Well, it's Friday, which means it's time to look in the old Democratic Underground mailbag and see what conservative Nobel Laureate or general nutcase tries to give me my comeuppance this week.
And, I'll tell you, my piece on the bogus "polls"
done by Fox's Sean Hannity on his web site, sure brought the insects out of the woodwork.
An example is Charles Reilly, of Manhattan Beach, CA, who writes…
Dear Bob Geiger:
Why don't you go on Mr. Hannity's show and debate him? You're always quick to throw your own bombs on people, so why don't you just go on the Fox Network and debate the fellow man-to-man.
Face it, Bob, you're just another limp-wrist liberal who doesn't have the courage or guts to appear in public (unless Arianna Huffington invites you over her house for the one-thousandth viewing of "Fahrenheit 911"). If you ever bumped into Hannity on the street, you'd probably crumple into a little ball and roll away. Do society a big favor and jump off a bridge.
To which I reply:
Dear Charles;
I would take offense at the "limp-wrist liberal" part, but I have broken each wrist once -- one playing baseball and the other in a barroom fight many years ago while in the Navy -- so you may have a point there. Sometimes when I'm writing back to right-wing knuckleheads, my wrists hurt very much indeed.
But you're wrong about the Hannity references. I actually work a few blocks from the moist soil Hannity burrows into at Fox News -- but I've never actually run into him. But if I did, it would be unseemly for a Veteran to "crumple into a little ball" at the feet of a true Chickenhawk, so I'm afraid I can't help you with that.
That said, I would love to be on his show, so do me a favor: Next time you're at his house doing his landscaping, sweeping his driveway or polishing one of his cars and he lets you come into the house to go to the bathroom, put in a good word for me. I appreciate that.
And I've never been invited to Arianna's house but I understand she may be having a contest to have as a weekend guest, the writer who gets the most hate e-mail from certifiably goofy right-wingers. With your help, Charles, I hope to be that writer.
And, by the way, I
loved your work on "Match Game" in the 1970s.
Bob
* * * * *But Little Chuckles N. Reilly wasn't alone… I pissed off so many people with the Hannity bit, even Spammers wrote to complain.
A Mr. Zhang He, from the Bank of China in Shenzhen sent me this:
Dear Friend,
I am Zhang He, Bank Manager of the Bank of China, Shenzhen branch, China. I have an urgent and very confidential business proposition for you. On June 7, 2000, a consultant/ contractor with the Chinese Solid Minerals Corporation, made a numbered time (Fixed) Deposit for twelve calendar months, valued at Twenty One Million Dollars (US$21,000,000.00) only in my branch. Upon maturity, I sent a routine notification to the forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, we sent a reminder and finally we discovered from his contract employers, the South Korea Solid Minerals Corporation that he died along with his wife from a plane crash. On further investigation, I found out that he died Without making a WILL, and all attempts to trace his next of kin was fruitless.
I was going to invite you to share the money, until I saw the nasty, mean-spirited things you wrote about Sean Hannity and his web site . I can no longer in good faith extend such a windfall to a horrible liberal who would so besmirch the reputation of such a fine, fair and balanced, American commentator.
Why don’t you and Arianna Huffington jump off a bridge?
I'm sorry but I have no reply. My wise-guy antics have finally cost me dearly and I vow to write nothing else about Mr. Hannity this week. Unless he puts up a poll asking if George W. Bush is a) Really smart, b) Really,
really smart, c) Freakin' wicked smart, or d) A genius who all patriotic Americans appreciate.
* * * * *Going so far off subject, I have no idea what the hell he's even talking about, Todd Honig babbles…
Hey, Bob Geiger. You're a fucking <sic> idiot. And from your name I suspect you're Jewish which makes your anti-Israel stance even more idiotic. It's moron leftists like you that got 6 million of our people killed by the Nazis during Worlds <sic> War 2. You want to see it happen again keep rooting for the Arabs you schmuck. And don't look to Jews like me to save your sorry ass either. Moron Jews like you aren't worth fighting for.
While it's hard to take macho rhetoric seriously when it comes from a guy named Todd, I'll try.
Dear Todd;
Since it's Shabbat, I'm going to go easy on you. Next time you write, please tell me what column in particular has offended you because, as is so often true with my Friday Fruitcakes contributors, I have no idea what you're talking about. I haven't written anything about the Middle East crisis and I don't think I've mentioned Israel more than a handful of times in the 18 months I've been blogging.
I'll just assume that you had me confused with one of the many other people you probably send hate mail to and leave it at that.
But just to be safe, I called Shlomo Finkelstein, President of the Jewish Defense Coalition (JDC) and asked him about your accusations. He put my mind at ease.
"Oh, Todd?" said Finkelstein. "Don’t worry about him. He writes to every blogger and accuses them of being anti-Semitic. He's sent me e-mails calling me an anti-Semite three times this week already. What an enormous tool."
My wife and my little boy are Jewish -- in fact, I'm not -- and if she even sensed at anti-Israel thought from me, I'd be sleeping on the sofa so fast it would make your pointy little head spin, Todd. But she did say "Hey, Geiger isn’t even a Jewish name -- this guy Todd's really a
schmo and you should tell him to
'Ech hob dir in drerd'." I'll assume you'll know what those things mean.
Shabbat Shalom!
Bob
* * * * *Tune in next time for another edition of the Friday Fruitcakes. And, for you hateful, self-loathing Republicans – keep those cards, letter and e-mails coming.
You can reach Bob Geiger at geiger.bob@gmail.com.