Oh, joy! More e-mail By Tom Brooker News-Chronicle Edward R. Murrow, the legend of early TV journalism, once cautioned his colleagues to check their egos at the door. The occasion was the first transcontinental broadcast, and the American public was agog that someone in New York could be seen live on a television set in Los Angeles. "Just because you can now talk across a continent," he warned his broadcasting brethren, "doesn't give you any more authority than the guy who can yell across the bar." Today, Murrow would be apoplectic over the technology that enable unfettered worldwide communication. I am speaking of e-mail, of course. It is the curse of every editor in the world unfortunate enough to be connected to this bottomless pipeline. Murrow's colleagues at least had to have enough moxie to survive the cutthroat world of TV journalism in order to hold mikes in their hands. Not so with the e-mailer. All one has to do is walk up to a computer, start an e-mail account (frequently a free one) and type. Because of this, I dread Mondays. I drag my weekend-wracked body into work, fire up the computer and watch the little thermometer tell me the progress of downloading two-plus days of e-mails (and that's another insidious thing: e-mailer send their drivel at all hours, 24-hours a day, every frickin' day of the year, holidays included). Last Monday, my thermometer said I was about to receive 52 e-mails. Oh, joy. One was from a guy from Arizona who proclaimed he was "The New Prophet." Another came from Ohio. This fella randomly chooses movies to review. Last week's was on a Clint Eastwood film so old you can't even find at the local video-rental shop. Two were from foreigners who claimed they needed my help to collect large sums of money secretly deposited in American savings accounts. Both were exiled potentates of some stripe who couldn't get the dough on their own because they'd be killed and/or the money confiscated as soon as they tried to get it. Several e-mails came from discounters selling pills, PCs and other paraphernalia. By the time I got through all the e-mails, I confess to thinking about ordering that miracle energy-booster the Canadian pharmaceutical company was hawking. The political junk e-mail is the most tedious. I had five "letters to the editor" from five different people in five different states, all proclaiming a need to support the President, all worded exactly the same. Some group out of Oregon wanted me to take a stand against clear-cutting federal forests; another organization was urging the repeal of campaign financing laws. One fella was suing a large chain discounter for stealing his invention; another was being sued for infringing on the copyrighted name of "Fortune 500." A woman in South Carolina was battling Disney Corp. because it wanted her to remove a caricature of Snow White from her beauty shop window. Lots of the e-messages were based on questions of personal worth. Don't I really want a larger, uniquely male body part? Wouldn't I be happier if I lost 15, 20 even 50 pounds in six weeks? Why wouldn't I want to end years of loneliness by subscribing to a dating-service Website? Why should I keep paying high mortgage rates to the local bank when I can have lenders from all over the world fighting over the privilege of lending me money? Sometimes, I have the honor of knowing the dozens of others who are receiving the same message as I. It takes several seconds to scroll beyond the list of recipients only to find a string of letters, responses to them and responses to the responses, all repeated and dutifully copied from one sender to the other so that by the time I receive it the e-mail is as long as it is boring. Inevitably, it is about something I have no desire to know. E-mail has also taken the taboo of chain letters to a new height. I have a relative who cannot pass up one of these for fear of losing her immortal soul or having a piano fall on her head. I am always one of 20-plus hapless acquaintances destined to be on her pass-along list. I kick 'em right to the trash. I'm not sure about my soul, but pianos haven't even laid a glove on me - so far. I particularly take offense at any e-mail which, when opened, immediately demands you acknowledge receipt of it before you even know its contents. Here, the human instinct of fear of the unknown plays heavily. If I agree to OK the "received" message, do I unwittingly post my e-mail to some moron who will keep contacting me until death do us part? Will I be automatically enrolled in a membership to a porn site specializing in bondage and "shemales"? Long ago I gave up on trying to get my name off the e-lists of the offending parties. Legally, the senders of mass e-mails must have an opt-out link, something you can click on and thus remove your name from their targeted market. Inevitably, these result in a long wait and a message that says, "URL could not be found." Attempts to rid myself of these electronic pests inevitably wind up in the dead e-letter office. I'd write longer about this except I see I have the light flashing on my office phone: voice mail. Egad and little fishes. Maybe Murrow's lucky he didn't live long enough to suffer these perversions of communication. He just saw Lucky Strikes being sold coast-to-coast by people pretending to be doctors. Brooker is editor of The Green Bay News-Chronicle. You can ask him anything through e-mail ([email protected]), or write to him at P.O. Box 2467, Green Bay, 54306.