Greatest Living American Politician Answers Idiotic Constituent Email: 'Deaaaad Honky'

Being an elected official at any level and in any part of the country can be a giant pain in the ass. Your job alternates between calling up a list of donors everyday to make sure that they are happy with the tax breaks you gave them, and answering queries and complaints from the moderate to completely batshit insane people that you represent. Most of the time the latter task is assigned to some poorly paid and overworked staffer, but every once in a while the official answers their own email/letters and the result is almost always MAGICAL.

Amidst the battles over gun control across the country, the level of discourse coming from your average constituent pen-pal has devolved from “angry mis-informed asshole” to “hey should we send this letter to the FBI before we open it?” So it’s not exactly surprising that Alabama Representative Joseph Mitchell seems to have lost his patience with one particularly incensed gun and email totin’ patriot and decided to speak his glorious unfiltered mind on the subject.

The incident began when retired coal miner and amateur constitutional scholar Eddie Maxwell sent off an email to all the legislators in Alabama containing his advisory opinion on the constitutionality of proposed regulations targeted at his precious steel thundercock:

Can the officers of our state government change our constitution when the change is forbidden by the people? The Supreme Court of Alabama has ruled that it cannot in an opinion dealing with another matter where change is forbidden. You have sworn to support our constitution. You have defined a violation of an oath in an official proceeding as a class C felony (C.O.A. Section 13A-10-101 Perjury in the first degree).

Do not violate your oath of office by introducing additional gun control bills or by allowing those already enacted to remain in the body of our laws.

Being threatened by some obnoxious Matlock viewer with “perjury” is probably one of the more tame emails that a person in Mitchell’s position has received since Newtown, but it seems to have nevertheless touched a bit of a nerve with the long time member of the Alabama House:

Hey man. You have used the word ‘except’ when I think you mean somethin’ else.

Hey man. Your folk never used all this sheit to protect my folk from your slave-holding, murdering, adulterous, baby-raping, incestuous, snaggle-toothed, backward-a**ed, inbreed, imported criminal-minded kin folk. You can keep sending me stuff like you have however because it helps me explain to my constituents why they should protect that 2nd amendment thing AFTER we finish stocking up on spare parts, munitions and the like.

Bring it. As one of my friends in the Alabama Senate suggested – “BRING IT!!!!”

Ahhh politics. The “BRING IT” form letter is the sort of government response that they never brought up in School House Rock’s “I’m Just A Bill,” but they should have. Now as the site reporting this little exchange mentions , Maxwell (the coal miner) is white while Mitchell is black. In the South, race is usually something so toxic that it is only brought up in the passive aggressive way possible (outside of campaign ads from Republicans), so it’s understandable that Maxwell was a bit taken aback by the “racial tones” of the amazing responses that he received.

That’s not the type of reply I expect to receive from a state legislator. The lack of response to your racist comments from your fellow members speaks volumes about the state of our legislature as a whole.

I’m not a racist and I find your reply to be especially offensive considering the position you hold.

My parents and grandparents taught me to love God and my fellow man as myself. My father was threatened by members of his church back in 1954 for inviting a black family to attend the church he pastored.

My father-in-law was threatened when he hired a young negro man to work in his shop back in 1968 in a community where several neighbors were members of the Ku Klux Klan. He didn’t allow those threats to keep him from treating people of all races equally.

In 1969, I was a draftee in the US Army and bunked with a young negro man named Earl Shinholster at Fort Benning. Earl later became a prominent leader of the NAACP back home in Georgia after serving with me in the Army. When I received numerous racist threats from negroes who knew I lived near Birmingham, Earl warned me of the knives they carried and cautioned me to be more careful around them. Earl had been watching me and he had come to know and respect me for my Christian values. Earl and I became friends and he helped me get through some tough times there.

Racism is not exclusive to my own people. I learned that before 1955. It is just as ugly now as it was then, regardless of the race of the person who is consumed by it.

I love my country and my state, and I vowed to support and defend our constitutions. I expect you and all of our representative to do the same.

Sincerely,

Eddie Maxwell

Now this email is chock full of stupid shit, and your Wonkette was all prepared to address them line by line like Ken Tremendous from Fire Joe Morgan. But luckily Joseph Mitchell, who is awesome, BEAT US TO IT. Apparently folks in Mobile County like their representatives to be snarky as fuck when faced with stupid proclamations from stupid people.

Eddie. I grew up in Albany Ga. I was a military brat for most of my youth. Air Jump Master and DI USMC. Because I preference my issues with the values that I learned in ‘the heat of battle’ during the mid-fifties through the ‘70’s and into today might tell you what and who I am. I find no need to define it or explain it to you because you can identify with the threats of reprisals against your folk for helping somebody of African Descent. I know ol’ Ft. Benning and Columbus like the palm of my hand.

Where were you during the Albany Movement? Oh…. You shoulda been there. I am certain that your experiences through how your kin folk ‘helped’ colored folk would have helped us a lot when we were bombed in Albany, Leesburg, Newton and Sylvester.

I apologize for the restless nights your folk endured out of fear of the Klan. At least as they stood on the sidewalk watching my cousins and me get beat up by some of your neighbors they were able to push you out into the street to physically intervene. They did do that didn’t they? Oh …. Well, I rear where you were one of the first to integrate the all-colored school to prove your parents point.

Do you that your fathers ‘black’ friend was unable to get FHA benefits? Knowing about those knives and stuff were of benefit but did you know that colored military typically carried knives to protect themselves from folk who looked like your father? Historically, violence on Black folk was committed by White folk. It’s a fact but is it ‘racist?’ It is ‘racial.’ I had seven uncles and three aunts who served in three different ‘encounters. My father was Regular Army.

Eddie, a person without the power to exercise a threat cannot be a racist because he or she will be eliminated. A person who can, by merely stepping back on the sidewalk’ ore being quiet can support racism and benefit from the ‘first hired,’ affirmative action, preferential treatment fostered by systemic racism and bigotry.

It is unlikely that I, through sharing my many experiences on the receiving end, will convince you of your errors. For that matter, you will never convince me that our discomforts were comparable. Let the next generations resolve this continuing story.

Lock and load.

jmitchell

And there you have it. We searched far and wide this morning to find our newest inductee to our “Legislative Shit Muffin of the Year” award and instead we found this country’s greatest living politician. Is it too early to start talking about 2016? No? Then Joseph Mitchell is now officially a contender. We look forward to him calling Luke Russert a porcine looking glorified intern with a bad haircut on national television this time next year.

[ AL.com ]