One More Detour on the Writing Road

I get the impression DHS and the FBI are on it.

And the far right is screaming about that, because when they get called on for dangerously inflammatory rhetoric and hate speech, it's harassment.

Because ACORN. Everyone should keep their eyes on ACORN.

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dancinghorse.livejournal.com

ACORN booga booga booga ACORN!

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windrose.livejournal.com

Whoa.

I'd heard tell the man was a bit ... loopy, but nothing like this. o.O

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Do you read

james_nicoll's blog? When he wants to drive some folks nuts, he posts a link to OSC's latest because people can't stay away.

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e-moon60.livejournal.com

The man is more than a bit nuts. I was at a convention with him one time, on a panel about disability in SF, and he stated that he preferred people who recoiled from his disabled son (since deceased) in Utah to those who were "fake friendly" (his term) like people in Carolina where he then lived, because it was "natural" to be repelled by disability. That efforts to integrate the disabled were wrong-headed PCness and "normal" people should not be forced to associate with those who "naturally" disgusted them. I was horrified.

Then he got off onto a ranting rage when I disagreed with him about something--was seriously rude to me and others on the panel--the moderator was clearly terrified to take charge and everyone in the room was leaning back looking scared. One of my best friends (who is LDS) was as shocked as I was. (He was out of control--or apparently so--enough that my military background brought me to full alert, as it did the other military officer sitting beside me.

Later that same convention, at a store signing, he threw a tantrum that delayed the signing some half hour because he *misunderstood* what someone said. And then he turned off the tantrum in an instant when he'd made the store staff bow and scrape enough to satisfy him, and was sticky-gooey-sweet for the next hour.

In that 24 hours, I lost all respect for the man, and now consider him dangerous--whether he's sociopathic, narcissistic, or has an explosive personality disorder, I don't know and don't care but I will never be in an enclosed space with him again. Clearly he thinks he's absolutely right and everyone who disagrees is absolutely wrong and should be pounded until they submit.

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scbutler.livejournal.com

I followed the links back - looks like Card wrote this piece last July. He makes Republicans look good, doesn't he.

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looks like Card wrote this piece last July.

Boy, I really did miss the boat, didn't I?

Before I had sold anything, I read an essay of his in, iirc, an old edition of the SFWA Handbook. It was about how he got started, and how he almost blew it after he signed those first nice contracts because he spent months afterwards playing video games and doing everything else except writing. He seemed like a funny, self-effacing guy.

Then I read this stuff, and it's like wtf???

Edited Date: 2009-05-01 02:02 am (UTC)

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barbarienne.livejournal.com

Well, you know, it's a combination of things. Internal contradictions are what make characters, and real people, interesting.

Compound that with the very real tendency of people's neurological profile to change with age (usually getting more rigid, but occasionally getting much less so...and sometimes both simultaneously). Sometimes specific trauma can spontaneously twist someone's brain chemistry. Exhibit A: Dennis Miller, who was a cool, snarky, mostly liberal guy...who went rather batshit insane after 9/11.

Being a bigot, alas, does not make a person all-around evil. As long as you aren't directly interacting with them as part of the group they hate, you may not even notice they're a bigot. They may still be a loving parent, may volunteer their time and service at charities you can respect, may still have a sense of humor.

I suspect OSC was probably always anti-gay (it is a fundamental tenet of Mormonism that gay = unnatural), but his encroaching dotage has now stiffened his thinking into radical paranoia.

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scbutler.livejournal.com

What, you think Republicans can't be nice people? Or whackos?

Or, the self-effacing guy might be just another character he made up.

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Back when I first saw him/read him in the 1990s this tendency wasn't evident at all. I mean, he was selling cassettes of his "Secular Humanist Revival Hour" making light fun of some religious stuff.

OSC has just gone weird -- quite possibly through the pernicious effect of reading too much right-wing nuttery and religious propaganda.

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Actually, by around 1990 it was but the state of communications back then made it easier not to notice. Two important events were a 1990 essay published in Sunstone that began with the idea that someone cannot be both a Mormon in good stand and a practicing homosexual and ended up endorsing the idea that the State should be used to enforce his particular cult's rules (he wanted the uppitier gays tossed in jail to keep the rest safely closeted) and a denounciation of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses, which he felt was "despicable".

