I love everyone except people (or is it poeple?) who can't spell.

Amen!

I HATE people who love me!!

Dear J.S. III,

Aw, we love you too, sweetie. KISSES!

Yours truly,
Slog

Satan better start paying rent.

That's not true... Slog loves Jews.

That letter is all kinds of funny.

/spell check

Fuck, they need spell check! But I do not hate people who believe in make believe things like god or Santa, I hate their belief system, not them as people.

Well, underneath the hyperbole J.S. makes some valid points.

Fnarf?

The reason our founding fathers had "separation of church and state" written into our constitution- and various other places- was to protect all Americans from freaks like the one who wrote that letter...

There is nothing wrong with hating Christianity. It's a toxic cult for idiots.

As a Jew I feel very comfortable on Slog. The Stranger has been pro-Israel, and has published many supportive articles about Judaism and Seattle's Jewish community.

If you don't like Slog, then stop reading it.

Ah yes, the patented Savage leave-the-typos-in treatment. Falls under the heading of, "Never argue with the guy who has the microphone..." Perfectly sound advice, though the part people tend to leave off is, "...because he'll pretend that having the last word means he's right."

Good job, Dan. You sure proved that guy wrong.

Now when did any of us claim to be "loving and caring?"

Issur speaks the truth. As always, in more ways than one.

Hey J.S.

Thanks for reading and keep buying from those advertisers we have on line and in the magazine!!

That last reference against socialism is classic.

His letter still had fewer spelling mistakes than an average page of The Stranger.

There's a SATAN in my brain?

Carollani beat me to it! I was going to say, since when do we hate The Jews? Now, Christians and virgins on the other hand, can fuck right off...

Oh it is too early to try and decipher hypocritical, contradictory dribble like that.
I need another coffee.

I hardly have time to fix my own typos, Judah, I'm certainly not going to bother fixing J.S.'s typos. Sometimes you just gotta copy and paste and and post and move on.

I must have missed the commandment about, "Thou shalt not allow socialism", because Jesus was all about the Capitalist Fascist regimes.

As a lifelong atheist, I have to say the illiterate anti-Christians who post all over this blog are an embarrassment. It would be nice to think that others arrive at an atheist view out of reason, education, and courage, but these loudmouths are no different than fundamentalist theists: willfully ignorant, hysterically reactionary and incapable of seeing any shades of gray in belief systems different than their own.

And spelling flames? Lame. Spelling flames are very, very lame.

Newvile PA? Sounds about right.

@ 13, you'd have a point about Dan leaving the typos in if he'd placed a [sic] after each one. That would be obnoxious. But what would you have him do, fix JS's mistakes?

SATAN INSIDE*- Intel

Shoot, I see that Dan answered Judah as I was typing. Oh well.

it always amuses me to see the ignorant demand tolerance of intolerance.

@23

You did. You also missed these Commandments:

Commandment 14: Thou shalt not let man fuck another man.

Commandment 25: Thou shalt not commit pre-marital sex.

Commandment 27: Thou shalt place a tariff on horseless carriages.

Commandment 32: Remember the Christmas day and keep it holy.

Commandment 54: Thou shalt not read the Stranger.

Gotta keep up with the Commandments. It's 2007. There's like, 5,000 of them.

I for one don't actively HATE Christians - some of them are actually pretty decent people - but semi-literate yokels like J.S. here do start to get on my nerves. And Fundies drive me up the wall.

Let's face it J.S., if you're out there lurking, Evangelicals in general, and fundamentalists in particular are at best obnoxious, and at worst hypocrites. They claim everything in the bible is irrefutable fact, and assert the infallibility of their God, whose will they further claim has been personally and directly communicated to them. Yet, they selectively cherry-pick which of His edicts to obey, and which to hold up as moral litmus tests for the rest of us; if we don't obey to the letter (something few, if any of them seem capable of doing themselves) we're destined to an eternity of torment in Hell.

Frankly, I wouldn't have nearly so much of an issue with Fundies, if only they would just learn to keep their primitive, superstitious beliefs to themselves, stop trying to foist them on those of us who refuse to subscribe to their particular brand of mania, and finally quit whining that they're being "persecuted for their beliefs", whenever someone points out what absolute rubbish most of them are.

Matt: Dan has, in fact, given many people the [sic] treatment in the past. For example:

THE SOUTH RISES TO THE EDITORS: you have the dirtyest [sic] mouth of anyone i have ever heard. kiss my ass you northern basterd [sic] ..................you suck you self rightous [sic] dickhead...... we are 10 times better thaan [sic] you northern assholes......dam [sic] sure friendlier. fuck off okay????????? who do you think you are talking about the southern people like this....

