My Dad, bless him, is getting old. he's also a hardcore Republican and Christian. That's his right to be, and that's just groovy, but he's got a terrible tendency to include me in every stupid "forward this to everyone on your mailing list" e-mails he gets...and with that crowd, you can imagine the kinds of e-mails. Seriously, some of these damn things are only a hop, skip, and jump away from Tea Party bullshit.
Normally, I just ignore them, delete them, and move on. Today, though, I decided on a new campaign of educational rebuttal. Every time I can prove that what he's sending around is wrong and back it up with facts and links, I'm not just sending it to him, I'm sending it to the same damn list. Ring the bells, school's in session.
This one was "everyone should refuse to use the new US dollar coins, because they don't have "In God We Trust" on them, and that's just another way they are trying to phase God out of this country". Whoever "they" are, of course. It took all of 15 seconds to find the truth on Snopes.com, of course (for those link-phobic/tl;dr among you, the words are on the edges of the coins). Sent out a quick e-mail to the whole list (37 of them, cripes...), admonishing people to do some basic research before sending out an inflammatory message to everyone they know so they don't look foolish. Described the misconception, added the link, and closed with a small word on the First Amendment and how 80% of the country is Christian, so it's pretty doubtful that "God" is going away anytime soon but, regardless, to take a cue from Christianity and love your fellow man instead of screaming at him for something that's not true.
Obviously, I don't know most of the list, apart from a few distant family members who are pretty much the same as Dad. I'm willing to believe that most of them will either ignore the message or will scoff and figure I'm some liberal weirdo (after all, the message will arrive addressed from "Archmage Chaos"). Still, do this enough times, and either a few of them will start to learn and question and maybe *gasp* THINK occasionally, or Dad will stop sending me shit because I make him look bad.
Either way, I win.