I got an email yesterday from a person who claimed to be the wife of a United Auto Worker. Her first paragraph read, “Stupidity should be your middle name. You state you saw the ‘worst-looking’ people on your visit to Nashville. Have you looked in the mirror lately? I laughed hysterically while reading the article and then looking at that picture of you.”

I learned some time ago the Internet is a lot like Talk Radio. I’ve found you can never be really certain of a true identity unless you meet somebody face-to-face. While there is little room to doubt my authenticity – or stupidity – after 40 years of writing columns with my picture attached, you would be amazed at how many phonies have found you can say anything as long as you can hide behind some silly nickname on a big domain like AOL or Google or Yahoo.

Well, I’ve got news for all of you children; when it comes to being called names I am an All-Pro. I can honestly say I’ve been called things I had to research to find out what I was that day. I’ve been salted-and-peppered more in my lifetime than most, but, then again, I’ve had many, many more readers love on me so I figure it is all part of the big picture.

When you are bold enough to put yourself on a pedestal, the first guy who comes along will try to knock you off - just for the fun of it. Remember, I started writing when I still had acne so I’ve got a pretty tough hide by now. I’ve also been able to talk to some of the greatest writers in the world and, if you think I’ve been called an ignoramus or a nincompoop a time or two, the tales the legends share are far better than mine.

The way I have always handled it was with a truism I adopted before I was 20 years old that goes, “Never get into a fight with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” Further, the only thing that ever happens when I get mad is that the overall effort of the whole squabble makes me tired.

The other truth about “The Legion of the Miserable,” which is a great name for those who spend their time trying to hurt people or gossip about somebody or relish in another’s plight, is the fact that if they are talking about you, they are giving somebody else a rest. I’ve always figured that if somebody was poor-mouthing me, then the President of the United States, whoever it was at the time, was having a better day.

My kids still laugh about the death threats I used to get. One Friday I wrote that upstart Auburn would beat a great Tennessee team the next day (UT won, of course) and some clown called the house to tell me I was going to die. My kids thought it was hysterical when I said, “Fine, but could you hurry … I gotta’ leave for work in about 30 minutes.”

I guess the worst lashing I ever took was when these two brothers once had this sports talk show and, boy, if I wrote that something was green they’d swear it was red the very same day. The truth is I have never listened to Talk Radio because there no credibility in what “Elmer from Lebanon” has to say. The trouble is, Elmer can tell the most outlandish lie in the world and listeners will swear it is true because they “heard it on the radio.”

I don’t mean to bash the good guys who have talk shows because I have friends all across the South who still get me to call in on a real slow day. But you talk about a slippery slope; Abraham Lincoln once said a lie will travel halfway around the world before the truth ever catches up with it.

Well, these two brothers kept on and on and soon they were talking about my family, my wife and my kids. People loved to tell me what they said, but my stock answer was, and still is, “God bless ‘em.”

One night it got really bad, but, again, I never heard a word of it because I made a conscious choice to never listen, instead going with heavy rock-n-roll. The sun wasn’t up the next day before three different lawyers called to plead that we go after them on serious libel charges.

They said they could put the tapes, which had already been transcribed, in front of any jury and we couldn’t lose. But I kept going back to my creed about the pig – you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

Not too long after that I think the FCC or somebody in government wanted to get real involved. I got a call from an official-sounding man claiming to be from the Justice Department, but, again, you really don’t know until you see the badge. I told the guy the pig story, and he laughed. The man said, “Who knows, you might own that station,” and then he laughed again when I said, “Who wants to own a station like that?”

I thought that was the end of it, but then I got another call a few weeks later from a man who said he was with the station, as I recall, and he wanted to come by my office for a formal apology and offered me air time and had worked himself up into what sounded like a pretty big sweat.

Again, I didn’t know who the caller really was – he could have been “Elmer from Lebanon” for all I know -- so I told him to save his breath and may God bless ‘em all.

In the years that have passed, one of the brothers has gotten to be a casual friend of mine and I delight whenever I hear about his wife or his children doing well. The big thing as far as I am concerned is that I did the right thing by not getting into “a fight with a pig.”

I now understand why they did it; they just wanted somebody to pay attention to them. That’s the same reason the wife of the UAW worker wanted me to know that she had laughed so hard when she looked at my picture.

But the better story is that I know she’d just heard on her radio that the automobile bailout had gone south, that she was mad and frustrated and scared, but … well, I did sorta’ glance at myself in the mirror on the way to take my shower, you know?

royexum@aol.com