Back in Pave's heyday people of a different mind took the time to pen us the occasional complaint, splash a little high-toned vitriol, blast us to Hell, or just declare wounded feelings. All these written in colorful varieties of English: fractured, sputtering, weepy, bizarre.

Ah, but gone are the days. We get nary a tut in the mail now, much less a full-dress tut-tut. So imagine our surprise to receive the below from one Polyglotte11 (the eleventh in an indeterminate series of Polyglottes?):

From: POLYGLOTTE11
To: pavefrance-at-gmail.com
Date: Jun 8, 2005 10:46 PM
Subject: your site

I find it AMAZING that you would spend so much time and energy on a French bashing website (which I, unfortunately happened across). I only read your titles, refuse to read anymore, but I find your site hateful and that it promotes hate and prejudices.

I did click on your "shop" link to see what hate you are selling. I went to CafePress and saw that you are selling t-shirts. I wrote them an email and I asked if they had a policy against promoting hate and prejudice and I'm awaiting their reply.

Hate generates hate so you probably DO get a lot of hate mail.

Polyglotte11

Last things first. Alas, Polyglotte11, we do not. But your sensitive correspondence sent us back to re-read our titles. Perhaps we are better than we know, but it seems to us that the titles are rather weak tea without our trenchant posts. But you are a very clever person to have correctly divined -- from mere rubrics! -- that, yes, we do have an animus against France generally. However our big complaints are with her contemporary political class. But that discovery requires more reading than you can spare us.

We regret your unfortunate stumble into Pave and are amazed that you didn't damage your pieties and have risen as humorless as you fell. But then you didn't bother to read our views, so there was never any real danger to yours.

Hate may beget hate, as you say, yet yours, dear Polyglotte11, only provokes our mirth. Best go back and tighten the screws on that théorie simpliste.

Oh, and let us know how you get on with Cafépress shutting us down.

To everyone else, if you are glossing more than titles and wish to better instruct us, drop us a line at:
pavefrance-at-gmail.com

PFFT (What is this?): Crippling criticism 0 | Threat to the Pave merchandise empire 5