In today's episode of Things That Piss Anna Off

[annathepiper]

I just got an email chain letter from one of my older relations demanding that people boycott a stamp that honors a Muslim holiday on the grounds of how it's Muslims that have perpetrated all these recent terrorist attacks against Americans.

I've just had to send her mail back telling her to stop sending me chain letters like that on the grounds that from where I'm sitting, to lash out against innocent Muslims in this country just because of the actions of certain Muslim extremists and to call all Muslims evil because of what those extremists have done is no better than those extremists calling all Americans evil just because we're Americans.

I do not expect this to go over well. Sigh. But it had to be done.

Comments

[avram]

<sigh> I was so proud of my country for a while.

During the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, some friends and I decided to make a point of eating at Khyber Pass, an Afghan restaurant on St. Marks Place, to show that we, as Americans, weren't extending our bad feelings about the Taliban to Afghans in general, and especially not to American Afghans.

We couldn't. Every time we went by there, for weeks afterwards, the place was packed, presumably with people who'd had the same idea. Or maybe they'd just had a strong hankering for shureen pulow.

Re:

[annathepiper]

Well, good on ya for trying, at any rate. :)

Sigh. I expect I'll get the same damned chain letter from my Aunt Donna's husband, since he and she tend to send me the exact same chain letters. I'll probably have to tell HIM, too. Unless my Aunt goes and tells him what an unpatriotic niece they've got or something. :P

Oh well, they already know I'm the family weirdo, at any rate.

[agrimony.livejournal.com]

Nevermind that chain letters are illegal. :)

[ssha.livejournal.com]

Really?

Re:

[annathepiper]

Well, I've never heard of email chain letters being illegal; I think I recall something about paper mail chain letters being illegal, yes, but not email ones.

Me, I just want her to stop sending me email like that. :P

Re:

[annathepiper]

See commentary to Cyn, below... it's not that I don't want to hear from my Aunt at all, I just want her to understand that I don't support those sentiments. :P I haven't gotten any sort of reply from her yet. I don't expect I will, at least for a while. Sigh.

[flashfire.livejournal.com]

Well said. To hold such an opinion is to exhibit high ignorance. Stereotyping people like that isn't fair. If we don't like it when other countries write us all off as arrogant and power-hungry, etc - well, our own people shouldn't be making widely generalized assumptions about them either. It's especially unfortunate when it's relatives that do this. My father is pretty racist - I hate when he starts going on about black people.

[annathepiper]

My dad used to make jokes like that, until one day I finally had to tell him to quit it. I'm glad he did.

My grandmother who once lectured me for 20 minutes on the evils of homosexuality is another matter, though. Sigh.

Thanks for the support though. I guess I'll just have to see whether this completely ostracizes me from that branch of the family or what (which I suppose would be a bit of a shame after I've finally gotten back into contact with them after a decade and a half of silence), or whether they just choose to politely ignore their eccentric niece out on the west coast.