Mailed It

The so called Southern Poverty Law Center just settled a defamation lawsuit for $3.7 million smackers. As noted in a previous post, the SPLC may face further defamation suits. Inshallah. SPLC founder and bagman* Morris Dees is better described as a direct-mail marketing genius.

As it happens we know something about direct-mail marketing.

In the fall of 1999 we got a call back from one of our resume submissions, a direct mail marketing firm in Northern Virginia that liked the writing sample we submitted.**

We started the day after the Yankees won the 1999 World Series.

For the next year we wrote direct-mail fundraising letters for a bunch of second tier conservative organizations***

Basically, as does Dees, so did we. We wrote letters to scare the daylights out of people and get them to send money. Behold:

I'm writing you today, Mr. Flores, becuase without your $100 contribution to REDACTED Bill Clinton is going to let the UN bang down your door in the middle of the night and take away your guns...

And:

I hope your sitting down Mr. Carmichael becuase you're not going to believe what Bill Clinton is about to do. Did you know that at the end of the year Bill Clinton is going to turn the Panama Canal over to the corrupt, drug cartel dominated Panamanian government. I don't have to tell you, Mr. Carmichael, that the Panama Canal is the strategic lynchpin of our hemispheric defense. Which is why I'm hoping for your urgently needed $100 contribution to the REDACTED

Mailers usually included a four page letter at the end of which was some kind of 'involvement device', a form to fill out, an envelope, maybe a stamp. Our goal was to make the addressee feel like they had to take some kind of concrete action and that they were really participating in the fight against whomever the enemy was.

Once a person sent a check, we hit them up again and again.

If 5% of the addressees opened the mailer we were happy.

*I am begging you to file suit, Morris Dees. Begging you.
**A questionnaire on New York past and present we sent to Hillary Clinton's Senatorial campaign. Recall we are from New York. Sample: Robin Ventura is A-the Governor of Minnesota, B-a player on the NYSE, C- Third baseman for the Mets.... 
***One was involved in an important supreme court case and I'll send a free copy of the book of their choice to the person who gets it in the comments first.