Patrick Murphy meet my spam filter

I just got spam from some Democrat running for Congress in Pennsylvania. He felt it very important that I know that he helped rebuild some house today. Well bully for him. I'm sure that among the news of Tony Blair wanting to wiretap members of Parliament and Al Gore accusing George Bush of breaking the law you'll all be very interested in me updating you on the latest home-building efforts of some guy you've never heard of.

I don't mean to be bitchy, but I will be. I am getting so much email now that several times a week I simply miss important emails in my in-box. I got an invite to speak at a rather important conference, never saw it. Press requests, no clue. The volume of email is out of control.

Why bring this up? Not to blame you guys who email me and send me great source material. Some of the best stuff on this blog, much of it actually, comes to me from you guys, our readers, via email. We love it, you do amazing work, and you're what makes this blog effective.

But when Patrick Murphy's assistant sends me a press release telling me he helped rebuild the home of a disabled Marine, I want to rip the head off small kittens. This is the kind of crap that all of the top bloggers are getting from clueless people around the country. They add people to email lists without our permission, or just feel the need to send crap all day long.

Well, the crap has got to stop. This isn't just affecting me, it's affecting every high-traffic blogger. It's affecting journalists we're all trying to influence. It's affecting politicians. It's making it so that email is no longer effective and reliable for anybody. And that's bad. Real bad.

Please think before you send an email. Is it really something the person you're sending it to really needs to see, or are you just spamming a lot of people and not carefully considering each recipient's interest?

And for the love of God, don't add anyone to your email list without their permission.

And one more thing. Send me a press release on any topic and you die.

Okay, our two minutes hate is over. And for the record, Mr. Murphy's entire campaign is now permanently in my spam filter, no email from anyone there will ever see my in-box ever again.