Lou Antonelli’s BOLO Story

Lou Antonelli poses with sign outside Hugo, Oklahoma.

Lou Antonelli poses with sign outside Hugo, Oklahoma.

This BOLO story is not about sentient tanks.

Those who listened to last week’s Superversive SF Hugo livestream already know, but the rest of the world has just learned that online discussion featured Lou Antonelli’s claim to have written a letter to the Police Department of Spokane, Washington, telling them to be on the lookout for someone who may incite violence — Sasquan guest of honor David Gerrold.

Lou J. Berger asked Antonelli if he really wrote the Spokane PD. Antonelli answered –

I said I thought Gerrold’s on-line comments were so intemperate they were an incitement to violence, which is what I believe. I wanted them to know in case there were any disruptions at the convention….

I just suggested they (the PD) be aware of the controversy and possibility of people getting, uhh, maybe too enthused.

I verified Berger’s report with Antonelli myself who agreed, “That’s the way I recalled it. If I said anything stronger than that, I don’t recall and I must have been drinking some beer at the time.”

Now Jim C. Hines has published a transcript of Lou’s quote:

I’m referring to your quote at 1:00:28 in the video linked below:

“I really didn’t know much about [Gerrold] before the Hugo nominations came out. Following his discourse and his level of discourse as a result, I personally wrote a letter addressed to the police chief in Spokane and said I thought the man was insane and a public danger and needs to be watched when the convention’s going on, and I mean it. I attached my business card. I said this guy’s inciting to violence. Somebody—a weak-minded might attack somebody because of his relentless strength of abuse. I think, honestly, I think he belongs in a secure psychiatric facility.”

Update: Lou Antonelli subsequently responded to Jim C. Hines’ Facebook post with an apology for his actions.

Thanks for your polite request for an explanation. I’ve thought about what to say, which is painful to admit.

It’s become public that on July 1st I wrote a letter to the chief of the Spokane Police Department expressing some concerns over potential security issues at the upcoming Sasquan.

I’m sorry for what I did. Without looking at the big picture I reacted in a manner that I thought I was being treated. It was stupid and wrong. My subsequent participation on a podcast was also a mistake because the environment further fueled my fear and I lashed out again.

I’m sorry I bothered the Spokane PD. They probably are ready to throw the butterfly net over ME when I enter the city. And I’m sorry and apologize to David Gerrold. He probably understands why I did what I did better than I do.

I need to ponder the hurt I have caused. To give me time to think, after Sasquan I am taking a half-year hiatus from attending any conventions and/or submitting any fiction.

I think I’ve become my own crazy uncle…

373 thoughts on “Lou Antonelli’s BOLO Story

  1. Speaking of Hoyt, I wrote a (polite) post after her blowout at Mike, where she got confused about the roundup titles and accused him of ‘raping the truth’. I tried to explain that he really hasn’t been commenting on her at all. Sadly, my post was never released from moderation or acknowledged.

    Did she ever retract that, or apologize?

  2. @Maximillian

    Not to my knowledge. I commented on a couple of her posts about hydrophobia aka homophobia asking her if she would do so, and she replied with refusals.

  3. @Mark – Faacinating. Out of all of them, she seems to be one of the few who honestly believes everything she is saying. It’s too bad that this belief is immune to examination or facts. :/

    Or am I missing something, did she say *why* she refused to write a correction? Was it just that File 770 are a bunch of evil Marxist SJWs, so even if she was wrong in detail, she was right in essence?

  4. The reason Dr. Mauser cannot see my Facebook page is because I blocked him.

    I don’t remember when or why I blocked him. But my reasons for blocking people are simple. Bad manners. Personal attacks. Flame wars.

    I would offer to unblock Dr. Mauser, but based on the evidence of his posts in this comment thread, I can’t see there’s any value in that for me. I’ve already had enough agida this week.

    Beyond that, I’m somewhat bemused, because if talking about my character is the most interesting discussion anyone chooses to engage in, I’d say that he/she needs to get out more.

  5. @Maximillian

    Oh, it was a conflation of various things. “Right in essence” probably covers it. IIRC, she stuck to her guns that it was somehow a dog whistle about homophobia, combined with accusations that Mike misquotes her most controversial articles and ignores others (she had a specific example of that which I disagreed with her about), and that the F770 comments section was abusive and Mike didn’t stop us. I believe at that point Mike had already said that he was leaving it there, and her own commenters were getting unnecessarily abusive, so I left.

