Kerry Kennedy meant to spread holiday cheer with an e-mailed Christmas card, but the message sparked an e-fight among recipients, including billionaire financier Steven Rattner, actress Catherine Keener and former Kennedy family political adviser Alan Fleischmann.
The brouhaha started when Kennedy, who’s president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center, blasted out a holiday card with an image of her family, a biblical quote and “Merry Christmas.”
Even though the recipients were bcc’d, thanks to a tech glitch, anyone who responded by hitting “Reply All” sent their message plus e-mail address to Kennedy’s full distribution list.
Initial responses to the Dec. 25 card were cheerfully supportive — “Beautiful photo! Beautiful family!” and “Just the sunshine I needed” — from those including “24” star Dennis Haysbert, producer Mike Medavoy and actor Matthew Modine.
But as an unending stream of trite responses clogged inboxes, a war of words broke out. “Please remove me from mass e-mails to Kerry in reply to her christmas card,” snapped activist Valerie Sklarevsky. “Please REMOVE ME FROM YOUR EMAIL LISTS!!!” begged another. Karen Duffy also asked to be taken off the list. Finally, on Friday, an e-mailer said he was copying RFK Center COO John Zurick to “suspend the group e-mail that led to the inbox clutter.”
Fed-up Rattner then chimed in: “I think something more along the lines of an apology would be in order. Please be sure I never get an e-mail from this organization again.” Ouch.
That sparked even further debate. Fleischmann wrote to all: “Kerry did nothing wrong . . . she never exposed anybody’s private e-mails or intended to . . . this did not irritate me to get a bunch of e-mails that say happy holidays to Kerry.” And Keener quipped, “Be more upset with the NSA than RFK.”
Finally, Kennedy herself weighed in with, “profuse apologies,” and, “You may be happy to know that my New Year’s resolution is to not bother all my friends during the holidays.”