(if they wanna get nitpicky about it, we gave them Chrissie Hynde and Rich Hall, too)
I don’t get a lot of emails from readers of the Wall Street Journal’s Daily Fix — the freelance gig at which I write in my indoor voice about the sports stories of the day and, when possible, also camel racing. (It was possible today) I get some, generally positive but occasionally trollish and almost all of them finding a way to work some negative comment about Obama into the text. But given the decent-sized readership there, I wouldn’t say I get a lot of correspondence.
So it was sort of strange when, about an hour ago, I started getting a ton of emails through the Daily Fix address on a topic I obliquely touched on a couple days ago — how much English soccer fans just effing hate the EPL’s ultra-leveraged American team-owners. (I linked to this article by Brian Phillips in Slate, which is an enjoyable read even if you’ve been following GC’s coverage of this trend for the last few years)
The first email was impassioned and featured some experimental punctuation, but did at least earn some points for the flattering — if flagrantly erroneous — salutation “Dear USA Media Executive/Outlet” and the first line, “We gave you THE BEATLES and this is how you repay us?” The second email was the same. And the third and fourth and so on and on. Some included added commentary, all of it on-message, but most just read exactly like this:
Dear USA Media Executive/Outlet
*We gave you THE BEATLES and this is how you repay us?*
What happened to the *™Special Relationship™ *between the US and the UK?
Are you aware of how *Tom Hicks* is driving our beloved *Liverpool Football Club *into the ground?
How would you like it if a British œbusinessman came over to the USA and destroyed the New York Yankees. Or the LA Lakers. Or the Washington
Redskins?
Well, we are living Wayne Huizenga and the Florida Marlins all over again!
Please Google *Tom Hicks + Liverpool* to see what an embarrassment he isto the USA.
We would be grateful if you could help us by reporting our story in order that me might persuade Wall Street NOT to lend him the money he is currently trying to raise, to drive our football team into even more debt and despair.
Sorry about the mass email approach but we have tried everything else, and we feel like we are at the end of the road.
Thanks in anticipation
I’ve received 20 of these emails over the last hour or so. None of which will do anything to make me a USA Media Executive, but did at least make me feel faintly big-time over that period. Among the other recipients of the non-BCC’ed email — most of them sports columnists at the Dallas Morning News, New York Times and the Wall Street Journal — were CNBC’s resident anti-expert Larry Kudlow and notorious anti-billionaire type Sean Hannity. I don’t know if this semi-spam campaign against the (totally odious) Hicks will have any impact on his attempt to refinance LFC, but it should at least have some impact on Sean Hannity. Because if I don’t sign him up for a bunch of goth_talk listservs and novelty-item mailing lists, some other recipient of this email surely will. I’m looking at you, Richard Sandomir of the New York Times. (I will not do this, of course, and you shouldn’t, either) (Sandomir, follow your heart)
I’ve emailed a couple of the senders to see how this campaign came to be, and I’ll post a selection of their responses here, if and when I get them.
I am a Texas Ranger fan. Tom Hicks screwed us worse than he could ever screw another sports entity. We sympathize with you, but you just have to buy him out to save face. Maybe someone will kick his arrogant butt!!
i am truly sorry Liverpool… i have posted your request on my facebook page, but i can’t offer much help. after all, we gave ourselves george bush.