So my last blog post about the Sad Puppies has turned into a kerfluffle of its own, which has been very interesting to watch as it unfolds. Mike Glyer of File 770 linked to it, Lou Antonelli’s File 666 picked it up, and Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories wrote a lengthy response to it, which I think is deserving of a response on my part.
Mr. Davidson’s post is interesting, and worth reading. We obviously don’t see eye to eye on a number of things, but it would be rather petty to go through our disagreements line by line. Instead, the part that I want to respond to is his call to action at the end:
Want to reconcile? Here’s what puppies must do.
1: Stop scamming the system. If you want to recommend works that you think are worthy of the award, go ahead and do so. But drop the political agenda (you’re dragons are imaginary) and eliminate the hateful, snarky commentary
If you’re looking for “hateful, snarky commentary,” I’m sure that you’ll be able to find it. On the fringes of both sides, there are a lot of people with blogs and strong opinions. I’d count myself as one of them—while I align with the Sad Puppies, I’m not a leader or organizer by any stretch, just another guy with opinions and a blog. Don’t be so quick to look for ammunition, because there’s a lot of it lying around.
Kate Paulk, one of the Sad Puppy organizers, has pointed out that Sad Puppies 4 is open to nomination suggestions from anyone, which appears to be what you’re calling for. And honestly, I think a lot of us don’t want to see conservative writers edge out everyone else so much as to see them go head to head with more liberal writers on a more equal playing field. It’s not about slaying imaginary dragons so much as breaking down walls.
So on this first point, Mr. Davidson and I tend to be in agreement. This seems like a reasonable step for reconciliation, and it’s one that the Sad Puppies 4 already appear to be taking.
2: Stop attacking the very people who are offering you a bridge
If a bridge is being offered, I’m willing to take it. If people are just trying to get the last word in edgewise, which was the vibe I personally got from Mr. Martin’s original post, then it will probably just lead to more kerfluffles. Then again, if everyone’s fighting to get in the last word, the squabbling will never end, and while that may make for good sport, it makes for poor reconciliation. So again, fair point.
3: Please learn a little bit about the history of Worldcon and the Hugo Awards
I’m not entirely convinced that the Hugo Awards will continue to hold the same influential place in fandom in the next few years. Even with last year’s massive turnout, there were less than 6,000 ballots cast. With those low numbers, it wouldn’t take much for a rival convention to organize their own awards and eclipse the Hugos in short order—especially if a large contingent of fandom becomes disaffected.
This is why I think it’s important to distinguish between the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies. A useful analogy can be drawn from Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters:
These are the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za. They want to make the galaxy safe by enslaving all intelligent life, either by encasing their home worlds in impenetrable slave shields, or by enlisting them as Heirarchy battle thralls to conquer and enslave other species.
These are the Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah. They want to make the galaxy safe by “cleansing,” or exterminating, all intelligent life. They are totally without mercy and cannot be pacified.
The Kzer-Za and Kohr-Ah are locked in a civil war over control of the Sa-Matra, an ancient precursor weapon that will enable the victor to conquer the galaxy. If you don’t find a way to stop them in time, then the Kohr-Ah will win the civil war and use the Sa-Matra to exterminate everyone.
The Sad Puppies are like the Kzer-Za, the Rabid Puppies are like the Kohr-Ah, and the Hugo Awards are like the Sa-Matra. The Rabid Puppies want to use the Hugo Awards to burn down the fan community, whereas the Sad Puppies want to reform the Hugo Awards to make Science Fiction less about political correctness and more about telling good stories.
Now, I am not a Sad Puppy spokesperson, so this may not be the most accurate or flattering analogy. Fellow puppies, please correct me if I’m wrong. But it’s worth pointing out that in the Star Control series, the Ur-Quan ultimately become pacified and join the New Alliance of Free Stars. This only happens after the Kohr-Ah have been defeated.
I think that’s what most of the Sad Puppies ultimately want: to have a place with the rest of fandom, where even if we sometimes have heated disagreements (has there ever been a time when all of fandom was in agreement about anything?), we aren’t cast out as “racists,” “Nazis,” or “misogynists,” as happened with Puppygate 2015.
The Rabid Puppies, on the other hand, just want to watch the world burn. And the more vociferous the rhetoric becomes, the more that it plays into their hands. Speaking as a Sad Puppy sympathizer who watched the 2015 Hugos from the sidelines, after all the abuse that I saw my friends receive, it kind of made me want to burn down the Hugos too.
You want to defeat the Rabids? Then reach out to the Sad Puppies, find commonalities with us, and make an alliance. If we can show the world that Science Fiction and Fantasy brings us all together in spite of our ideological differences, then all of fandom will win.
And so regarding Mr. Davidson’s third point, I don’t think it’s about respecting the prestige of the awards so much as listening to and understanding the other side of fandom. And I’ll admit, I can do a better job listening to the side of fandom that sees the puppies (sad or rabid) as the enemy. If they can return the favor, I think that will go a long way.
4: If you want to be counted as Fans, then be Fans. Fans who care attend Worldcon, nominate their conscience and attend the business meeting to effect change they think is needed. They work WITH and within fandom – they do not set themselves up as a cabal that engages in fear and hate.
If that’s a challenge to be more involved in the Hugo Awards, then it’s one that I can accept. In 2015, I largely watched from the sidelines, and if I do the same this year then my opinion is pretty empty. I do count myself as a part of fandom, and I can respect the call to put my money where my mouth is.
I’m not entirely convinced that “no one controls [the Hugos].” Overtly, of course not, but there are indirect ways to accomplish the same thing, through whisper campaigns and the manipulation of cliques. But as Mr. Davidson points out, it’s hypocritical to criticize that without also trying to get involved. And if that’s the invitation he’s extending, I am willing to accept—no hate required.
Or, option three, ignore the Hugo’s and let the Amazon Best Seller Lists and readers comments guide your reading experience. Only a select few, financially successful, people can drop everything to attend conventions. Those fans that can’t attend, like me, will just pretend the Hugo don’t exist until it goes away because to us its irrelevant.
“Or, option three, ignore the Hugo’s and let the Amazon Best Seller Lists and readers comments guide your reading experience.”
I would theoretically agree with you, except the SJWs will take that over soon enough. They already own Goodreads.
Thirteenthletter00,
That might very well be true, our society might be doomed by the stupidity of the SJW’s among us, but the affair with the Hugo’s strikes me as Quixote-ish. Tilting at windmills just seems silly when there are other options, the easiest of which is to simply ignore the Hugo’s and start your own award.
