TurkeyMonkey

I got my first piece of bona fide hate mail at InTown late last week. While I can’t really imagine these semi-incoherent ramblings getting onto the magazine’s letters page, I wanted to share them with all you TurkeyMonkey lovers (and haters) out there. I know it sounds odd to be happy about getting an angry email, but in the writing biz, whenever someone who reads your work is moved enough to write in, it’s really touching. Sort of like Sally Field’s Academy Awards speech: You read me, you really read me!

I’ll paste the letter below, sans author. If you’re wondering what story is being referred to, it’s my article on Scarsdale real estate flippers, which you can see here.

The only thing more coarse and vulgar than the subject of Scarsdale Magazine’s February article “Risky Business” is the coarseness and vulgarity contained in Ted Mann’s writing.

Thank goodness some measure of refinement still exists in various quiet, lower profile quarters of our town. It certainly doesn’t exist in this article - or in its author. I’m sure he’d say “I’m writing ABOUT those kinds of guys, I’m not ONE of them.”

But indeed, his writing reveals him to be a bit of a coarse scruff as well.

The unfortunate thing, Ms. Mitcham, is that scruffs don’t necessarily KNOW that they’re scruffs - no matter how well-educated, well-dressed or otherwise successful they might be. And, since Ted Mann is on your editorial staff, for all we know you’re all birds of a scruffy feather. Heaven help us, as you’ll be doing the non-scruffs in our community no favors.

Ugh.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 1:36 am and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.