This diary will not be a very popular one. I probably shouldn't write it because I'm a pretty sensitive person and all of the flames that could follow could really stress me out. I suffer from mental illness and Asperger's Syndrome so I probably shouldn't be on the internet. But I need to say this.
I've never been a big fan of the Saturday Hatemail-palooza but it's really been starting to make me cringe recently. It was sort of funny at first but around the time of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting it's gotten less humorous and more disturbing. But that's not the only thing that's bothered me about it. I feel like it's kind of exploiting clearly disturbed individuals for the sole purpose of making fun of the mentally ill.
Today's outing was particularly painful for me.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Here is the email from a person who took offense at a Front Pager using the word "Schizophrenia" to describe some typical Republican BS:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
THE US OF SCHIZOPHRENIA IN THE TITLE OF ARTICLE
IS OFFENSIVE THIS IS A MENTAL ILLNES AND YOU ARE OFFENDIGN FOLKS THAT SUFFER FROM THAT . ANYWAY YOU ARE WRONG RE HOW YOU SEE THIS . HOW MUCH DID OBAMA PAY FOR THIS ARTICLE ?
Honestly? Outside of the misspellings and all-caps and the conspiracy theory about President Obama this email made a DANG good point. So what does Kos do? He tells him to take his medication as an insult.
It really hurts me that things like this are tossed around so freely on a progressive site. There are plenty of people (like me) who suffer from mental illness who always vote Democratic and support this president. It seems to me that a big part of the Hatemailpalooza feature is demeaning people whose grasp on reality is tenuous at best and lumping all mentally ill people with them as vile and hateful. Most people suffering from mental illness are harmless and just trying to get through their lives as best they can. There are plenty of progressives who suffer from it too. But it's easy to get a cheap laugh to make fun of the crazy people who write those awful emails to Kos.
I'm sure there will be plenty of people who will tell me I'm being too sensitive. That reading Hatemail is the best part of the week on Kos and if I truly dislike it I can just not read it. This happens to be true. But there are plenty of places on the internet I choose to ignore (such as Stormfront to use an extreme example) but that doesn't mean they are good ideas. If someone wanted to start a group on Kos for racist or sexist jokes would telling people who are rightly offended by the idea to simply ignore it? What makes this any different from that?
I'm sorry if I offended anyone with this post. I rarely write diaries but this has been something on my mind for a while now and today pushed me over the edge. I think we progressives need to have each other's backs, particularly the most vulnerable among us. I don't see what good comes from highlighting and exploiting the writings of the mentally disturbed.
Update: I wasn't feeling too good when I posted this so I took a nap and when I come back there are over 200 comments. I would have stuck around had I known so many people had read it. I'll read all the comments but I just want to clarify that this diary is pretty much just me voicing my frustration with the site and in no way should be taken as me telling people how to run it. I have a hard enough time with my own life, it would be very difficult for me to try to run everyone else's.