How exactly would anyone take over sales rankings?
Dismissing hateful Sad Puppy rhetoric as coming from the “fringes” is ludicrous.
Here’s an example of hateful, snarky commentary from a Sad Pup: “I MOCK YOU! I MOCK YOUR ASININE INCESTUOUS CLUSTERFUCKED LITTLE CULTURE OF DOCTRINAIRE PROGRESSOSEXUAL MEDIOCRITY MASKED AS SUPERIORITY! You are all dolts. You are moral and physical cowards. You are without ethics, without scruples, and if you weren’t so patently pathetic, I’d say you might be dangerous. Fuck you. Fuck you all. The forces of the progressive pink and poofy Xerxes were met at the Hugo Hot Gates, and repelled by a few brave dudes and dudettes with the stones to stand up to your bullshit.”
That’s Brad Torgersen, who ran last year’s Sad Puppy campaign.
Here’s another example: “So, let’s call them for what they are. Nasty, petty, bullying socialists who would fit in just as well with the Nazis as they would with their equally murderous Communist cousins.”
That’s Kate Paulk, who is running this year’s Sad Puppy campaign.
Torgersen and Paulk aren’t “fringe.” They’re the leadership. And I could quote many more examples of prominent, widely respected Sad Puppies making such statements. (Let alone Rabid Puppies.)
When Brad and Kate and other Puppy leaders say things like I’ve quoted, they’re setting an example of acceptable behavior for all Sad Puppies. Because they are the thought leaders, not the fringe, how they talk matters. I don’t see how reconciliation is possible if the leaders of the Sad Puppies use demonizing, hateful rhetoric to discuss the other side.
It’s a sad fact that no matter what happens, there will be people on both sides using hateful rhetoric. So anyone saying “as long as any [Sad Puppy] [anti-slater] uses hateful rhetoric there can be no reconciliation” is effectively saying “there can never be reconciliation.”
So I don’t ask for hateful rhetoric to be 100% eliminated, because that would be demanding the impossible. But I ask that the leadership of the Sad Puppies, as well as the folks (like yourself) who are positioning themselves as reasonable voices open to reconciliation, to stop using hateful rhetoric. Including name-calling your opposition as “SJWs” and “CHORFs” and “puppy-kickers” and so on.
Joe, do you think that’s a reasonable request?
In principle, yes, in specifics, no. Terms like SJW have entered the mainstream of cultural-political discourse, and demanding that others stop using it is just another attempt to control or limit the speech of the opposition. But yes, there is a lot to be said about staying classy.
That said, I’m not convinced that the quote you take from Paulk crosses the line. It’s a very political statement, to be sure, and not at all politically correct, but that’s kind of the point—the main mission of the Sad Puppies is to eliminate political correctness in Science Fiction. Also, it’s worth pointing out that Paulk wasn’t the one who dragged Nazism into the debate: that would be Irene Gallo, who equated the Puppies with Neo-Nazis.
Actually, long before Irene Gallo’s comment, Lou Antonelli called the woman who created the Puppy-free Ballot a Nazi. And Antonelli never apologised for it, unlike Gallo.
Point is, Kate Paulk wasn’t the one who took things full Godwin: she was responding to the people who had.
But it was still a Puppy – Antonelli – who first invoked it, and definitely not Gallo.
It doesn’t bother me to use such terms. I consider the phrase “Third Wave Feminism” to be completely interchangeable with “neo-Nazism.” Both are supremacist ideologies dedicated to defaming and demonizing entire groups based on their immutable biological characteristics, which is how the Southern Poverty Law Center defines a hate group.
Like Martin, Davidson is clueless about what is even going on. He straw mans us with nonsense while ignoring the giant gorilla in the room, including those who attacked him with such vulgarity one deleted a blog post addressed to him. Yet he pretends talking about them is tilting at windmills.
SFF’s social justice crusaders are being exposed as the frauds they are. They routinely violate the principles behind the concept of “equal protection” and hope we won’t notice. They call themselves “liberal” and “progressive” and yet again and again admit they have no interest in debate or free speech. They cry about “justice” and are opposed to due process via hashtags like #JustListen and kangaroo courts at colleges extorted into existence by Title IX and the Dept. of Education. In other words they stand in opposition to their own stated principles.
They see themselves as fans of people like Rod Serling and Ray Bradbury and yet those two would’ve despised them. Both men engaged in burying principled morality tales within SFF but sometimes blurted their concerns outright with anti-Jim Crow stories in contemporary settings; 3 for Bradbury which predate 1951, Serling with his 1958 Emmy-nominated and Writer’s Guild-winning “A Town Turned To Dust,” and also 1956 “Noon On Doomsday,” a show about Emmett Till so heavily watered down by network executives Serling claimed even Coca-Cola bottles used to dress the set were removed, Coke being based in the South, Atlanta.
Bradbury bizarrely had his Fahrenheit 451 censored without his knowledge years after it had been published for the first time as a whole novel in the dark ages of 1954 in the very sexist, misogynist, pornographic Playboy Magazine these “feminists” hate.
In 1966 Serling spoke passionately to UCLA students about the racist Calif. Proposition 14 housing initiative which was eventually overturned on the principle of “equal protection.” He also believed in debate and free expression on college campuses, not “banhammers,” even if it meant American Nazis, whom he hated.
So when the Hugo-winning Lightspeed violates the idea of equal protection with a reviewer not reviewing white men and segregated anthologies on spurious excuses, and the Hugo-winning John Scalzi violates the idea of free speech and debate with equally spurious deletions and by saying the world would be better without comments sections and other Hugo winners violate the idea of due process by supporting one-sided definitions of “harassment” and #JustListen you are being sold a con game by bigoted authoritarians, not “liberalism.”
Bradbury and Serling made “comments” some people didn’t want to hear and there is no doubt in my mind who our social justice crusaders would’ve supported in the ’50s since they have no principles whatsoever.
Nice word play, but (I think) deliberately off the point.
Until Sad Puppies renounce their affiliations with Rabid Puppies, there is no effective difference between the two. None. The leaders of Sad Puppies are in so deep that they must make, by name, a public statement that they do not support rabid puppies, do not support Vox Day.
The list being curated by Paulk is still not a recommendation list – it is still a slate, so long as it is curated and organized as a bloc vote.
