When John Scalzi left office as SFWA President he announced an absolute, carved-in-stone policy against commenting on the organization’s issues for one year. He explained it anew the other day so everyone would be sure to understand he hadn’t violated his self-imposed gag rule with a new post, Join the Insect Army:
Although I reference my time in SFWA here, I won’t be directly commenting on current SFWA actions, etc. I’m still in my one year “don’t talk about SFWA” stage (I’ve noted the recent unpleasantness elsewhere because it is not something SFWA is doing, but rather, something being done to SFWA).
I may be a science fiction fan but even my Slan-like imagination cannot conceive any way Scalzi could be doing more to inject himself into matters SFWAn had he not taken that mighty oath.
This month alone he’s written about SFWA controversies three times, the two other posts being Ten Things About Petitions and Freedom of Speech and Today’s General Comment Apropos of Nothing in Particular.
But there must be a difference, even if I can’t see it. So I will continue to shout along with the mob, “The Emperor is wearing clothes! The Emperor is wearing clothes!” For no particular reason at all.
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I’m not going to get into the SFWA wars–sorry–but I thought Scalzi’s analogies about how writers make a living were quite good. I don’t care for Scalzi’s politics, but everything he says about being a pro writer is quite smart.
Neither of those concerns — what he thinks about the SFWA wars or what he says about being a pro writer — is really the point being made here but that he’s turning into a buffoon by (1) not doing what he says he’s going to do (his self-imposed SFWA gag rule) and (2) writing about people whose names he refuses to use (like Vox Day). As a reader, that posturing makes me feel that Scalzi is insulting my intelligence. I really can’t see why he thinks it’s clever.