BUILD GOODWILL EXAMPLE: WRITE ON !

[THE anecdote told in class about the letter to Ben & Jerry’s regarding their gritty ice cream was designed to motivate you to use persuasive techniques you are learning in this course whenever possible. It is also designed to help you realize that you have some power to change situations you dislike. My effort to show you the benefits of using communication skills wisely should create awareness of my goodwill. The following advice applies our course content to another real life issue: How to “Get Even” when you sense an injustice has been done.]

An angry letter, when properly executed, is a thing of beauty. It is a perfect poison dart to the neck of your enemy, flying swift and true to the mark, penetrating the skin, and spreading paralytic poisons throughout your quarry's system. Sound good? Let's get started! You will need the following: 1. A computer. 2. A printer with paper. 3. An envelope. 4. A stamp. 5. A clue.

Now, angry emails can be a beautiful thing. I've got nothing against them. They are the one-night-stand of complaints. They are typically brief and satisfying and require no real level of commitment. However, this makes them all the more easy to disregard by editors, reporters, politicians, and ex-lovers. To really, really show that you mean business, nothing works quite so well as an actual letter on paper that you took the time to seal, stamp, and mail. I have also found that paper letters are much, much more likely to elicit a personal response from the addressee.

Step One: Keep it Short

This is the alpha and omega of the angry letter. No one is going to read your eleven-page Unabomber-style manifesto. The poor souls (aka, your friends) you forced to look it over before you sent it were just being polite to you when they handed it back saying, "Uh, it's fine!"

It's not fine. It's too damn long. An editor, ombudsman, or congressional aide is going to open it and see the rows and rows of tightly-packed print and immediately wad it up and toss it in the garbage. No one has time for all the meandering digressions of your rant. This is not a blog post. The addressee didn't come to you to ask what you think. You have come to them in the middle of their busy day of scarfing cocktail weenies, sipping Kool-Aid, and having two hour breakfasts at tony DC hotels. You've got under three minutes to make your case, so make it good.

Step One: No more than four paragraphs. No more than twelve sentences.

ABOVE ALL, RESTRICT YOUR RANT TO ONE PAGE.

This is crucial. When I say no more than twelve sentences, I don't mean fourteen. I mean twelve or fewer. The tighter and more compact you can make your beautiful poison dart, the further it will fly and the deeper its poisoned tip will bite into the skin. ALSO, getting all of your thoughts on one page shows explicitly that you have some discipline. You can always write another letter later.

Step Two: Don't Swear

Again, your letter is not a blog post. The more intelligent and authoritative you can be in your delivery, the greater your credibility will be with the addressee. If you are a 28-year-old mother of two, it helps to include this information. Make sure you are registered to vote and can validly claim to have voted. If writing to a corporation, mention that you buy their products and recommend the product to friends and family. Most effective: if you have already voted for the person to whom you are writing, mention this. Also mention that you talk to friends and family about voting, thus suggesting you constitute a mini-bloc of sorts. [This tactic works. Read the Charlie Wilson anecdote.] Above all, you are merely a concerned citizen who is speaking up in the name of decency, integrity, and Everything that Makes this Country of Ours Great. (See Step Three, "The Moral High Ground")

So, remember, you're not angry. At least, not on paper. Even if your hands are visibly shaking with rage as you type, your prose should be as calm and imperturbable as a glacial lake. You can be appalled, shocked, disgusted, disappointed, saddened, and embarrassed for the author, but the one thing you do not want to communicate is anger. Starting with a tone of 90-decibel rage is only going to make your reader defensive and angry themselves. So, start calmly and coolly. That way if you must pour on the boiling oil in the last paragraph or two, you've left yourself some room for that.

Step Three: Assume the Moral High Ground and Do Not Let Go

This is one of the most important aspects of an angry letter. As much as every person would like to believe that they are an adult, fully capable of reasoning and making decisions for themselves, everybody on this earth has a momma and a daddy, which means that everybody at some point has been soundly scolded by someone. The key to successfully assuming the moral high ground is to take this tone with your addressee from the outset and cue up their frightened, "Ah! I'm in trouble!" instinct before they have the time to think better of it.

To this end, one should write as if you are doing your duty to the addressee by snatching them up by the scruff of their neck and setting them straight. You are saving them from future embarrassment and error. You are doing it For Their Own Good. This is where phrases your parents used on you can come in very handy, "I'm not angry with you, I'm just very, very disappointed" or "It grieves me to have to point this out to you, but I thought it best for your reputation and career that I do it rather than someone who really, really hates you." The person to whom you are writing has failed in some way. The purpose of your letter is to address this failure and make certain that the recipient will think twice before making this kind of error again.

Step Four (Advanced): Be Manipulative

As much as you are comfortable doing so, play head games with your opponent. You are writing as a sort of friend, a concerned member of the public who wants to save your addressee future embarrassment, both personal and professional. An openly angry letter can be dismissed out of hand, but a letter that whispers persuasively to a person about their own fears and feelings of inadequacy can keep them awake at night for years to come. !

