I have mutt configured to open the html email in lynx and dump the text. Lynx is a terminal browser and does not support images and does not execute javascript. Prior to configuring mutt this way, I frequently encountered the kind of bad content you talk about in mail, but now I get the content and can still feel safe. I am still vulnerable to HTML parsing bugs in lynx, but I don't think the risk of anyone targeting lynx is all that big.

To read and send mail, I ssh to my mail server and use mutt there. For the most part it works great, except when I receive links I need to visit longer than about 70 characters because then I have to copy the URL in parts rather than all at once due to the plus signs inserted by mutt to indicate that the line continues.