Kate could go a long way towards reconciling Sad Puppies with fans if she were to publicly state that there will be no curating of the recommendation lists currently on SPIV website and that posting a suggestion there is the end of it. No lists sent out to voters, no blocs.
You’ve got to drop the conspiracy BS.
No, you still don’t get it. Being a Fan is not about just buying a membership at Worldcon. If you looked into the history and traditions as I suggested, you’d understand why.
My prediction – based on your response, is that most puppies are going to do what you have just done: basically ignore the central points I was making in favor of pushing your own narrative. That does not lead to reconciliation. We’ve seen this kind of BS for the past three and a half years, this is nothing new and provides absolutely no incentive.
Steve, you’re a hatemonger and shouldn’t be surprised if the people you alienate don’t act according to your command.
I get it that you’re most probably in this for the publicity but why don’t you just leave wrongfans alone before you make them feel they have no choice but to join somebody else’s army.
The problem, Mr. Davidson, is that you’re moving the goalposts, changing terms, adding grievances, and making additional demands. Are you looking for reconciliation or capitulation? Because from what I can see, you aren’t pursuing this in good faith.
I don’t think you realize this, but the Hugo Awards need the Sad Puppies more than the Sad Puppies need the Hugo Awards. If enough SF&F readers and fans (lower-case) become disaffected like Miss Priss, it drives the Hugos further into irrelevance, and increases the probability that a new fan-voted award will rise up to replace them. It’s not the victory that the Sad Puppies are looking for, but it’s a victory nonetheless—and it would represent a massive defeat for the Trufans who claim the Hugos exclusively for themselves.
The longer that puppygate rolls on, the more I’ve come to realize that the “graying of fandom” isn’t about aging so much as snobbery and elitism. Science Fiction and Fantasy has never been stronger, but Fandom (capital F) is gradually driving itself into irrelevance.
Also, you’re projecting:
Here’s the thing: The Hugo awards were doing just fine before the Puppies, for several decades, and they’ll continue to do just fine if the Puppies stop existing or move on to their own award. The nomination and voting numbers were increasing considerably year by year even before the Puppies slated and motivated little-f fans like me to vote in protest against the tactics. Lots of us little-f fans were really happy with the recommendation lists every year, and weren’t thrilled with the Puppy options. If you have a look you’ll see a correlation between things that do well at the Hugo’s and things that do well in the Goodreads Choice Awards, which are probably the biggest voted-on-by-readers award in terms of participation, and an absence of Puppy candidates – except Butcher – which to me says that little-f fans are generally more in tune with standard Hugo tastes than with standard Puppy ones. The Puppies wouldn’t exist as a group without the Hugo’s. Are you quite sure that the Hugo’s need the Puppies more than the Puppies need the Hugo’s? I’m not sure the evidence is stacked in your favour. I think you’ll need to show your work for that assertion.
The question is this: who is going to bring in the most new blood, and what sort of new blood is being brought in? For all the hooplah about last year’s massive growth in Hugo membership, 5,000 is a pretty pathetic number. Here in Utah, Salt Lake Comic Con launched their first year with a number that was two orders of magnitude larger—in fact, they had to split off FanX just to accommodate the rapid growth.
On the conservative/libertarian side of fandom, Puppygate 2015 has disaffected a lot more people than it has brought in. The longer this fight drags on, the worse it’s going to get: you can’t have a No Award sweep every year and still remain relevant, especially if it’s the new people you’re bringing in that consistently vote No Award.
If the Sad Puppies are leading to (a majority of?) conservative and rightwing fans getting less happy with the Hugo’s, then I can’t imagine a better argument that the Puppies are bad for the Hugo’s! Putting people off the award is the opposite of being good for the award. So, no, I don’t find that persuasive reasoning that the Hugo’s need the Puppies more than Puppies need the Hugo’s, quite the opposite. If it’s just a minority of conservative and rightwing fans, then, well… Oh well. *shrug* There are also a minority of leftwing and liberal fans who aren’t keen on the Hugo’s (and lots of people from all over the spectrum who aren’t invested either way) – one award cannot be all things to all people. One award shouldn’t try to be all things to all people either because it isn’t actually possible.
What isn’t at all clear is whether the Puppies represent anything other than themselves, despite general claims to representing conservative fans/libertarian fans/little-f fans/etc. I have yet to see convincing evidence for it.
As for numbers… The Hugo’s have never had higher voting numbers than this year, ever, not in the history of the award – and yet managed to be prestigious all the same. I’m not convinced participation is the be-all and end-all of award quality; the results over time are more important, and the Hugo’s have plenty of proof in the pudding there. Otherwise the Goodreads Choice Awards would be the most prestigious award around through sheer numbers. 🙂 Hopefully EPH (or a similar effective system) will be ratified and will prevent future slates from overwhelming the nomination process and this will cease to be a big problem.
What I mean is that the vitriolic pushback against the Sad Puppies is driving off conservative/libertarian fans. The Sad Puppies themselves are actually bringing those people in, but when we see all the abuse that Torgersen, Correia, Hoyt, et al receive, it tends to turn us off.
That makes more sense – but still isn’t persuasive evidence that the Puppies are good for the Hugo’s. It sounds more like taking indifferent fans and turning them into anti fans. I don’t think that’s a net improvement.
The thing is, conservative fans always had the option of voting for the Hugo’s, and a lot of them have been doing so for decades. The problem here isn’t conservative fans getting involved, it’s conservative authors using slates to boost their influence out of proportion to their numbers and as a result disenfranchising fans (including conservative ones!) who nominated only their own preferences. I’m sad if any conservative fans looked at people getting angry and upset about the latter actions and thought it applied to them as people, but I also can’t help it if people decide that they’re unwelcome based on Puppy leaders getting angry responses from people (including conservative ones!) who were wronged by them, even though those angry responses were not aimed at conservative fans.
There seems to be this assumption that conservative fans weren’t already involved as ordinary Hugo voters and it isn’t true. Conservative fans had their nominations rendered pointless by a slate taking up most of the available space just as much as non-conservative ones.
All that being said, hopefully SP4 won’t produce a slate but will leave it at a recommendation list (which I think would be perfectly acceptable, and I know I’d use it), and hopefully EPH will be ratified and will stop slates being a problem now and in the future. I’m pretty sure that it would all die down pretty quickly as soon as the threat of having nominations mean almost nothing goes away. Fandom is fractious, but fandom is also forgiving given time. I doubt Beale will ever be popular but I can see most of the Puppies being treated much more generously if the slates are no longer a factor.