  6. Mark: We’re probably in a fair amount of agreement and I don’t quibble strongly with the parts of your comments I do quibble with. (For example, during the last years of Salazar’s rule and the beginning of Caetano’s, Portugal’s economy did grow quite fast compared to the European average, so perhaps her comments about Portugal’s economic growth are not that far-fetched.) But remember, it was Jim Henley’s comment about her pining for fascism that I objected to. It is, in fact, strongly reminiscent of Hoyt’s own view of people on the left and was made precisely to support his labeling her “extreme right-wing.”

  7. @Ferret Buhler

    Hoyt may well have been right about Portugal’s trajectory, but claiming that a fascist regime did good things for the economy is not generally considered a valid apologia for being a fascist regime.

    I’m not sure what the most useful term is for placing someone on the rightward wing of the right (i.e. to the right of wherever mainstream conservatism lies), but based purely on the people Hoyt defines as being to the left of her (which includes the whole of Europe) I’m pretty comfortable placing her there.

  8. First, I’d like to apologize for not replying directly to you before posting comments to Mark involving you; that was rude of me.

    Jim Henley: “Back in the roundup days, Mike and others linked several posts where Hoyt lamented the “Marxists” that ruined Portugal.”

    I called up all the posts tagged “Sarah A. Hoyt” and read all of her posts that had been linked to in the tagged posts and didn’t find a single one where she talked about Marxists ruining Portugal; I freely admit I didn’t bother trudging through the comments, so perhaps something was linked there. The closest passage I found was this: “Among other things I’ve been called…a “fan of the Portuguese regime deposed in the seventies” (this by the German wonder who doesn’t get that one can oppose both a regime and its replacement.” So in short, I still don’t think your comment is fair.

  9. Mark: “Hoyt may well have been right about Portugal’s trajectory, but claiming that a fascist regime did good things for the economy is not generally considered a valid apologia for being a fascist regime.”

    I reread the post you linked to and I don’t agree with your assertion that it’s an apologia for Salazar’s or Caetano’s years in office: “Overthrowing the regime would have been a good thing, (only it wasn’t his regime anymore but that of his chosen successor under whom I suspect Portugal would have been a kinder, gentler version of China today and possibly very prosperous, if still soft-fascist) if the Junta that overthrew him hadn’t contained at least communist under orders from Moscow.” I take it you disagree with her view of the balefulness of the socialist and communist influences on the revolution, which is perfectly fair, but none of her post struck me as an apologia for the New State. [Shrug.] But I could be tone deaf.

    “I’m not sure what the most useful term is for placing someone on the rightward wing of the right (i.e. to the right of wherever mainstream conservatism lies)…” I think many of them of the libertarian persuasion prefer “rightist.” In any case, “extreme far-right” is usually taken as equivalent to fascist or Nazi, and calling those who aren’t fascists or Nazis “extreme far-right” quite rightly makes them angry.

  10. @Ferret: I think we’re hearing different music to Hoyt’s lyrics. to me there’s a great wistfulness to her expectations of how she thinks the Caetano regime would have developed. Let us not forget that Caetano, in whom she places so much retroactive hope, did want the military to suppress the popular uprising against him; the military simply refused.

    Here is Wikipedia’s account of Caetano’s time as leader, which was 6 years, so it’s not like he didn’t have time to “evolve” if he wanted to:

    During Caetano’s time in office, his attempts at minor political reform were obstructed by the important Salazarist elements within the regime (known as the Bunker). The Estado Novo’s political police — the PIDE (Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado), later to become DGS (Direcção-Geral de Segurança), and originally the PVDE (Polícia de Vigilância e Defesa do Estado) — persecuted opponents of the regime, who were often tortured, imprisoned or killed.

    There’s also the Middle 8 about handing Portugal’s African colonies over to Soviet front groups without considering that maybe, just maybe, it was her country’s conduct in those colonies that made communist revolutionaries look appealing in the first place. And no word of the enormous damage done to places like Angola by Western support for the likes of Jonas Savimbi.

    All that adds up, to me, to “extreme right wing” and, in practice, “pining for the lost regime.” BUT – I can see why you’d call it another way. Your disagreement is reasonable, even though I still do disagree.