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You're right -- I remember reading that Sunstone essay in a passed-around photocopy and that was after I'd seen OSC. I was shocked at the time.

I went and double-checked, and the last time I saw OSC in person was at Ad Astra in 1988 (just after Cardography was released). So shortly after that whatever was weird in him started to emerge.

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touchstone.livejournal.com

Strangely, while I don't doubt for a minute that OSC is an anti-gay bigot, it seems to me that he's using that as a jumping-off point in this article to get to his main point - bemoaning the drift of marriage away from it's 'proper' (to him) definition of 'one man owning one woman'. Which, you know, also not attractive :)

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Just don't bring up the polygamy thing. He gets cranky about that because the Mormons gave that up a century or more ago.

On an unrelated note, the first Mormon community in Canada was founded by Mormon polygamists fleeing a polygamy-hostile environment down South. Specially, it was founded by Charles Ora Card in 1887.

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touchstone.livejournal.com

I suppose I should have left off that second 'one'.... :)

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Nah, it's like Republicans and cannibalism. Sure, most of the Democrats in Hinsdale County got eaten by Republicans but that was a long time ago and these days only an unrepresentative minority of Republicans are cannibals. I've often defended Republicans on this very point.

The mainstream of the Church of Latter Day Saints forbids polygamy and will excommunicate people for practicing it. They've done this long enough that most people who remember when polygamy was OK are long dead. The Mormons who do still practice it are heretics in the eyes of the original LDS hierarchy, like Lutherans are to Catholics.

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The last OSC I ever read (from the library thankfully) was _Homebody_ -- which was incredibly sexist. Big strong men needing to take care of weak women: that sort of thing.

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excessor.livejournal.com

It has been long been common knowledge among gay men about OSC's attitudes towards gay people in general, but such knowledge rarely punctures the general public's awareness. The article is quite interesting because it contrasts so strongly with my (and I presume a large number of other peoples') self-image. Regardless of the topic, I think of myself as an American first. Am I naïve? I wonder sometimes. I am sad sometimes at the glacial pace of change, but respect for the Constitution and our system of laws is an intrinsic part of who I am.

As it happens, I am a gay man who very much wants to be able to legally wed my partner. But the immediate issue doesn't matter; whether it's same-sex marriage or stem-cell research or any other topic, I can hardly imagine an issue that would make me renounce my American-ness as OSC is doing in the linked article. It makes his other ideas suspect as well.

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I can hardly imagine an issue that would make me renounce my American-ness as OSC is doing in the linked article.

All the secession and overthrow talk is taking me aback a bit. I know folks on the Left were talking about escaping to Canada after the Bush elections, but I didn't see the blow-it-all-up rhetoric I'm seeing from the Right. And the problem is that as the moderates bail or keep silent, the crazy just gets more and more concentrated.

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excessor.livejournal.com

I cringed every time someone told me of inclinations to move to Canada or Europe to escape Bush. It's not that Bush didn't inspire (on a related note: isn't it nice to have a President who actually believes in science?) but the idea that life in Canada or Europe would be a step up is laughable.

The Fringe Right is laugh-out-loud funny these days because they leave the impression of bratty children who aren't getting their own way.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, but I agree (and I'm annoyed) that Moderates don't speak out very much against the crazy (both Left Crazy and Right Crazy). I wish Molly Ivins had lived long enough to see this because she'd have been able to summarize it so well.

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I enjoyed Miz Molly.

One of the blogs I read every day is Balloon Juice. John Cole is a convert from the Pajamas Media side of the street, but he's less emotional than some of the more pronounced left-leaning blogs.

And it is nice to have the science folk back. I hope they can undo all the damage.

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I wish Molly Ivins had lived long enough to see this because she'd have been able to summarize it so well.

So do I -- so much.

Jim Hightower is doing a pretty good job of following up with his books, although he doesn't have quite Molly's dry touch in describing right-wing lunacy. But his latest book, Swim Against the Current: Even a dead fish can go with the flow, is really good, and describes some useful ways of making a difference.

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e-moon60.livejournal.com

Losing Molly Ivins was a serious blow to both humor and common sense.

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Oh, I posted that one a while ago. He later backed off somewhat from his revolutionary rhetoric.

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There ya go. I probably missed it because I have sworn off your OSC linkies for That Way Lies Madness. I can take the madness, however, in small, self-administered doses. Like arsenic.

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