If email could kill....

The following letter is part of a public discussion initiated by Uriel's letter of Dec. 9, 2005 objecting to management abuses at his Toronto squash club (which is part of the Bally Total Fitness Holding Corp. empire). See index for list of letters in the discussion.

From: Uriel Wittenberg
To: [numerous Northridge club members]
Sent: Thursday, December 22, 2005 11:23 AM
Subject: If email could kill....

Your (no longer my) Vice President, Jodi Wellman, has sent me a response to my last message — the one where I help her quote the contract correctly.

She is not pleased.

She's not even pretending to be friendly anymore.

What seems to have gotten her particularly steamed was my suggestion that I'd stay on at Northridge til May. Northridge is her territory. And as her email reminds me, she has already told me my membership is over. (Sound of slamming door.)

Strictly between you and me — I am relieved she didn't cancel the cancellation.

My acting like I'd be glad to stay til next May, in that last message of mine? That was actually a bluff.

But it looks like there was no danger she'd call me on it. This lady is really not going to miss me.

At this point it's probably fair to say you won't be seeing me again at Northridge anytime soon.

But if you're staying there — as you hear the gangsta rap coming over Bally's new, no-alternative-channel satellite sound system, you might think of Bob Herbert and what he says today in his New York Times column:

It is time to blow the whistle on the nitwits who have so successfully promoted a values system that embraces murder, drug-dealing, gang membership, misogyny, child abandonment and a sense of self so diseased that it teaches children to view the men in their orbit as niggaz and the women as hoes....

The slaughter of E. J. Duncan, who was 21, and his friends - Jason Bachiller, 21; Jihad Chankhour, 22; and Christopher Vieira, 19 - was all but literally accompanied by a hip-hop soundtrack. Duncan, Bachiller and Vieira were members of a rap group called Graveside, which favored the rough language and violent imagery that has enthralled so many youngsters and bolstered the bottom lines of major entertainment companies.

The Rev. Eugene Rivers, who has been fighting for years to reduce youth violence in Boston and elsewhere, was a neighbor of E. J. Duncan's. "My son Malcolm knew E. J. well," he told me.

He described the murders as a massacre and said he has long been worried about the glorification of violence and antisocial behavior. "Thug life," he said, "is now being globalized," thanks to the powerful marketing influence of international corporations.

[Excerpt from Blowing the Whistle on Gangsta Culture, by Bob Herbert, New York Times, December 22, 2005.]

I would ordinarily share the message Jodi sent me with you, but this time she's added a formal, legal-sounding statement at the end that seems to threaten that I'll lose my house if I publicize it.

You know.... I'm going to take a chance here and quote the statement itself:

This message, including any attachments, is solely for the use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and/or privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution of this communication is expressly prohibited.

I don't know what might happen to me now. But I'll confide something else to you. Frankly, I don't have access to anywhere near the legal firepower that Bally can command. Bally is a billion dollar company. Next to that, I'm a pygmy. Not even.

So I've got to be very careful. They'll pounce on any opening I give them. Luckily, so far, Jodi has managed to be 100% wrong about everything.

Jodi's message also has a further statement that asks you, my fellow members, to fink on me in case I ignore the threat:

If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy any and all copies of the original message. Thank you.

I doubt any of you would oblige. But I'm sorry, the initiation fee is bad enough, I don't want to lose the house too....