A retired English teacher living in Atlanta grabbed headlines after correcting an official letter from the White House. Now, she's said she's getting nasty messages after a photo of the corrected letter went viral.
It all started after Yvonne Mason told 11Alive she wrote a letter to the President asking him to meet with all the families of the Parkland, Florida school shooting victims individually.
"It was an emotional letter, and that was emotional for me," she explained.
Mason got a letter back from the White House. But what she saw when she read it made her pull out her highlighter and an ink pen.
"Wait a minute – why are all these things capitalized? That's just not correct," Mason remembered thinking.
She went line by line through the letter, making corrections as she read it. Her big issue was that the letter was supposed to be a formal one from the White House. However, she said it used far too many "I" statements.
"I would have dinged them on that, if he was in my classroom," she told 11Alive's Kaitlyn Ross. "There has to be a better way to refer to yourself than I. Self-referential letters are not as effective."
Mason also pointed out the random capitalizations sprinkled throughout the letter. At the end of it, all she could do was write, "OMG, this is wrong!"
"I did send it back and said, 'You are not serving your administration well by continuing to send this correspondence,'" Mason stated, explaining to 11Alive why she wanted to fix it in the first place.
She told 11Alive she understands the note is a form letter, likely written by a staffer. But Mason still thought the White House should be held to a higher standard.
"I would prefer that the White House use the rules of standard American English, which is what we teach little kids, and would make it clearer and more concise," she said.
But after a photo of her corrections to the letter went viral online, Mason said she started getting flooded by nasty messages and comments on her Facebook page.
"There have been some extremely vitriolic comments, and there seems to be a lot of anger directed at me because they thought I was disrespectful to the president, that I was making fun of him. That I called attention to make fun of him," she explained. "Well, maybe. But it's a letter. And it's my letter to do with what I wanted to do."
She told 11Alive the insult that hurt the most was traitor, because she felt like engaging with one's government is what everyone who loves their country should be doing.
"Writing to the leader of your country, that's the opposite of traitor. That's someone who is invested," she pointed out.
However, Mason said she is taking all the comments and feedback in stride, even being willing to poke fun at her favorite response calling her an "old hippie hag," because, she said, that one is pretty much true.
