Comedian Ari Shaffir

It’s from this cool dude.  www.myspace.com/lifttillwedie

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Date:  Mar 28, 2009 7:26 AM

I dont think u will live much longer if you piss people of like you are doing right now, someone is going to find you

so i thought id let you know amazing racist
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Here’s what I think most people who write me the nearly exact same letter
don’t seem to understand.  I love it.  I love the hate mail.  The people who
write them are nearly always dimwits.  And they’re crazy.  I want to read
those letters in the same way I love talking to homeless people.  It’s
entertaining on an “I know I’m supposed to be no better than anyone else,
but you clearly prove that’s not the case” level.  I won’t even explore the
misspellings or the need to shorten you to u when using a full keyboard,
because they’re too obvious.  Nor will I go into what irony is, and how if
you can’t tell that I’m not really racist, by the way I yell at a Latino man
to “Go back to Africa.” then maybe you’re not really examining those videos
fully.  I am a clearly Jewish man wearing a Klan outfit.  Do you maybe think
I’m not really in the KKK?  Perhaps I am, but think about it for a bit, and
you’ll probably have your answer.  Nail salons aren’t known for giving out
“happy endings,” yet there I am trying to get one.  Perhaps I did that on a
comedic level.  Interpret it however you want, but is it possible that these
videos done for National Lampoons were done to elicit laughter and they
shouldn’t be interpreted as an actual random day in my life?  Again, you
interpret it however you want, but it’s something to consider.

As for this particular letter, this would be my response.  It WOULD BE my
response, because, like 50% of the people who write me angry messages, they
have their profiles set to not allow return messages.  It’s very brave to
write a hate filled message to someone you don’t know and will never meet
while making sure they can’t even let you know how dumb you are.  Very
brave.  So this is what I would have responded to him had he allowed it.

“Well, those videos have been around for 5 years and my tour schedule is and
always has been on the front of my MySpace page and my website.  Why would
it be more likely to happen now than it has been over the last half decade?

And faggot is an offensive term.  I’m glad to see you set the line at hate
speech for only certain people.  It really shows how you don’t think all
groups of people are born equal, which is at the core of any racist belief.”

Please look for yourself at how awesome this guy is from his profile.  You
can’t see the pictures unless you make friends with him, but I’m almost
positive he’ll be showing off how rad he is in at least one of them.  And it
will not be ironic.

My favorite messages are the ones that carry hatred inside of them, while
decrying seemingly hateful acts.  Here’s the deal.  I’m Jewish, but I don’t
care about it.  I make Holocaust jokes when they fit.  I take no pride or
shame in the fact that my parents are Jewish.  It’s just something that is.
So you’re not going to make me angry, by making anti-Jewish jokes.  Well,
you’ll make me a little angry when they’re bad jokes, but that’s only
because it offends me on a comedic level.  The same level of joke about any
subject would offend me the same.  And it seems that a lot of people also
like to try to insult me by referring to me as a homosexual.  Which, I’m
sorry to say, is not something I find insulting.  I believe around 8% of the
population is gay.  It’s not a positive or a negative.  It’s just something
people are.  My best friend in college was gay.  Gay Andrew, we called him.
Or Gandrew for short.  When we wanted to insult him, we wouldn’t just call
him gay.  If we did, he would just respond, “Yeah, I’m gay.  I know.”  And
trying to insult a heterosexual by simply insinuating that he or she is one
of the 8% of people born as a homosexual, is akin to calling me a Chink.
It’s NEVER going to make me feel bad.  I’m not infallible.  It’s just that
insulting a heritage on which I place no positive or negative value or
placing me into a percentage of the population who has done nothing to find
their way into that population is not going to do it.

Here’s why I think that they think those things will hurt me.  I think those
are the things that would hurt them.  They only know their own experience.
And they try to to project that experience onto others.  But that doesn’t
always work.  Often people share the same experiences, but it’s not always
the case.  If a professional skateboarder tries to insult me by saying that
my kick flips look like a little boy’s if he had cerebral palsy, well,
that’s not going to sting as much as if I really worked on my kick flips and
took pride in their quality.

I think I’ll start posting more of these letters in the future.  Unless I
get no response from them.  But if people like them, I’ll put up more and
I’ll try to explore (much shorter than this.  Sorry) specifically why each
letter fills me with joy.