Bob & Bennie

DAN SAVAGE RESPONDS: The next time you're going to write an e-mail to someone bitching about Southerners being described as dumb-ass rubes, you might not want to litter your e-mail with misspellings. You also might want to familiarize yourselves with commas, periods, and other mysteries of English punctuation. Unless, of course, you seek to confirm, not refute, the accusation that you, in fact, are a bunch of dumb-ass rubes down there.

It's one of those things you notice about his debating style after you've been reading his work for 10 years or so.

I have to disagree about spelling flames. In the age of spell check, there is no excuse for that many blatant errors. Typos, a couple of misspellings, whatever, but basically every other word mispelled? You're an idiot.

If you send out a hateful, hypocritical, mean, illogical screed like that full of ad hominem attacks, your atrocious spelling, grammar, reasoning, etc., is fair game. And if you can't proof read your shit, why should anyone else?

I thought Pennsylvania had more socialism than we do ... at least that's how I remember it.

DAMMIT and I misspelled "misspelled." Classic.

Dear J.S.,

We don't hate.
We just don't fucking care or bother to notice.

Love,
Slog

Can somebody tell me what a "rube" is? Thanks.

@31: HERE, HERE!

I don't go shoving pamphlets about my personal ethics and morals under peoples' doors, or preach to them without invitation about my beliefs, or shoot/beat/kill/maim/legislate/sue/spout off/baptize them into my system when they're dead. I just wish the fundies would just chill, focus on their religion in their own homes and churches, and leave me the eff out of it.

Is there anyway of *asking* the south to secede? Or paying them to do so? I mean, really? I think we'll be fine up north here if we team up with Canada.

If you send out a hateful, hypocritical, mean, illogical screed like that full of ad hominem attacks, your atrocious spelling, grammar, reasoning, etc., is fair game. And if you can't proof read your shit, why should anyone else?

Your missing the point.

It's not a question of whether someone who sends a letter chock full of errors deserves to be publicly humiliated. The question is, why does Dan publish the letters? The morons he's mocking are, essentially, strawmen. They don't represent the best arguments for the issues Dan addresses when he flogs one of these dipshits in public. They are, in point of fact, pretty much irrelevant except as propaganda.

So basically Dan's little [sic] letters aren't just responses to individuals -- they amount to cheap ad hominem attacks on viewpoints he disagrees with. Which makes them hypocritical. And also mean. Not to mention boring, though I do enjoy picking at them on the slog.

The sic treatment in that instance seems entirely fair and to the point, Judah. Either way, man, you need to get back on your meds.

Ha! "You're missing the point."

I wish I could claim to have put that in there on purpose.

@5,

I can't stop laughing...T_T

@38:

We refuse to secede on the grounds that if we have to LIVE with these people, you should at least have to put up with their caterwauling from a distance.

Well, we get letters like that one, Judah. It's part of the discourse, and this one seemed intended for Slog's audience. So we posted it. Because it was a letter. To the editor. Which we tend to post. Because it was a letter. But sure: I'm a bad, bad man. Agreed.

But sure: I'm a bad, bad man. Agreed.

As long as we're clear.

@24

I hatz Crikey-ians, and I spellz real good.

Fuck jeebus and his idjit followers.

This letter supports my point that religion is not for morons.

There is nothing in the letter from JS that advocates theocracy, or threatens violence, or even indicates clearly that the writer is evangelical or fundamentalist. The most radical thing there is the crack about socialism. That's what I mean about the inability to see shades of gray: seeing all Christians as caricatures is ignorant and prejudiced.

Maybe you feel victimized and it has given you a chip on your shoulder. I'm sorry to hear that, but the thing is, if you can't be reasonable, then you're not helping.

@17, @23 - Yes, how did that start? Why do American Christians identify so strongly with, of all things, Capitalism?

I suspect the officially atheist governments of old USSR (and, I suppose, China) have something to do with the American Christian backlash against socialism. It seems a bit irrational and mind-numbingly oppositional to me. If it came out that Nikita Krushchev liked watching Gilligan's Island, Bob Denver would probably be declared the antichrist.

When Satan discovered I was Gay, he kicked my sorry ass to the curb. So I joined the cult called Judy-ism, and now I'm happy and well adjusted. Judy-ism is for everyone, you don't have to be named Judy, but your mother does.

Elenchos, come on. The first thing the letter addresses is the Stranger's hate for George Bush. That comes off as defending Bush, at least it does to me.

And the whole "I love you all" aspect of it does make it sound like they're some religious spacecase AKA: Christian, not Jew. Jews are pure ;)

@49, so Bob Denver *isn't* the antichrist?

I can't believe no one get the sarcasm.

Chrisitans as a whole are uneducated idiots. That is why they can belong to their cult of "Christianity".

Jews are better educated, better read, and more erudite than any other religious group. Why not expose Christians asthe idiots they are?

