poison pen: responding to my hate mail pt 2

So thus far my hate mail (meaning all the mail generated by my site) has been by people who take offense at my dismissive tone regarding their dearly loved movies. This had been the state of my hate mail until tonight, when I received my first response to the article I wrote about the forthcoming Sylvia Likens movie. I had half-expected some kind of negative response, mainly because of the (in retrospect) over-stated hyperbole of identifying NASCAR broadcasts as more realistic venue than independent film festivals to reach out to potential child abusers. Obviously, this is a gross overstatement, and were I not committed to not altering the content of my writing once it’s published, that passage would be quietly exorcised.
As it turns out, the first negative feed-back the piece has produced has nothing to do with my comfort in pandering to southern stereotypes. Instead, it reads:

What gave you the right to plaster my fathers name {Coy Hubbard} over the internet? I guess people like you don't really care who's lives you are destroying, after all Sylvia Likens was 40+ years ago. I wasn't even born yet and you've destroyed mine.

Thank You,
Sincerely,
Dealing with it

Obviously, I would be a rube to not at least entertain the idea that this is someone pulling my leg for reasons too bizarre and obscure to imagine. At first I couldn’t fathom why my site was chosen; when either Hubbard’s or Likens’ names are entered into a search engine, hundreds of pages are found(this was an important case in the 60’s). While mine is not among the first hundred found for either name, I checked my site meter, which tracks this visitor as finding my site by typing “photos of coy hubbard and the murder of sylvia likens” into Yahoo (I tried it- mine is the first site that appears).

Because of the anonymity offered by the internet, I can never be sure who wrote this. But out of the remote chance that the actual real son or daughter of Coy Hubbard is the author, I feel compelled to write back.

Dear Sir or Madam,

It’s been a couple of hours since I discovered the comment you left at my site, and I’ve spent that time in careful consideration of how best to respond. There is a great deal of rage expressed in this short message, rage that seems wholly misdirected by being aimed at me. While brevity is hardly my strong point, I will try to apply it as I answer point by point.

First; the issue of my “right” in plastering your father’s name over the internet. I don’t know how extensive your internet searching has been, but I can hardly take the credit for introducing this story to the digital age. When typed (with quotes) Google kicks back 398 entries, and even allowing for the probability that there have been others who share that name, it would appear that this case isn’t going away. As such, I could easily hide behind the obvious and simple point that this is public record and a well covered case to boot, and I could even go so far as to offer a rhetorical question about Sylvia Likens’ “rights”, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll simply make this point; setting aside your personal relationship for a moment, do you want to live in a society where the protection of the guilty is so absolute that their name’s can never be mentioned in connection with the crimes they commit? Don’t get me wrong, I am no Dirty Harry style vigilante hell-bent on blood atonement; this is not one of those websites that list the current addresses and name changes of convicted criminals. Not only do I accept the possibilities of reform and redemption, but I truly hope your father achieved them, finding meaning and peace in his adult life. But while I have no interest in hounding people about their past bad choices, I also believe it is morally bankrupt to ignore that past because it makes people uncomfortable.

The suggestion that I “don’t really care whose lives” I destroy is absurd and offensive. Whose life have I destroyed, exactly? I am empathetic enough to concede the possibility that (hypothetically) there are others who are also responsible for your father’s presence in that house. Since most of the writing about the case is focused on the Baniszewski family, I can only speculate on what combination of emotional problems and miserable home lives brought the neighborhood kids into that nightmare, but the fact remains, they were there.

I certainly take exception to the statement that I’ve ruined your life; like you, I wasn’t even born when all this happened, and I think it’s incredible that my one passing mention of your father’s name is the cause of any personal catastrophe. If, through some unfortunate series of coincidences, my website is the first time you’re reading about this case…it’s just my bad luck, I guess. But the fact remains, among the couple of hundred websites that discuss this case, there’s a consensus of horror and disgust.

I highly recommend you come to peace with this situation soon, since, as I wrote in the original article, two Sylvia Likens movies are slated for release in the next few months (the criticism of being the actual topic of the piece). The filmmakers are using the real names, and while I don’t think either of these movies will be blockbusters, even modest success will mean a level of exposure well beyond the size of Millet’s book being assigned reading in gender studies courses…or my dink-ass website.

In conclusion, I don’t pretend that this response will in any way calm your anger or bring you to an acceptance of the specific context many people (myself included) view your father in. Rather, I expect that if you ever end up reading this, I’ll find an even angrier, more hostile message than the first one. I’m not looking forward to it, but I’m hard-pressed to think of anything I could write that would make this “better”, short of offering an apology for listing the participants in a hideous and inhuman crime- something in good conscious I cannot do. I take no pride from- nor find no pleasure in- the thought that stumbling into my site caused you any suffering this evening; I can only imagine the daily hell of living under the cloud of association with a crime committed before I was born. But as sad as that thought may make me, it does not change the fact that what I wrote was true, and that to falsely apologize or alter the text of a published piece would betray what it means to me to be a writer, and what it means to be a man.


Sincerely,
Jason M. Cutler