Okay, I still have to write about my visit to the Tabasco sauce factory, but it’s really late and I’m too tired for a long post with pictures.
I just got a letter from WBUR (Boston’s NPR news station) asking for money. Don’t get me wrong, I like NPR, and listen to it almost every day. I’ve even given them money in the past. I wouldn’t claim they’re an unbiased news source, but I don’t think any news source is, and for the most part I find myself in agreement with their politics (otherwise I probably wouldn’t enjoy listening to them so much).
There’s one line in the letter though, that just encapsulates what most irritates me about them. They’re trying to point out how the reader of the fundraising letter relies on NPR (and hence should give them more money), and they ask:
“Have you ever held court at a party because you could talk with confidence about the complexities of the recession, not just in the U.S., but also in Spain, Germany and Greece?”
For one thing, the only parties I go to where people would be impressed by my ability to parrot back whatever I heard on NPR last week tend to be attended by other people who also listen religiously to NPR, and probably also heard that same news segment.
For another … “hold court”? Maybe there’s a target audience for this letter that does see themselves holding court, entrancing all the other cocktail party attendees with their knowledge and insight. Not that I never try, but I usually look back afterwards and think, “You know, I sounded kind of full of myself.”
This was the letter from WBUR in Boston, so maybe the NPR fundraising letter in other regions of the country sounds a little less pretentious.
As one of my roommates pointed out, lines like that are why many people who don’t listen to NPR think those of us who do are a bunch of smug assholes.
*chuckle* I rarely actually read the letters various orgs I support send, and never in any detail. I guess I’m missing something (maybe it’s to their benefit — the food bank tends to send letters that make me more mad than compassionate).
On a similar vein, I had a prof in grad school who often said “and you can talk about this at your next cocktail party” about random chemistry factoids.
You mean those letters about their new campaign, where you can get your name on a plaque on their wall for donating $1000? I’ve found those pretty annoying, too. The Boston Food Bank is actually pretty innocuous though, as far as obnoxious pleas for funds from charitable organizations go. The American Cancer Society is probably about the worst; they’ll call you repeatedly at home and not only try to hit you up for a pledge, but also try to get you to volunteer to stuff envelopes, and it’s really hard to get them off them phone without being rude. I think I’m on their “Do not call” list now, though.
Doctors Without Borders sends some of the least annoying letters I’ve received. I actually don’t read fundraising letters from these organizations very closely, for the most part (though sometimes I read parts of the little magazine or bulletin that some of them will send). But sometimes they make the mistake (like WBUR did) of making the letter brief and elegantly concise enough to be skimmed in 30 seconds or less; there’s probably annoying stuff in some of the long, rambling 2-page missives other orgs send out, but I don’t notice because it’s on page 2 or 3 and I tossed it into the recycling bin after the 2nd sentence.
It would be a chemistry prof who said that, wouldn’t it? I bet he buys t-shirts from the American Chemical Society.