To "liberals" who blame Nader for Gore losing the election...

(...yes, I'm still sick, but just so you all don't feel abandoned...)

For a long time my boyfriend Yves has been a big fan of "Savage Love" advice columnist Dan Savage. But Yves never felt compelled to write in until Savage printed & agreed with a letter from "Pissed-Off New Yorker" declaring that all the bad things happening in the country right now can be blamed on people (such as Yves and myself) who voted for Nader in 2000. Or as "Pissed-Off New Yorker" himself puts it: "Now you need to remind those assholes that the death of Roe v. Wade—and of any progress on privacy and gay rights in the United States—is all THEIR fuckin' fault."

Yves (and I) would beg to differ. So he wrote his own letter:

Just read your column (like I do every week), and saw the letter from "Pissed-Off New Yorker". I'm going to say this one last time to "liberals" who blame Nader for Gore losing the election.

Thousands of registered voters were removed from the polls in Florida in the months leading to the election. State law says that ex-felons cannot vote in Florida -- but an overwhelming majority of those removed had never committed a crime in their lives. An additional eight thousand Floridians were thrown off the polls thanks to another list erroneously listing them as ineligible -- even though their voting privileges had been reinstated, or, in some cases, were never taken away in the first place. The elections supervisor of Madison County, Florida -- who had never committed a crime in her life -- was on a list of people denied their right to vote.

The majority of those people blocked from voting? African-Americans, who historically vote Democrat.Who was responsible? Surprise, surprise -- Jeb Bush, Katherine Harris, and the state of Texas, who sent Florida the latter list.

If people who bitch and moan about the inability of Al Gore to capitalize on eight years of Democratic prosperity spent even a fraction of that energy actively protesting against perhaps the worst violation of the Civil Rights Act in forty years, we might not have a puppet presidency right now. But it's a lot sexier to blame Nader for that slim margin of defeat, isn't it? -- Pissed-off At People's Perpetual Ignorance

P.S. It's hard for me to say something this "cold", Dan, since I love you, your books, and your column, but I do dare you to print and respond to this.

I hope Dan prints his letter, but just in case he doesn't, I figured I would.