Fun with Liberals

There's a joke where I work, told only in certain company, that if you're a) white, b) male, and c) straight, then you don't get to be diverse...diversity only refers to people that aren't one of those, see? I got a graphic illustration of that earlier today, and I had to share, since I'm not one, not two, but (you guessed it) all three.

I got a link to this news story via my official email. It wasn't a press release, or anything from the Director's Office stating that it was to be distributed. It came, in fact, from somebody with a gmail address, via somebody with a Comcast address, and is the sort of thing I ignore as spam. The subject line, though, was "Fwd: US Violates International Human Rights of People of Color" (there's that term again - see people without color don't have those rights...got it?), which was different enough from the usual glurge that I made the mistake of opening it. Mind you, passing along chain letters is a no-no to begin with, but that's a whole separate issue.

If you're a bit conservative, as I am, you might find that article a bit bad for your blood pressure. The "UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination", huh? I didn't hear any outrage from them during any of the half-dozen "ethnic cleansing" purges in various parts of the world, probably because the countries doing the purging and/or in charge of the Human Rights Commission are the self-same countries that have state-sponsored ways of dealing with pesky minorities....Libya, Syria, China....you know. Them.

Anyway, it struck me as amusing that the guy pushing this article is the "diversity" guy for our office, which given the person in question is much like putting lipstick on a pig. I'll call him Clueless Multiculturalist, or CM for the purposes of the rest of this post. I sent him a polite email:

WG: I'd really prefer not to receive this sort of thing. I find it highly offensive; please don't forward me this kind of garbage in the future. Thanks.

Not suprisingly, I got a short reply a bit later:

CM: Not everything in this world is fair, just like I will not take you off any staff list. In the future if you get something from me that you find offensive please just delete it. Any info that is send out to staff is for informatino only so you are empowered to not read it or delete it.

Isn't that sweet? Passing along offensive forwards is okay because the world isn't fair. Mind you, I never asked for him to alter the distribution list (which by the way is the "official" one) - I asked that he not send it to me. But I'm empowered to not read it. This blew my mind. Here's the guy in charge of diversity telling me that if I'm offended by something he says or passes along that he's not supposed to to begin with, then I'm empowered to not be offended by virtue of the fact that I don't have to open his email.

Rather than explain this to him, I wrote him back and attempted to point out one small flaw in his cunning plan.

WG: The fact that you're using a staff list distribution group to distribute content you've been informed is offensive should be a cue of your own; you're empowered to create your own distribution lists.
I'll refer you back to this conversation the next time you ask me why I didn't get the memo.

What the hell, a little Office Space humor never hurt anybody. His reply:

CM Again, WG, do whatever you need to do with the information you get, but I will not take you off ay of my list since you are part of this branch/agency. What ever you do with your email is up to you and it's not my concern. I will not play this silly game with you so drop it.

I love the sound of righteous indignation in the morning. Now he's offended that I was offended! Not only that, my expressing (twice) that I simply didn't want to be included any longer in the distribution of offensive content went sailing right past him - he doesn't have the administrator rights to our email system to make the changes he's insisting he won't make anyway. I suppose I could have continued pummeling him with the clue bat, but he was getting all huffy and indignant on me, and we can't have that. Red refers to him as the "Mayor of Munchkin-land", because he looks like the guy in the Wizard of Oz, and when he gets upset he tends to swell up a bit, huff and puff, and make general unpleasantness for all around him.

I did, however, create an email-handling rule just for him. Now everything he sends that reaches me goes directly to the trash - I'd have set up one to auto-deny everything, thus preventing delivery, but in order to do that I'd have to have set up an auto-reply function, whish is a major no-no. I asked an IT friend of mine what would have happened if I'd forwarded it to the list of known spam addresses from senders, and he said that although he wasn't sure, it might have auto-blacklisted the entire department's email system.

Good thing I didn't do that. >:)