I’d like things to improve rather than going over old slights – which I think I’ve slipped too far into with the previous comment.
Beale’s pretty popular among his own people, and Larry Correia is fantastically popular among his people. That’s the thing: the face of fandom has changed dramatically, from a movement on the fringes to the cultural mainstream.
You’ve mentioned before how the Hugos have held a place of prestige for decades in spite of the low voting numbers. Thing is, 30-40 years ago, SF&F was still far enough on the fringes of culture that bringing a thousand people together to vote on an award was a big deal.
But today, we live in a world where a sci-fi blockbuster can bring in more than a billion dollars in its opening week alone. In that kind of a world, five thousand fans is a paltry showing for what is supposedly the genre’s most prestigious award.
In some ways, though, it’s just the natural growing pains. As SF&F has entered the mainstream, fandom has split into multiple overlapping fandoms, which is natural. There once was a time when it was possible to read all of the SF&F novels and short stories put out each year, but now, that is no longer possible. When you look at it from that angle, the Puppy pushback is a natural and predictable outgrowth of SF&F entering the mainstream.
“Beale’s pretty popular among his own people, and Larry Correia is fantastically popular among his people.”
Sure, but we were talking about the negative responses they were getting not their adoring fans. 🙂
If there are fans talking less-than-politely at conventions about conservative viewpoints that wouldn’t surprise me. I’d be more surprised if there wasn’t. I mean, certainly some conservative fans have no qualms about throwing insults around, and I have no reason to believe that’s a conservative-only trait – but “some fans moaning” and “widespread leftist conspiracy to disenfranchise conservative fans and authors at the Hugo’s (that somehow completely misses other conservative authors despite their publicly known opinions*)” are not the same thing at all, and what I haven’t seen proof of is the latter.
For the numbers – the Academy Awards are voted on by 5000-6000 people and it hasn’t hurt their prestige. I daresay more people watch films than read science fiction and fantasy. The Goodreads Choice Awards has many times more voters, and while I’m sure it feels good to win it the award doesn’t have the prestige that the Hugo does. I don’t understand this fixation on “more voters = better” when I don’t see the evidence for it. Could you explain your reasoning?
*Like Brandon Sanderson, for example.
The Academy Awards is a pretty good analogy, because there are several award winning movies that simply have not had the staying power or popularity of other contemporary films that never received an award. A good example from recent years is American Sniper. The Academy Awards are very political, and that has hurt them among the general movie-going public. As a result, a lot more people pay attention to sites like Rotten Tomatoes than they do to the Academy.
The Pullitzer and the Newberry Awards are two literary awards that have also followed this path. Elitism leads to political one-sidedness, and political-one-sidedness leads to irrelevance. The Pullitzers and Newberries may have a veneer of prestige, but when you look at the power (or lack thereof) of the awards to boost the sales numbers of the winning books, there’s your answer.
Personally, I lean towards the view that bestsellerdom is a much more telling mark of quality than any sort of award. There are a lot of excellent books that never become bestsellers, but there are very few books that sell millions of copies without doing something right.
Oh, I don’t know. Quality is measured in different ways, and some of those ways are less quality than others. 🙂 50 Shades of Grey, Twilight, and The Da Vinci Code all sold bucketloads but I don’t think anyone with much sense is going to point to them and say that they’re the best of the best. Even something I genuinely love, the Fast and the Furious films, they make lots of money and they get great audience reviews, but I don’t think they ought to win Best Picture. Sometimes the things that make lots of money make that money because they appeal to the lowest common denominator. I think awards should have a different and higher standard than that (and besides, the award for “making a ton of money” is “having a ton of money”).
What I’m wary of with claims about awards getting politicised (although in the case of the Academy Awards I suspect those politics exist but are closer to office politics than they are to world politics) is that I think it’s very easy and comforting to think that my stuff WOULD win, only those mean people who disagree with me politicly are stopping it from happening – instead of thinking maybe there really was a gap in quality, or something that the winner did that was just a little bit more new and special. It’s such a comforting idea that without Really Good Proof I’m not sure it will ever sound like anything other than conspiracy theory to me. (American Sniper though? Every liberal I know hated that thing with a passion. I’ve never seen so many people miffed at a nomination for political reasons.)
Speaking only for myself, while I look at aggregate websites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic I use them to find reviews easily as much as anything. “Random huge group of people likes/doesn’t like a thing” is less useful to me than knowing why someone did or didn’t like it, because someone might write a negative review saying “urgh, there were just too many dragons, neat laserguns and heartfelt scenes of friendship in this film, it was awful”* which would have me going “hot damn that’s right up my street, sign me up”. Or someone might love it but the things they love about it might be stuff that just doesn’t ring my bell. Star Trek Into Darkness has a great Rotten Tomatoes rating, and few media items have inspired in me the level of hatred that that film has! Similarly, bestseller (as much as I’m happy for authors whose work I like when they get one, because I want them to be able to eat and also keep writing books for me to read) just tells me lots of people liked it enough to buy it. It doesn’t tell me why.
*Entirely made up example, but I do really like those things. A lot. Especially the dragons.
Eh, you should spend a little more time on Correia’s and Hoyt’s blogs to understand where the conservative fans are coming from. Larry launched the Sad Puppies in response to the whisper campaigns, which those of us on the political right can see quite clearly, while the fans on the political left either can’t see them or refuse to see them. In fact, I attended Renovation in 2011 (my first Worldcon) and independently came to the same conclusions as Larry regarding the elitism and the whisper campaigns, before he organized SP1 at all.
What does it mean to support or not support Vox Day? What overriding principles are you invoking to shun Day? Who and what are you comparing him to? Group defamation? A denial of equal protection based on race and sex? It is quite obvious those are exactly the rules you are invoking. Since you ignore the obvious far greater number of social justice crusaders who ignore those rules, the problem is you are invoking those rules based on the race and sex of the authors together with fake claims of oppression. That is Orwellian in that it is contrary to the very rules you claim to judge these matters by. You cannot have these arguments both ways.
VD is one person. I can name you 60 in the SFWA alone who use the same rhetoric. I can name you 30 people booted from last year’s Hugo nominations by the Puppies initiatives who use the same rhetoric. What the hell are you even talking about? What are your rules?
