Spammer in Chief
Dear Mr. President: Please stop spamming me.
I received my first piece of unsolicited e-mail from President Obama on Feb. 2. He wanted me to spread the word about his recovery plan for America - you know, the one where my higher taxes keep failing businesses like Chrysler afloat. "I know I can rely on your spirit and resolve as we lead our country to recovery," the prez wrote.
There was a note at the bottom of the message: "Powered by Hope and Supporters Like You," implying that if I donated to the Democratic National Committee, I could get more spam. Yippee!
That month, I received three Obamaspams, then silence, until last week. "Alex," my pal Barack wrote, "I am proud to announce my nominee for the next Justice of the United States Supreme Court: Judge Sonia Sotomayor." The e-mail included a four-minute special video created just for this e-blast. "I just wanted to take a few minutes to share with you an important decision I am announcing today," blah blah blah.
The sender of record is "President Barack Obama," but this e-trash actually emanates from "Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee." So I phoned them: How did I get on this list? I certainly never asked for presidential spam. (I did solicit spam from the Hillary Clinton campaign, comedy material that did not disappoint.) And is taping these promos really the best use of the president's time?
"We don't know how you got on the list, but we will un-subscribe you immediately - an option you could choose to do yourself," the DNC's communications director Brad Woodhouse e-mailed me. (I see it now, "unsubscribe," three screens down, in ant-size type.) "The DNC does pay for and uses its own equipment to film the president for OFA/DNC emails as approved by the White House Counsel's office."
So it's all on the up-and-up. Just as I suspected!
Mack was the proverbial man of many parts. He founded the progressive psychiatry department at Cambridge Hospital. He won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for his biography of T.E. Lawrence, a work that still infuriates Britons, because it revealed some of the great hero's unnerving sexual tics.
After that, Mack threw himself into investigating purported alien abductions and published two more books: "Abduction" and "Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters." It was Page One stuff: His Harvard colleagues accused him of besmirching their august "Veritas" logo with his UFO frippery. Mack hired a savvy defense lawyer, Eric MacLeish, who beat back his adversaries and later gained a measure of fame and infamy as counsel to the victims of abuse by Catholic priests.
Two Mackolytes, Dominique Callimanopulos, board member of the John Mack Institute, and filmmaker Randy Nickerson, have been working on a movie that may reintroduce Mack to a new generation of admirers or detractors. "Encounter in Ruwa: The Ariel School Sighting" narrates Mack's 1994 trip to Zimbabwe to investigate a famous UFO appearance "confirmed" by dozens of schoolchildren.
I've seen excerpts from the movie - who knows? Kids say the darnedest things. I asked Callimanopulos if Mack's work, once underwritten by new age-y philanthropist Larry Rockefeller, had continued after the psychiatrist's death. "Not really," she answered. "The Mack Institute is dormant at the moment. It's a case of founder's syndrome; he built up institutions that were mirrors of his own personality and evolution."
What about society's acceptance of "experiencers," who say they've had contact with aliens? "Dennis Kucinich is still going to get ridiculed when he talks about aliens," Callimanopulos said. By contrast, Nickerson noted that some UFO tales are going mainstream. "Back then it was all 'X-Files,' " he said. "Now you're seeing these stories on the Discovery and History channels."
Nickerson and Callimanopulos will show some of their movie at 7 p.m. on June 12 at 38Cameron in Cambridge. Call 617-661-0203 or e-mail domcall94@gmail.com for details.
Alex Beam is a Globe columnist. His e-dress is beam@globe.com. 