Doug Clark: Foul e-mail puts public service into perspective

We don’t pay our City Council members enough.

I know. This from the guy who’s carved a career out of lampooning the folly and foibles of the fearless leaders of Spokane City Hall.

But there should be a hazardous duty bonus available when council members become the targets of right-wing religious loons.

Case in point is the vile e-mail that was beamed to the council last Tuesday.

Agitated by a decision to remove crosses from the badges worn by Spokane police chaplains, this cyber snake addressed council members as leftist secular subhumans.

And that was the nice stuff.

“Personally, I hope you all suffer soon, painfully and slowly.”

I’m always astounded when an idiot can manage to manipulate a computer keyboard while his head is buried 2 feet up his …

The e-mail hit Joe Shogan especially hard.

It is no doubt to blame for the council president’s abnormally tense and ill-tempered behavior during a City Council gathering on Thursday.

Shogan’s reported hostility toward two figures who played an ancillary role in the badge fracas prompted Councilman Steve Corker to offer the pair amends.

Shogan didn’t appreciate Corker’s intercession and told him so.

I dropped in on Shogan Friday to get a copy of the e-mail that shook him up so.

He met me at his office cubicle. Shogan presented the document for my inspection.

“I saw combat in Vietnam,” he said. “So I know what it’s like to have my life placed in danger.”

Shogan added that he never imagined that serving on the council might jeopardize the safety of himself and his family.

But we’re living in an Age of Extremists.

To continue the e-mail:

“Oh, by the way, when the Muslim fanatics in Washington State start killing innocents, I hope you people are able to be really close-up witnesses of your sanctuary policies, hopefully they will remove your blindfold and let you watch them decapitate your children first.”

Isn’t that nice?

Just like in the military, police chaplains still can wear lapel pins to advertise religious affiliation. That fact was lost on this sick boob.

The e-mail bears a name, which I won’t relay. The Internet is a wild frontier of fraud, deception and self-important hack bloggers. More particulars hopefully will emerge after police investigate the matter.

Get a load of how the e-mail ends:

“May God’s wrath fall upon you. May flood, famine and pestilence abound around you. May the unclean scourge and torture you and yours.”

The work of a poisoned soul to be sure, but is Shogan overreacting to how much danger it represents?

Years ago I might have thought so.

I once received some threatening letters that I took seriously enough to call the police. The lieutenant I spoke with actually laughed. He’d love to look into it, he told me, but there were “too many suspects.”

The world is different today. Freaks shoot up schools and shopping malls – and that’s without the faith factor. Throw God into the mix and zealots will bomb abortion clinics.

Or slam jet planes into skyscrapers.

The point is that you can’t afford to be too careful anymore – especially when religion is involved.

On Friday, the City Council interviewed candidates for the seat vacated when Mary Verner became mayor.

The prospective council members were warned about long hours, tedious board and committee meetings and all the obligations that go along with this thankless, low-paying job.

Shogan should have passed out copies of the e-mail.

That might have thinned the ranks some.