Justice is blind. Ever hear of that? Within that rule there is no such thing as all non-whites can’t be racists, women sexist, or gays heterophobes. Fair play is goose gander, not short people can burglarize a house but not tall people.
When I think of all those principled morality tales buried in our genre in print and TV from Edmond Hamilton’s “A Conquest of Two Worlds,” to Leigh Brackett’s “All the Colors of the Rainbow,” and on to The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits and Star Trek, I can’t help thinking how disgusted those people would be at what a waste it all was.
Mr. Davidson, there is an uncomfortable truth you refuse to deal with: you cannot take out Vox Day and John Wright without taking out Tor and TorCom, the SFWA and whatever outright bigots the rank and file at WorldCon have been nominating for awards. There is no way to slip around that fact unless you do the equivalent of taking a baseball game and stacking the rules for one team. That stacking is what this divide is all about. There is no world where “homo scum” and “cis scum” are different, nor “mansplaining” and “womensplaing,” “white tears” or “black tears.” Racial and sexual slurs do not come with historic rewards points no matter how much people say they do. The right to be treated decently as an entire sex or ethnic group in inalienable; it does not “depend,” there is no “except when…” Group defamation is always wrong. Just deal with that as a guiding principle and do the right thing.
I think you hit on the crux of the issue, James: that identity politics have crept into Science Fiction, and that the Sad and Rabid Puppies are both reactions to it. That is why they have taken on a significance outside of fandom: because “Puppygate” is one of the new battlegrounds in the ongoing culture wars. If there’s going to be any reconciliation, there also has to be a rejection (or at least a moderation) of the toxic identity politics and cultural Marxist collectivism that fuels the culture wars.
I participated in last year’s Hugo and stayed up to watch the show. I won’t bother again.
And let’s not forget what this insanity is doing in SFF in the first place or that it is built on lies about the history of SFF. No one was excluded. If someone was truly desperate to be published in SFF magazines or felt they would be discriminated against they could just lie when submitting manuscripts. James Tiptree, Jr. AKA Alice Sheldon fooled editors until the mid-’70s, but she did that as a prank, not because she couldn’t get published. Black, gay or female authors could’ve been published all along from WW I on. The fact they were a tiny minority tells the true story, and it has nothing to do with patriarchy; they just weren’t there, the same way black folks don’t care about hockey or Bolivians about Irish dancing. It’s just a random cultural thing no one controls or can predict. Why attach the most mean spirited motives to dead people one never knew other than being straight white men and then use it as an excuse to social engineer the field and by an amazing coincidence discriminate against straight white men, complete with racial/sexual slurs and demonization theories promoted by award-nominated and winning “marginalized” fruitcakes?
I take it on faith Francis Stevens knew her own WW I era culture and the Munsey magazines she submitted to (and was published in) better than I do. Why did she submit as a woman if she was so worried? Why did a pulp feature a bio of Leigh Brackett complete with photo at the very beginning of her career if men were so hateful? Brackett claims she was welcomed with open arms. Editors certainly knew who Andre Norton was as well as C. L. Moore, a woman who claims she used her initials because of her boss thinking pulps were trash, not patriarchy. Mary Gnaedinger helmed the much-loved Famous Fantastic Mysteries for it’s entire 15 yr. run, and she really knew her stuff.
You don’t have to think about these targeted lies very much to see they come from this bizarre supremacist feminism that has a bug up its hind end about men and needs to be booted right out of our hobby and crawl back under its sociopathic rock.
Let me start off reminding everyone that the puppy slates kept Andy Weir off the ballet for the Campbell Award. So….
The SF puppy movement the fringe. The pups are concerned that Fans were reading wrong things, by wrong authors and having wrong fun. They asserted they were correcting the course of the Hugos and shamelessly gamed the nomination ballet. Then after lots of boasting and hate mongering, they promptly crashed and burned to the applause of the Fans.
Kate Paulk says “we are all Vox Day” and why Larry Correia solicits Vox on one day and the next declares “I am not Vox Day”, his MonsterHunterNation shows who he is. It is a blog of hate of SJW and Chorfs and has little to do with SFF in general. There is spit difference between sad pups and rabid pups.
Mr. Vasicek, the Hugos Fans have done you a great service. They passed the EPH voting reform at the the last business meeting. There will be one more year of Vox/Correia/Paulk type attempt to ruin the Hugos. Then EPH will assure that your view of SFF (whatever it may be) will be well represented. No one will pay attention to the puppies culture war because their numbers are too small to be a concern. The Fans and the Pups can nominate as they like and be represented in proportion to their numbers. Everyone should be happy with that. They can do as many slates as they want.
I always lay down a challenge to the Pups. Why not go freep the Goodreads Choice Awards. Your books are not doing very well there either. You know why they don’t? Because their numbers are too small to make a large impact. After next year, that will also be true of the Hugo Awards and the Kerfuffles go away.
Um… you do realize that the term “wrongfun” was invented by the Puppies to describe their own tastes in fiction, because of all the things the SJWs didn’t approve? Seems like you’re engaging in a bit of revisionist history there.
No matter how the rules are changed, I have no doubt that someone will figure out a way to game them. I’m not particularly invested in the Hugo Awards, but I’ll be more involved this year and see if it’s worth getting involved in future years. If the experience is a repeat of last year, my hopes are not going to be high.
As for the Goodreads Choice Awards, if your challenge is to get more involved with those, sounds like something worthwhile. But I don’t think your take on the slates and the SP take on the slates is quite the same. The SP victory conditions (or RP victory conditions, for that matter) don’t depend on having every book on their slate win an award. That’s why Vox Day was the true winner of the 2015 Hugos—because he pulled off a massive Xanatos gambit and you guys played right into his hands.
I think it would have been a loss to give awards to work which weren’t good enough. Refusing to be bullied into giving awards to works that didn’t make the grade isn’t losing, it’s making the best of a bad situation. Beale was going to claim victory whatever happened, which made his claims largely irrelevant. Do you think he wouldn’t have declared victory if Puppy nominees had won? Why should I care tuppence for the win conditions of someone more interested in claiming victory than having one? I’m more surprised that people believe him when he tries that sort of thing. As far as I’m concerned he did lose, and badly.
The problem with Puppygate 2015 was that most the public discussion was not on the quality of the works, but on things like identity politics or accusations of racism and misogynism. In that arena, the SPs were bullied pretty hard by the SJW types, with their beliefs misrepresented and their movement completely mischaracterized. If it were only about the quality of the stories, it would have never spilled over into the mainstream culture wars the way that it did.
