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FOR THIS ISSUE'S MOST SELF-important, empty-headed gasbag activist argument, look no further than a recent commentary piece from Doug Moss, publisher and executive editor of E/The Environmental Magazine, in which he claimed that unsolicited e-mail isn't spam if the sender's motives are noble.

That's right: noble.

Moss was reacting to a complaint call he received from a lawyer at another nonprofit organization over some unsolicited e-mail Moss sent.

“First of all, what could be more environmentally friendly than replacing all those folded letters, fliers, postcards, plastic-windowed envelopes, reply envelopes and ‘lift letters’ (those extra little folded pieces pretending to get personal with you) with electronic mail that consumes no trees, produces no cancer-causing dioxins, consumes virtually no energy and adds to no landfills?” he wrote.

The jaw-dropping irony of that argument is, well, let's just say dizzying, no? Apparently, it hasn't occurred to Moss that he's arguing for direct marketers to migrate all their efforts to unsolicited e-mail. Oh, wait, DMers aren't noble.

And just when we recover from the ignorance of his e-mail-saves-the-environment argument comes an assertion of even more mind-bogglingly ignorant proportions:

“Since when is most mail ‘solicited’ anyway? How far do we take this? Suppose I meet you somewhere and then look you up and send you a letter. Am I to be berated for sending you ‘unsolicited’ mail? And what difference does it make to you, anyway, as the recipient of said ‘spam’ or ‘junk,’ whether you were the sole recipient of an e-mail or paper envelope or just one of 300,000? You received one and that should be the extent of your concern. Either the message has a noble purpose or it doesn't.”

What's that we hear? Braying? Where has Moss been since the mid-'90s? And just who does he think he is to determine whether a pitch is noble or not?

Why is e-mail that helps businesses providing wanted products or services thrive and produce jobs any less noble than some cause Moss has decided is worthy of his grand attention?

And please note: This column is not advocating spam. It is simply pointing out that unsolicited e-mail clogs the system no matter what its intent, and nonprofits have no less responsibility to keep their e-mail permission based than any commercial entity.

Moss clearly doesn't understand that his uninvited e-mail competes with e-mail people have asked to receive, and may crowd out wanted e-mail from organizations even Moss deems noble.

But wait, the King of Self-Important Gasbag Arguments saves his best brain hemorrhage channeled through his word processor for last:

“Those repeated mailings from American Express and Citicorp, vying for your gold card business? ‘Junk mail’ indeed! And so are their endless counterparts in cyberspace trying to trick us into taking mortgages we never applied for, or giving our personal bank account information out to sons of sons of deposed Nigerian leaders. And I agree we should loudly protest the vast numbers of commercial messages we are bombarded with every day, whether e-mailed, mailed, broadcast, televised, shown on movie theatre (sic) screens, billboarded, skywritten or printed on a small flier and placed in a clamshell along with two-whole-beef-patties-special-sauce-lettuce-cheese-pickles-onions-and-a-sesame-seed-bun. They are wasting resources and urging us to waste even more, perpetuating the notion that every aspect of our lives can only be fulfilled through some sort of a purchase.

“But a few trees or bytes put to use in defense of starving kids, battered wives, victims of drunk drivers, or Mother Earth are not ‘spam’ and they're not ‘junk,’ either. And if people of conscience can't grasp that then we're just going to remain our own worst enemies.”

OK, kill the violins.

Gotta love the part where he puts Amex and Citicorp on par with Nigerian 419 scammers. Moss probably wasn't even aware of what it says about his infantile holier-than-thou belief system when he wrote it.

Message to Moss: Spam is spam no matter who sends it, and you'll play by the same rules as everyone else no matter how “noble” you think you are. Here's to hoping Internet service providers start blocking your e-mail.