Most Americans define themselves through their jobs. So, ask yourself what this person's fears about their job are likely to be. Are they afraid of being a laughingstock among their colleagues? Are they afraid of damaging their movement as a whole? Are they afraid of being outmoded and left behind by new generations of writers and thinkers? Or conversely, are they just a beginner who is frightened of making mistakes that will keep them out of the big leagues forever? As much as you can ascertain these things, make use of them in your letter. Use words like "unprofessional", "sub-standard", "unacceptable", "sophomoric", and "amateurish". Avoid words of screaming condemnation as much as you can, like "cowardly", "lying", "despicable", and the like. You are attacking the person's stance, not the person.

However, words that convey a value-judgment about their job performance like "tawdry", "shallow", "meretricious", and "disingenuous" are all good. Just make sure that you're making a distinction between the person and their position. Telling a person that they're a scum-sucking, worthless waste of good protein whose highest ambition in life should be to become good compost may make you feel better, but it will do nothing to change that person's performance. Remember, this is an advanced step. If you feel it is beyond your ken, despair not, gentle reader. Merely state your case plainly and authoritatively and everything will be just fine.

Finally, a couple of minor stylistic points. It's best NOT to begin your letter with "I", as in, "Dear Mr. Smith, I am writing to you because blah de blah diddy-blah". A wise grammarian once told me that formal letters never begin with "I". Of course, this is one of those things like the serial comma by which grammar geeks like me swear and other normal people disdain as an infringement on their personal writing style. I just think it's best to start your letter with the facts of the matter, as in the following example:

Dear Mr. Smith:

On Sunday, March 4th on your show "Meet the Pawns", you allowed right wing author and columnist George F. Will to state several blatant falsehoods uncontested. As a concerned viewer, I feel that it is my duty to point out to you that letting this kind of misleading information stand as fact on your program reflects badly on television journalism in general and upon you in particular.

I am aware of the doubts cast on your objectivity and professionalism by revelations brought forth in the Scooter Libby trial. I trust that you are doing everything in your power to push back against the resulting perception of you as a ventriloquist's dummy for the White House. It would be a shame to see your entire career as a journalist become a footnote to Mary Matalin's characterization of you as an easy mark for the Bush administration's talking points.

Good luck. Best, T. Rex, Esq. Athens, GA

See how simple that is, and yet manages to call into question Smith’s entire reason for being? Sometimes, you can accomplish a lot more by speaking in a low, reasonable tone than by writing, "Dear Mr. Smith, Yo, Pumpkinhead! What the HELL are you THINKING?, etc." Also, spell-check rigorously. Then spell-check again. Nothing says, "Hi, I'm an ignorant rube!" quite like mixing up there, their, and they're, or to, too, and two, and so forth. Don't use words that you aren't intimately familiar with, and be on your guard against dropping too many "impressive" vocabulary words where simpler, clearer language would do. Nothing shoots your argument in the foot quite like poor spelling, bad grammar, and malapropisms. Any questions? SOURCE (with minor edits): http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/03

HOW EFFECTIVE IS THIS APPROACH ?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/category/ads/

Ads Pulled From Coulter Site: By Nicole Belle

CNN: At least three major companies pulled their ads from Ann Coulter's Web site, following customer complaints about the right-wing commentator referring to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards as a "faggot." Verizon, Sallie Mae and Georgia-based NetBank each said they didn't know their ads were on AnnCoulter.com until they received complaints. That’s because many firms use media buying services that claim expertise with specific areas, markets, demo groups, etc. So it is better to assume that the company you are complaining to may have been inadvertently exposed to the risk of losing sales (you might take your business elsewhere) by outsourcing the purchase of ad time for many other programs. [NOTE: THIS ASSUMPTION, BESIDES BEING CHARITABLE AND REASONABLE, ALSO allows everyone to consider, and act on your complaint in business-like terms.] There are many places to buy ad time without controversy. Businesses do not want to alienate current or potential customers. Their reluctance to antagonize is not a weakness; use it to your advantage as well as to theirs. ( If you resort to insults, you invite rejection.)

A diarist at the liberal blog DailyKos.com posted contact information for dozens of companies with ads on Coulter's site after the commentator made her remarks about John Edwards at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Friday. "One of the best ways to communicate one's distaste for Coulter's repeated incidents of hate speech is to respectfully but firmly let her advertisers know you are deeply troubled by their indirect support of bigotry through their advertising on Coulter's Web site," the blogger VolvoDrivingLiberal wrote on DailyKos.com.

I'm a big believer in the power of our collective voices. Especially the power of the written letter. Feedback does affect the way people do their jobs; overwhelming feedback can change the way a job is done. This is perfect proof. I've seen a lot of comments to the effect of "Well, all we do is complain on these blogs about how bad things are. Nothing gets better that way." Very true. Lend your voice. Keep in mind that paper letters (while not environmentally sound) do pull more weight than emails. Let's be part of the process.