I read a lot of reviews* and the discussions around the actual stories were solidly about quality in most cases. And, as I’ve said elsewhere, it is also quite clear that people were paying attention to that quality because the works that were immediately behind No Award were always the ones that got the most praise from the Hugo voting community – Totaled, Flow, Triple Sun (although Ashes to Alluvium, which came immediately behind, was pretty close), Burnside’s Related Work. The Related Work category came in for a lot of political criticism, but since the works that got that were usually political themselves (Burnside’s didn’t get much but Wright’s did) I don’t think that’s unfair.
I think it would be best not to conflate the often politically flavoured criticism of the Puppy leadership and the often considerably less political criticism of the stories.
*What was disappointing was how few Puppy reviews there were out there. I wanted to read about why these stories were supposed to be so good – sometimes people open my eyes to something I missed and improve a story in retrospect for me – but there wasn’t much out there to read and trying to get people to say what they liked was like pulling teeth.
Fair points.
” And, as I’ve said elsewhere, it is also quite clear that people were paying attention to that quality because the works that were immediately behind No Award were always the ones that got the most praise from the Hugo voting community…”
Apparently it wasn’t _quite_ enough about quality to actually put them in front of No Award. Funny that.
Your comment assumes that the people who voted No Award and then ranked the nominees by quality secretly felt that those who eventually got second place weren’t just the best of the group but also deserved to win. That’s a really big assumption to make and not one supported by most of the discussions I’ve seen. Quality, in terms of Hugo nominees, isn’t just about quality relative to each other but quality relative to previous winners of the awards, what else came out in the year itself (a few, but not all, people used “was there one or more stories out this year that were better than this?” as their metric for whether to put a slated nominee above No Award), and how any individual voter feels about what the Hugo should be rewarding (new ideas? great plots? unusual characters? deeper meanings? something else entirely? all of the above?). That’s why No Award is an option – so for whatever reason a voter might have they can use that to express dissatisfaction with one or more nominees in any given category in any given year.
1977, for example, had No Award given in the Dramatic Presentation category because by then people had seen Star Wars and felt that the nominees just didn’t live up to it (personally I don’t think the awards would have been disgraced by one of the nominees in question winning but I can sort of understand the decision). Star Wars won the next year. Some people routinely vote No Award in certain categories as a protest against those categories existing at all (I’ve seen people mention Editor, Dramatic Presentation, Graphic Story, and Fancast). Some people almost always use No Award above one or more candidates in most categories because they have very high standards. Quite a lot of people voted No Award over the eventual and non-Puppy Novelette winner this year (it was a very close run thing and only just won) because they just didn’t like it.
This idea I keep seeing from Puppies and Puppy-supporters that because something is on the ballot it must be considered by all voters as Hugo-award-worthy is not supported by the history of the award.
“If it were only about the quality of the stories, it would have never spilled over into the mainstream culture wars the way that it did.”
It became about the culture ware because the puppies are about the culture war. Call them Sad Puppies. Call them Rabid Puppies. I call them Tea-Puppies. Larry Correia was nominated for the Campbell. He didn’t win. At first he said, it was an honor to be nominated. Then he decided it was because he was a conservative and started a movement based on identity politics. His blog reads like Free Republic. He tried to get himself a Hugo through his campaign. That didn’t work.
Now he uses identity politics to target market. So do other puppy “leaders”. It’s a way to sell books.
If you want a counter point. Go to Jim Butcher’s website. Correia talks a lot about Butcher. You know what Butcher’s politics are? Me neither. No one does. Jim’s a nice guy and he will talk about lots of things but politics isn’t one of them. If the stuff that was posted at Correia’s web site was posted at Butcher’s it would be moderated immediately.
Correia has never been about identity politics. Identity politics is essentially collectivist, and Larry is nothing if not a libertarian.
To understand identity politics, watch this video:
https://youtu.be/zH0mPfR-K2U
“Correia has never been about identity politics. Identity politics is essentially collectivist, and Larry is nothing if not a libertarian.”
OK – no. You can’t give me an hour video and say watch this.
Larry is all about identity politics. That’s his spiel. I was robbed because I was a gun toting conservative. Identifying with a libertarian movement does not put one outside of identity politics If you don’t believe me, go watch him rant about liberals, Stephen King and guns. Or just read his book. That’s what all that SJW and CHORF and affirmative action talk is about. His blog is a constant churn about conservative vs liberal politics and candidates. He even did a blog on why Ted Cruz would be the Republican Candidate. This isn’t SFF.
And that’s the thing. That’s how Larry markets. He stirs these guys up with all kinds of nonsensical conspiracies and creates a pretty solid fan base. Good for Larry. But after next year, that’s all he will be able to do.
See… GRRM may be a nice guy but it doesn’t really matter if the Pups and the Worldcon Fans get along or don’t get along… after next year. Just like it doesn’t matter if the Goodreads Choice Awards go to conservatives or they don’t go to conservatives.
If you are sincere in understanding what I mean when I say “identity politics,” it is worth your time to watch the video. I am not using the term the same way that you are.
Identity politics is political discourse that ignores individual choice and treats all people as the sum of their identity markers. It is more than merely saying “our side is right, your side is wrong,” it is saying things like “all whites are privileged,” “all men are part of the Patriarchy,” “blacks can’t be racist,” etc. Political position is a result of individual choice in a way that race, sex, nationality, etc simply are not, therefore it falls under partisanship, not identity politics.
White supremacists from the alt-right and #blacklivesmatter activists from the progressive left are both involved in identity politics, because they both operate with the same baseline assumptions that puts race ahead of individual choice. Multiculturalists in Europe who fail to distinguish between legitimate refugees fleeing from places like Syria, economic migrants who are just looking to take advantage of socialist welfare, and Jihadist terrorists who are seeking to infiltrate Western societies in order to set up sleeper cells are also caught up in identity politics.
In books, identity politics is manifest when people say things like “we need to use our privileged position to signal boost minorities,” or “we should spend the next year reading books only by women / minorities / SJW flavor of the week.” It is placing the identity of the author above anything about the quality of the story.
Larry Correia is guilty of many things, but identity politics is not one of them. Same with Hoyt, Torgersen, and many of the others on the SP side. Beale, on the other hand, does deal in identity politics, because his political ideology puts an emphasis on race ahead of individual choice.