Exactly Mr. Poe. Somebody points out that you are hate something, and you read that as a defense of the thing you hate. The reason you read it that way is that you see the whole world as being either for you or against you, nothing in between.

The whole "I love you thing" is what Christianity is supposed to be all about. You might not buy it (I don't) but to arbitrarily attack everyone who does buy it is, well, uncompromising, bigoted, and hateful. JS might not spell very well, but he's right about the Slog.

I love the "socialism" bit at the end. Either the person is 60 years old or completely out of touch with the world. Might as well be talking about the Whig party.

Wow, that was almost coherent there until the end. OH GNO!@ THE DREADED SOZIALIZMZMS! BILL O'RLY TOLDZ ME THATS BADD.

Because, as we all know, Jesus prefers our wealth be distributed almost entirely to a small number of fat white men, like him. It's the Christian way.

Issur seeing as you are so educated could you tell us who or what Chrisitans are?

I am an uneducated idiot but, I know what a spell checker is.

@49: It's something called prosperity ministry. Folks like Don Stewart and his magic green hanky tell the folks that 'God wants you to be successful', and stress that God wants capitalists and Americans in particular to be wealthy, to better enjoy the fruits of the life he's given them.

Evangelical political involvement has poisoned politics, and prosperity ministry has absolutely poisoned faith. I hate these fucking charlatans (unlike your average, 'Jesus wants you to do good things' Christians), because they prey on their poorest followers and drain their money, as though tithing to Don Stewart or his ilk is an investment that god will pay off.

Is JS3 Amish? Was this letter written under candlelight?

Dan, you should be nice and send JS3 some vibrators from Babeland and some Hustler rags as a thank you.

Microsoft Word 2007 spell/grammar checker flags 6 misspellings. Oddly enough, it misses the "you readers". And what is with the "life has to offer, which are better than socialism"? Try this:

You are mean, nasty, ugly people that hate President Bush, Conservatives, Christians, Jews, and our soldiers. You say mean, nasty words about them. You have Satan living inside of you. I find it odd that you claim to be very loving and caring while practicing bigotry and hate against certain people because of their political philosophy or religion. You hate virgins and the faithfully married. But I love you. I hope that God would give your readers and you the chance to see your mistakes in life and see the blessings and joy life has to offer. Life is much better than socialism.

"Life: Now Better than Socialism!"

@59:

In addition, it provides hucksters like Stewart a very convenient "out" for their own greed and extravagence: "look at me! I'm successful and wealthy! God LOVES me! Does God love YOU? Are you successful? Are you wealthy? Send me a bunch of your money, and maybe God will make you successful and wealthy, like he made me!"

Plus it plays into the notion that poverty is a moral failure on the part of the impoverished, rather than an economic or social failure. "God does NOT love poor people! If He LOVED them, they'd be successful and wealthy. It is the fault of poor people that they are poor, and their poverty is God's punishment on them for failing to earn His love by becoming successful and wealthy."

I guess that's supposed to make the faithful feel morally superior, if they're not suffering from abject poverty themselves, and give them justification for opting out of any social contract to help the impoverished.

Of course, it runs completely counter to Jesus' admonitions about how to achieve spiritual perfection, but I guess the folks who subscribe to this particular philosophy would rather have all their wealth in the here-and-now, instead of waiting to recoup their justly reward after they're dead.

@50

Hey, I get to join Judy-ism; well maybe, my Mom is Judith, but goes by Judy, does that count.

And, JS III, I don't hate Christians, conservatives, Jews, or soldiers; Bush, yes, I'll admit to hating, he's incompetent and wasteful of our nation's resources and our soldier's lives. I do disagree with these types of people on many fronts, but disagreement isn't hate. Most of my extended family is very Christian, fundy even; and I love them all. They also love and accept me, even with my atheism, which they are aware of. We all get to participate in the hurly-burly of political and social life; where we work out as a nation what our priorities are. I understand that those priorities are changing in ways that are uncomfortable for you, but I believe that you can indeed adjust to these changes. Go on with your own life as you please, no-one will force you to be gay, unfaithful, or even sexual at all.

Other people's sex lives, virgin, faithful, or otherwise are none of my business; and I don't judge unless they hurt children, animals, or non-consenting adults.

going way back to #3:
"That's not true... Slog loves Jews."

if by love them you mean getting all hot-n-heavy with them in our underoos over a game of candyland, listening to mash-ups of polka and skinny puppy, whilst doing whippets and drinking yoo-hoo mudslides, then yes we love them lots and lots!

You know what you're supposed to say to people who send you reader mail like that, right? Or anyoe tha threatens to pray for you, now that I think of it.

SOYGNH

That's what you say. Always.

taht litter wuz phuny!!

and so troo!

i hat al thoz peeholes!

"you are mean, nasty, ugly people.... but I love you"

typical

if I may quote Tom Lehrer - "there are some people who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that."