Comma chameleon?

You know that story that's been in the news recently about the scientist coming under misguided fire for doing research on gay sheep?

It opens all sorts of fascinating, higher order avenues of inquiry on ethics and the boundaries of science and the perils of the giant game of worldwide telephone that is the news -- but unfortunately, a small, perhaps neurotically trifling bit in the New York Times' coverage of the matter is standing in the way of my venturing down any of them.

You see, ever since I read this...

The controversy spilled into the blog world, with attacks on Dr. Roselli, his university and Oregon State University, which is also involved in the research. PETA began an e-mail campaign that the universities say resulted in 20,000 protests, some with language like "you are a worthless animal killer and you should be shot," "I hope you burn in hell" and "please, die."

... I've been consumed by the question: Was that comma really included in the original "please, die" threat?

Given that the Times has been known to depart from the vernacular to the point of distraction with strictly regimented punctuation and spelling out contractions and whatnot, I actually wrote them an e-mail last week asking, out of professional copy editing curiosity, the origins of that comma. Naturally, I'm still waiting for an answer, and it's still bothering me.

Either way, it's intriguing -- if it's an editing decision, it's arguably changing the tone of the phrase to a point that it alters its meaning; if it's not, imagine the kind of person who decides to sit down and menace a scientist via a PETA e-mail form, yet remains conscientious of such a popularly arcane bit of proper punctuation.

If that comma is authentic, far from neutering the force of the threat, it makes it all the more unnervingly crafty -- if that were directed at me, I would almost have to oblige, seeing as how it was asked so diplomatically.

Le sigh.

English class ruins lives.