Frankly, the fact that you think Larry is obsessed with identity politics says far more about you than it does about Larry.
I don’t want to get into the overall political argument, but as a neutralish matter of definitions identity politics can be used to include any aspect of identity – including politics. I had a quick google around to double check and one of the examples easiest to find is identity politics to do with musical taste! I’m not sure a debate on whether to have a broad (identity politics can include any aspect of identity) or narrow (identity politics can only apply to traits you’re born with) definition is worth getting irritable over. There’s always the option to agree to disagree on the definition instead of making personal assumptions about each other.
Agree with Meredith. But not to labor, let’s accept the definition as provided by the host. So it is identity politics for non puppies but it isn’t identity politics for the puppy side which is all about identifying with the conservative culture movement and resonates as a backlash against what they perceive as affirmative action. That makes the whole term irrelevant. But the puppy movement is cultural and political at its core – pick whatever term one wants.
The main point here is we are talking about SFF awards and it is a Fan based award. However the Fans identify or (don’t identify) makes no difference. And with EPH the puppy movement will only have an impact in accordance to their numbers – which is small. Kerfuffle over. Who cares if anyone reconciles?
You can choose your personal political philosophy, or which books to read. You can’t choose the genitalia you’re born with or the melanin content of your skin.
Even allowing for political ideology as an identity marker prone to identity politics, most conservatives (including Larry) will still listen to arguments made by individuals whose politics run counter to their own. They don’t say “I can ignore anything a democrat will ever say because no democrat will ever say anything worth listening to.” Rather, they say “I’ve heard what this individual has said before, and based on the poor arguments he’s made in the past, I’m going to ignore him.” It’s a subtle difference, but it’s important because it marks the difference between individualism and collectivism.
In the past, I’ve taken Sarah Hoyt to task for some of her remarks about Islam. She hasn’t written me off for it the way someone on the left would write me off as “Islamophobic” if I had criticized Muslim immigrants on their blog. So no, I don’t think that Correia or Hoyt or any of the other Puppy leaders are mired in identity politics quite the same way as Wendig, Jemison, or Scalzi. You’re going to have to show me a lot more evidence if you’re going to convince me otherwise.
Isn’t Scalzi friends with Instapundit?
I think the usage of identity politics is still varying in definition, so I’d like to get this nailed down – the one I’m familiar with is that people’s identities influence how they see the world and respond to other people (which seems fairly inevitable on a minor level, but could easily get nasty and dangerous taken too far), and that it can extend into ingroup reinforcing and so forth (which, equally, is just humans being humans when not taken too far). Is the usage here more along the lines of “because I’m y, I do not listen to people who are x”? Because I’m comfortable with applying the first definition to all the parties mentioned to a greater or lesser degree (the ones I know much about, anyway, I don’t want to jump to conclusions about those I’m less familiar with), but I don’t think I’d accept the latter definition as applying to any of them, Puppy or non-Puppy. Beale, maybe, Requires Hate/Sriduangkaew, maybe, but no-one else.
As I see it, identity politics is defining people solely as the total of their identity markers (eg white, cis, male), not on what they say or do as individual human beings.
Right, I see. Well, as I said, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone do anything like that who isn’t as extremist as Beale or Sriduangkaew. Correia doesn’t do that, Scalzi doesn’t do that. Sometimes I see young, silly teenagers (who can nonetheless inflict considerable damage on other young, silly teenagers) engage in such reductionism but, well, they’re young, silly teenagers. Most of them grow out of it.
Funny how terms can end up varying so wildly in definition. I’ll have to make sure I’m more careful about getting an idea whether I’m talking about the same thing in future.
Kirby,
Your use of the Tea Party (Tea-Puppies) as a pejorative says everything we need about where you are coming from. It also supports some of the points of those from the Sad Puppies like James May, who’ve eloquently made their points, that you are politically motivated. You’ve just associated yourselves with the hard left loons who think that screaming their hateful rhetoric loudly makes them right. And for the record, I’m not a conservative, though I’d disagree with using that as a slur… I’m a proud libertarian who is hated by both parties.
@jrhandleyblog if I have to say that was a pejorative rather than a classification I would say it was a pejorative to the Tea-Party, not the puppies. But that seems off point to this discussion. The pups freeped the nomination process. The Fans reacted in the voting. The pups were embarrassed and the Fans applauded. Now GRRM talks about reconciliation. Why? The pups are a tiny fringe of an already tiny group. Once voting the weakness in the nomination is resolved, who cares who is a loon and who is a tea-puppy. We will either agree that “Seveneves” is Hugo nomination worthy or we won’t and if we don’t it will be in proportion to our numbers.
I do expect Vox and Larry to keep stirring things up but I don’t think they will get their minions to invest $40 each year on an ongoing basis.
You know some of us left wing loons don’t have our favorite works win Hugos either. My favorite SF for the decade never got nominated but the market loved it. Ton of sales. Mini series is coming up. But no Hugo. Doesn’t mean its because the author is a liberal SJW. Doesn’t mean the Hugo fans were wrong fans having wrong fun. Doesn’t mean there was some big conspiracy by TOR. Fans made their decision. That’s enough.
I think Mr. Martin recognizes that the No Award sweep hurt the Hugos, and doesn’t have the humility or grace to say so publicly. He also probaly recognizes that a second No Award sweep would inflict lasting damage, from which it would be very difficult for the Hugos to recover.
GRRM has said publicly right from the beginning that he strongly disagreed with the people advocating No Award across the board, and has also publicly stated since then that he particularly disagreed with the No Awards given in the editor categories. I don’t recall whether he made any specific statements about the fiction or Related Work results but he has always been against No Award as an automatic response to slating. He was always very clear that he personally was going to read the works and rank them according to the standards he holds for any other year, whether they were on a slate or not.
There are people you could criticise for encouraging No Award but GRRM really isn’t one of them.
You’re right, Meredith, my mistake. I mean that he doesn’t have the grace to admit that the Puppies have a point about elitism and the Hugos, which doesn’t exactly connect with the last comment.
No Award sweep was the collective judgement of the fans on the works they were presented. GRRM was just one fan. This is a Fan based award. Are they wrong Fans having wrong votes?
Dear Mer Handley –
You say “what else would you be referring to but a political movement eschewing smaller government”. You should consider that as a left wing loon my view of the tea-party is not that. Nor is it relevant here other than as a culture back lash.
