No good deed goes unpunished.
A while ago (and knowing that it would likely do no good because of the shrieking cowards who control the Stupid Party caucus would fold as the first opportunity) I signed an online petition requesting that the Stupid Party tell Maximum Leader Genius to take his horrid post facto spying bill and ram it up his ass. Since it was an online petition, it needed an email address, so I gave it one, then went around clicking every “I don't want any of your stinking email solicitations, thank you very much.” button I could find.
The petition made no difference (of course) but what was worse than that was that very soon after that I started to get “personal” messages from Jane Hamsher and Matt Stoller (“personal” as in “sent through a lefty-affiliated bulk emailer. aka “not personal at all&rdquo) asking for me to contribute money to some doomed liberal cause or another. And what address were these stinking email solicitations sent to? Why, surprise surprise, it was the address I used for the petition and the address that I clicked all of the no-email buttons I could find out about.
Now, I'm sure Ms. Hamsher and Mr. Stoller are wonderful people (The firedoglake weblog was an enjoyable read back in the days before it became a big business with groupies; I'm not sure which weblogs Mr. Stoller are affiliated with, because the only ridiculously popular lefty weblog I read is the pale blue Satan and I can't be bothered to even remember the names of most of the others,) but this business of selling your good names to spammers is icky, and if I had been stupid enough to provide my permanent mail address I would have ended up kicking myself for my stupidity (I provided my email address to the MoveOn people back before the coup in 2000, and got easily a mailing a day for the next two years (even after I'd blacklisted the fuck out of every moveon server I could find.)
As it stands I can easily remove the offending address (postoffice aliases are very useful at times) and chalk this up as yet another reason to cultivate a passionate dislike for the whole online lefty establishment. And the next time an online petition is passed around, I'll pretend I'm Nancy Reagan and just say no; if it's important enough for a petition, it's important enough for me to get on the phone and politely request that the congressional representatives who are supposed to represent me actually represent me instead of the crowd of inside-the-beltway courtiers that they run with.
It won't be any more effective than the internet petitions, but at least I won't get more spam.