Medical news spammer
goes on tirade

This has got to be a first. After repeated requests to be taken off an e-mail list, the guy in charge of the spam mass mailings sent me an insulting e-mail and threatened to sue me and get me fired.

My new spam blocker had decreased unwanted e-mail by hundreds, but not e-mails from Bio Medical News (BMN). They contain information about what's happening in the entire Bio Medical world, something that a humor columnist can do without. So, after my requests to get off the list went unheeded, I e-mailed BMN saying that if they didn't stop e-mailing me, "I will add a new feature to my column: The Dumbest Companies/Organizations in the Bio Medical Community," and each week I would ridicule, embarrass and attack any of the companies or organizations in their e-mails.

Well, THAT got the attention of one "David G. Anast, MPA, Publisher/Editor/CEO" of the Biomedical Market Newsletter, a man whose humor lobe apparently has been removed.

He wrote that if I ridiculed any entity in his newsletters, "it would confirm to the entire world your stupidity, illiteracy and lack of ethics ... and demonstrate that you should be the topic of your own column on 'Dumb Newspaper Columnists.'" (The illiteracy charge apparently referred to my greeting "To whome it may concern." He apparently is not familiar with the "Ye Olde English" spelling of "whome.")

After a raft of other sophisticated MPA-CEO-type insults ("You are as much of an expert columnist as an elementary school student"), Mr. Anast put me on "LEGAL NOTICE" that my "biased and unfounded, undocumented wild claims" could result in a lawsuit and loss of my job.

I WROTE BACK an equally sophisticated reply ("As for the threat of legal action ... ooooh, I'm sooo scared") and I put HIM on LEGAL NOTICE. To wit: "I am a humor columnist, sir, and I'll have you know that most of my living as a humor columnist has been based on 'biased and unfounded, undocumented wild claims.' In fact, 'biased, unfounded and undocumented wild claims' are the backbone of modern humor writing in America. If it were not for 'biased, unfounded and undocumented wild claims,' Dave Barry wouldn't have won a Pulitzer Prize."

I continued, "Your bullying might work in the Bio Medical News world, but it doesn't fly here. ... So bring on your lawyers, big man. This is one humor columnist who won't be pushed around by a flack for Bio Medical News or any other Bio-related news organizations." And since he ended his missive by listing his lawyers, I ended mine: "cc: Johnny Cochran, Esq.; Mark Geragos, Esq.; Billy Martin, Esq.; Maurice 'Jailhouse' McDougan (Esq. pending); and Clarence Darrow, Esq. (Diseased.)"

The fact that I wrote "diseased" instead of "deceased" should really drive the MPA, CEO, ETC of the Bio Medical News crazy. Whether it stops the bio-medical-related e-mail spam remains to be seen.