But I agree. This is a tempest in a teapot. Worldcon is composed of Fans many who have been in close association for many years. They joke about how old they are. They like to get together and discuss SFF and debate over who should get what award. They did this for many years until a flaw was discovered in their nominating process that gave a dedicated small group the ability to take over the nominating ballot. Hopefully that is resolved and after this year they can continue with their convention in relative peace.
As you say, the pups can have their own convention. Or they can stay and compete on an equal footing.
You say, “I watch too many grown men and women get apoplectic over something so trivial”. I agree with that as to the awards. Particularly SFF. Some writers who sell lots of books like Diana Gabaldon don’t seem to want to be considered at all for a SFF award. Can you imagine if she did; started a kerfuffle over not being considered and mobilized that huge fan base? JK Rowling won a Hugo; didn’t show up to accept it and didn’t send anyone in her place. Stephen King won a Hugo for a non fiction book in the 80s but never for any of his works. I don’t think he cares.
I look at the 2015 Goodreads awards for SFF. “Golden Son” by Pierce Brown won the SF category with 32K votes. It is early I know but I don’t hear any Hugo buzz about that. I hear lots about “Seveneves” that only recorded about 16K votes. But to put SFF in perspective, the mystery category was won by “Girl on a Train” with 106K votes. So yes, the whole thing seems a bit trivial.
Except… like you say… let them have their convention back. These guys have been riding that Worldcon Horse for a long time. It is important to them.
Kirby, aside from being wrong on your politics you seem like a funny dude! LOL
“Um… you do realize that the term “wrongfun” was invented by the Puppies to describe their own tastes in fiction, because of all the things the SJWs didn’t approve? Seems like you’re engaging in a bit of revisionist history there.”
No. I am just saying the pups are the ones doing what they accuse FANS of doing. There is no cabal. This is a Fan based award.
…which is why SP4 is allowing anyone, Puppy or not, to participate in putting together their slate / recommendation list right now?
“…which is why SP4 is allowing anyone, Puppy or not, to participate in putting together their slate / recommendation list right now?”
Well we will see. Sarah has been good at banning people in the past. Personally, I hope that a watering down of the slates plus the increase in Fan participation will be enough to generate a representative ballet. Who knows? But again – after 2016, the pups won’t be able to game the nomination process. If they can muster 20% of support, they can have a puppy work on the ballot as they should. And good for them.
Or… they can get behind works with lots of market support like Guardians of the Galaxy, in which case it won’t matter if they are puppies or they are not puppies.
I don’t think you will see 6 Hugo Nominations for John C. Wright with the EPH voting reform.
Forgive me, but what exactly is a CHORF?
Collegiate Harridan Out Ruining Fun? Curmudgeonly Hot Old Renaissance Freaks?
Please help! 😛
Cliquish, holier-than-thou, Obnoxious, Reactionary Fanatics. It’s a term that Brad Torgersen invented last year with Sad Puppies 3.
Thanks, and EPH Voting Reform?
Not sure of that one.
E Pluribus Hugo (out of the many, the Hugo, roughly) is a proposed alteration to the nomination process to move from a first past the post system, which is very vulnerable to slating, to a more slate-resistant nomination system (it won’t be the same as the voting system, but you can see how much more robust the voting system was at finding the majority opinion; EPH tries to emulate that success). The details can be found via google – I’m not a voting systems expert so you’d be better off looking for the explanations of the creators than listening to me muddle through an explanation. 🙂
Thanks, Meredith.
Kirby, I don’t follow the Hugo and have been pretty solitary in my fandom of all things Science Fiction and Fantasy until this past year when the Hugo hit the blogosphere. I hadn’t heard of it, and consider book awards to literati and snobbish in general to lend any weight to them. I’ve just been following the thread here as its the only one active on this topic on the few I follow. I think the drama is much ado about nothing. I think Meredith is right, the Puppies should cede the field, give you your award back and start their own game. Let them compete in the marketplace of ideas and win, or lose, rather than let Godwins Law run amok. Instead I watch too many grown men and women get apoplectic over something so trivial and exhibit behavior (yes, its both sides) that I’d punish my kids for. Rather silly, but that’s just me… as for “Tea-Puppy,” what else would you be referring to but a political movement eschewing smaller government? Yes, that form of governance is antithetical to a large state preferred by the left but insult the other is childish.
Let’s look at a bottom line here. The quality of the Hugo Winners anthologies Vol. 1 and 2 is undeniable, and it only covers the first 15 years of the Hugos. Where is that quality now? You can’t take the 2000-15 Hugo Winners and produce that quality of short stories, especially the last few years. The lesson is that affirmative action kills quality. If you prioritize the social identity of the author over art then what you get is social identity, not art. If you look at those first two volumes and note there’s only one woman and one black guy then you are on the road to murdering art the same way you would be in insisting an NBA all-star game have 50% white players. Contrary to what people may think, majority black folks in rap music is not a crime or problem, nor is it in SFF. These are cultural currents which go wherever they choose to go. Try and racially-sexually wrangle them like a herd of cattle and you’ll wreck whatever cultural expression you go after.
One of the biggest bald-faced lies the social justice community is handing out is they are not involved in an affirmative action movement, though there exists comment after comment – hundreds of them – about uplifting “marginalized voices.” The problem is there are no marginalized voices in SFF. There is only race-baiting, made up grievances and manufactured victimhood based on narratives which range from outright lies to paranoia. Pie-chart SFF and that’s all you have, a pie-chart which makes social justice clods feel secure that a good day’s work has been done. Unfortunately the stories are garbage. For some oddball reason I’m not interested it is a genderqueer who tells me the truth about owls or an Asian lesbian who tells me the truth about “rape culture” via noble mermaids used as fish sticks by ignoble men. That is not SFF; that is a supremacist cult and it is group defamation in the same sense “defamation” is used in the titles of GLAAD and the ADL.
When Davidson writes our “dragons are imaginary” that is a straight up false-hood. We have been under a relentless assault for several years now by a bizarre cult with an equally bizarre shared language full of “cishets” and “gendernormative” that is as distinct a language as “gracias” is from “thank you.” Davidson should remember how he himself was assaulted by a woman who uses phrases like “Can someone please think about the white people?! Ugh.” What is that if the word “Jew” is used for “white”?
Good stuff is where you find it, not where you want it to be. That was a lesson taught in another counter-culture movement a half century ago. I can see it needs to be taught again.