The Dueling Boycott

He had not been expecting a letter. It was only because Mr. Tennyson's call to boycott the sponsors of a TV network reality show started through an elaborate email and texting campaign he helped design. But instead of holding a letterhead from a TV network executive reflecting concern over the boycott's effectiveness, it was a handwritten letter from an unexpected nemesis, Miss Pinsky. She opposed the boycott and was writing Tennyson to tell him she was going to do everything she could to stop a potential domino effect for network TV and his campaign to get that reality show stripped from the airwaves.

Your ill-advised attempt to change the face and shape of television won't work, Mr. Tennyson. You see, I also have an equal coterie of supporters who will keep buying those sponsor's products to keep that reality show on the air. Not everyone wants to turn the clock back on television 30 years when we already identify and enjoy reality shows as half-truth entertainment.

So said the middle part of Miss Pinsky's handwritten letter, written in a fierce handwriting style with the graphology signs of heavily dotted I's and swirls pointing straight up.

Tennyson considered his goals as ambitious as Miss Pinsky's, despite perfectly timed droplets of his developing sweat falling hard on each blistering adjective of her letter. It was Tennyson who felt he had the most realized ideal in America by managing to gather enough of a force to theoretically make a difference by taking on a boycott against a TV show he thought was ruining the state of television. The other difference was that he couldn't seem to gather enough support meeting face to face with people and only managed to get organized through a substantial group of friends in the online world he'd never met in person.

With this physical manifestation of a real, archaic, handwritten letter, it took seconds to form it into a guideless stone by an unseen David against a Goliath Miss Pinsky had never met in her life. Reading the final words of her letter revealed she was also sending word of the attempted boycott to the CEO of the TV network so head brass would be prepared and know the supporters would tune in to keep ratings at their usual high levels.

The intermittent sweat drops on Miss Pinsky's most adamant words were dry by the time Tennyson wasted no more than seconds to insert her letter into his fax machine. He was sending it off to a source he knew at the TV network who was clandestinely helping the boycott become a reality.

Because Tennyson only knew his secret source through the internet, the person was just a reliable abstract with no knowledge of gender. Nevertheless, a fax number and email were given out freely to Tennyson so he could pass on urgent news.

Rally your troops now, because I have an inside source saying there's a letter being delivered out of the mailroom to the CEO with the name Pinsky on the envelope...

So said a return email minutes later from the source that instigated a chill the second the subject line was seen in Tennyson's email box. And there sat more textual poison in his paper-littered office space located in a windowless den inside his home where he'd spent the last six months getting ready to control the future trajectory of television entertainment. It was the typical modern-day office doubling as home where you could communicate and potentially influence thousands if not millions of people without having a live meeting with a single person.

Now as if an incarnation of the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Tennyson began to direct his universe of cyberspace warriors into taking immediate action to counteract the inevitability that Miss Pinsky's letter was going to reverse everything. This rallying cry was a 21^st century Henry the Fifth call for war where a potentially damaging, horseless fleet could be called up in less than a minute.

A single comment on a social networking site put out a circuitous call of arms to disable the letter and use email, texting or a cell phone call to get a fast word to the CEO of the network that Tennyson's army meant business. After a ten-minute elated mania by Tennyson of conducting his universe and bringing all his followers to attention, the source at the network emailed again...

False alarm. It was a memo from a network board member named Zalinsky announcing a shakeup at the network. The board announced the CEO was voted out with a revamp of the network's structure to a home-shopping network. Poor guy, he didn't see it coming.

He hadn't been expecting a letter...