Dear Mr. Kaczynski,

How much do you despise the media portraying you as a whacked out psychopath instead of the anti-technology visionary you are? How unfair is it that people know you for your mail bombs and not your PhD dissertation? You have to be more than a little pissed. And you probably think you’re powerless to stop this smear campaign. Maybe you’re solely focused on surviving inside a supermax federal prison. Whatever the reason, it’s time to take control of your image once and for all.

I’m Bradley Norris, president and CEO of Norris Personal Branding. Our specialty is turnaround projects—taking battered public images like yours and transforming them into top-performing brands. All of us down at the firm believe you could be the perfect figurehead for the burgeoning pro-environmental movement in this country. Imagine your seventeen years of cabin life being held up as the ideal for living in harmony with nature. Minus the bomb making, we’re talking the stuff of a modern day Henry David Thoreau, here. At the very least, we can replace people’s scorn for you with something resembling begrudging admiration. This is all about changing your legacy to something uplifting and inspirational. And quite possibly making a boatload of cash.

Here’s the game plan, Ted. First, we eradicate the name Unabomber from public consciousness. Probably the invention of some hack copywriter trying to be clever, and once something like that catches on, watch out. It’s the name most people identify you with, and that’s a travesty. After all, building and mailing those bombs is but a small piece of your body of work. Sure, those little bundles of anti-industrialization pyrotechnics killed three and injured twenty three. But what people should focus on is a little 35K-word, anti-technology manifesto that didn’t write itself. That beaute is all about you hipping the rest of us to your hard-fought wisdom, Ted. The guys in the office found it riveting. A little dark in places, but what call for the systematic dismantling of modern society isn’t? People should be calling you Captain Eco. Heck we’d settle for Manifesto Man. Think it can’t be done? That’s where you’re wrong, not in your assertion that technology long ago robbed modern man of his autonomy.

Let’s talk about that ubiquitous FBI sketch of you. That artist didn’t do you any favors, that’s for sure. And while the Zuckerberg hoodie and Sophia Loren sunglasses combo does convey a certain mystique, the creeper factor is off the charts. Those curly bangs they put on you are the stuff of little girls, not anti-technology visionaries. I don’t know what’s worse, that or your soak-his-toenail-clippings-in-apple-cider-vinegar arrest photo. Thankfully, a quick search pulled up some Harvard-era beauties of a young academic about to blossom. The V-neck sweater one of you is off-the-charts adorable, according to our preliminary focus group research. That’s the Ted Kaczynski we want America to know and embrace. Don’t you think it’s time they did?

The best part is that the timing’s perfect. This Mayan calendar thing scared the shit out of people. They’re going back to basics—trading iPods for high-volume water purifiers, abandoning their cubicles to start organic farms. Twenty-something writers are crafting their breakout novels on manual typewriters. Steve Jobs is dead. This movement needs a poster boy. Don’t let some hipster with an ironic tattoo and messenger bag steal your thunder and become the face of this thing. You’re the one who lived in the shack, made those nail bombs, and pedaled your rusty Schwinn three towns over to mail them. It’s you whose brother ratted him out. And now you’re the one doing the hard time. That’s instant street cred. You can’t dream up a story like that (and we’ve dreamt up plenty). Give us the word, and we’ll slap your smiling mug on everything from organic cotton onesies to free-trade coffee beans. A whole line of Captain Eco approved products are waiting to be snapped up by people who feel the same sense of outrage at industrialized society as you, but can only lash out by shopping at Whole Foods. You get a piece of every sale, and your legacy is forever altered. And the proverbial middle finger to that snitch brother of yours is all gravy.

We have to move fast on this, Ted. Don’t let this opportunity slip away. I’ll be in touch soon. In the meantime, stay strong. We’ve enclosed something to help you pass the time—the current issue of Neo-Luddite Monthly. The paper’s recycled, the ink is soy, and there’s a killer article on whittling on page thirty two.

Sincerely,

Bradley Norris
President and CEO, Norris Personal Branding