger going on and should seek some counseling for some of your issues.
On another topic...it needs to be said that at least when you look back on the moral side of it, the Republican party has had a better record.
Consider both Kennedys (Marilyn Munroe) and Clinton (Monica) in the White House in the Oval office. You didn't see any of that from former Republican presidents. So there!!!!

I’d sent my email only to her, but she sent the above to the whole distribution list. And then this came in a separate email immediately following:

If you are at work...should you be doing personal emailing of any kind?? Get to work!!!!!!!

My brother replied, explaining that my mother had mistakenly given our work email addresses, and although he wasn’t sure who she was, to please respect our wishes. Then we got this:

You three are spending entirely too much time with personal emailing while you are at your important jobs. You guys are too much. I have a life to get back to. Put a smile on your face and cheer up for God's sake. And I hope you had a Merry Christmas too!!!

And then this:

Now that was funny. My email address was put on this list. We're long lost cousins...don't you know. Look at our last names. I just spell mine differently. Don't you have some work to do that's important to someone? I know I do....Hugs and Kisses.

My mother chimed in at this point, asking my cousin to lay off, and that she raised her kids up right and that she herself was sick of some of the opinions that were being expressed.

Then we got this:

If you guys don't mellow out I will be forced to attend someone else's family reunion this year. You take yourselves way too seriously. The Holbeck sense of humor has been lost with the passing of some special people. That's too bad. Better yet...delete my name from your list...this is a waste of time and depressing as Hell!!!!!

Let me tell you, every one of these was like a knife through my heart. My family doesn’t fight like this. We don’t DO this. But by this time I had given up on communicating with her, although I did draft an email that I never sent. Here it is:

How fucking dare you?

I had decided to ignore your emails because frankly, I don’t argue with people who posess no sense of reason. What’s the point?

But lay off my mom. What the hell is the matter with you?

Oh, and by the way:

Gerald Holbeck was my grandfather.
Marjorie Holbeck was my grandmother.
Wayne & Emory Holbeck were my uncles.
Virginia Holbeck was my aunt.

I miss them all like crazy and wish they were all still around today. I did not always agree with them but I loved them and they loved me.

Please never again suggest otherwise, you bitter, spiteful old bitch.

The most depressing thing about the whole affair is that none of the other Holbecks have bothered to come to our defense. I think perhaps that is because to their minds we have deserved it somehow, we have provoked this response with our leftie/PC ways and they guess we’ve been taught a lesson by this batshit-crazy keyboard harridan.

Because to them, they are normal, and my brother my sister and I are, and always will be, outsiders. We eat sushi, we wear “fancy shoes,” we hate Bush, and worst of all, we have transcended our circumstances, and to them that means we are uppity, and I suspect that at least some tiny part of them hates us for it.