Sad Emails From Nancy Pelosi

by David Roth

As a general rule I try not to think too much about the national Democratic Party. Still, they text me from time to time, brusquely and always for money. I get emails purporting to be from Nancy Pelosi and James Carville and sometimes also a half-in-character Martin Sheen, all with the abject and uniquely dispiriting email subject lines—tonally it is always either “Do You Remember Values?” or “I’m Dying, David”—unique to Democratic fundraising appeals. 

Those emails are still coming, but they are sorted now into a folder where I never see them until I am the specific kind of high that moves me to do some bulk-deleting, and I open the folder. The subject lines seem doubly uncanny all stacked up like that, all urgent and terrified and three weeks or two months old.