  11. Jim Henley: “All that adds up, to me, to “extreme right wing” and, in practice, “pining for the lost regime.” BUT – I can see why you’d call it another way. Your disagreement is reasonable, even though I still do disagree.”

    Fair enough. It’s a minor, minor issue in a massive foofaraw, so I’m happy to leave it at that.

  12. @Ferret Buhler

    Hoyt is referring to the Caetano regime, about which she says “I suspect Portugal would have been a kinder, gentler version of China today and possibly very prosperous, if still soft-fascist.” In short, she seems to think a Fascist regime might have made a good fist of running Portugal. Possibly true, but undeniably a Bad Thing for the Portuguese who appear to value their hard-won democratic rights. Not the sort of thing you want to write without very careful qualification. If I was being generous, I’d simply say that Hoyt’s horror of Marxism led her dangerously close to the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

    I don’t have an opinion on the exact “balefulness of the socialist and communist influences on the revolution” due to a lack of in-depth knowledge, but I can certainly conclude that they weren’t that baleful because Portugal transitioned to a successful democracy. Hoyt appears unhappy that it was an European-type of democracy (because Marxists), but that’s hardly an unexpected result for a European country.

    Terminology aside, if I wanted to call someone a neo-nazi, I’d do that. There’s a spectrum between mainstream conservatism and “neo-nazi”, and placing someone on it doesn’t equate to calling them a neo-nazi. This is of course the error that Hoyt repeatedly makes when conflating “left” with “Marxist”.

    ETA rather overlapping with some of what Jim has said. I’m happy to wind this one down unless there were any specific points you wanted to come back on.

  13. “I’m not sure what the most useful term is for placing someone on the rightward wing of the right (i.e. to the right of wherever mainstream conservatism lies)”

    A couple of years ago there was a kerfuffle in British political circles when a close associate of the (Conservative) Prime Minister referred to his party’s activists as “swivel-eyed loons”. This might fit the bill, at least for certain values of “useful”.

  14. @TNH

    Dr Mauser has linked his blog in his nick throughout, which includes his publications and therefore his name. Still no reason to take him seriously, mind.

  15. On Hoyt’s position on the political spectrum consider:

    The pursuit of “perfect justice” be it racial, economic or whatever has filled millions of graves. Now, would Jeb Bush do that? I doubt it. Or at least I don’t think so. He’s a soft-Euro-socialist not a Stalinist (which means yeah, in certain circumstances the lesser of two evils) but the phrase is still worrying for a demonstration of brain-rot and how lazy thinking gets into people’s minds and ejects reason and sense, and can cause horrible evil.

    Which can be found here . I think if from the place where you are standing Jeb Bush looks like a ‘soft Euro-socialist’ then it is safe to assume that you are standing somewhat quite far to the right. Mind you, Hoyt does have the common sense to dislike Trump also.

  16. Disclaimer first:

    I’m not speaking here on behalf of Macmillan, Tor, or any other entity doing business in the professional publishing world.

    Anyone who says otherwise is at minimum an idiot.

    Re pseudonymity:

    I hope I live long enough to see a day when a discussion of authentic identity in comment threads doesn’t have to YET AGAIN thrash out the difference between stable pseudonyms with a knowable history, and short-term throwaway pseudonyms used by commenters who are avoiding engagement and responsibility.

    Nick Mamatas has this one nailed:

    One need only spend time on any recent Puppy thread here to find pseuds claiming to be experts on some subject, to be facing immense personal difficulties either now or in the past that excuse them from the basics of sense-making, to be great fighters and military veterans who’ll kick everyone’s asses, to be big-time business people who really know how corporations work and thus Tor must be run under SJW terms than proper capitalist ones etc etc.

    There is no reason to believe any of it.

    For a while there, we had a lot of Pups commenting at Making Light. Almost all of them used nonce-pseudonyms. Most of those entities made one or two unpleasant remarks, then left. A few dug in and argued at length.

    An oddity: every Pup commenter who stuck around and argued at length turned out to be lying his bleeping head off. It was extremely offensive.

    Another oddity: among the pups Pups were more people who claimed to be ESL speakers than you’d normally see in an online population that size. Those who posted at sufficient length for us to get a sense of their text turned out to be lying about their ESL background too, so I now regard all such claims as suspect.

    And a footnote: the commenter on Irene Gallo’s FB page who asked her to explain the Pups claimed to be an ESL speaker.

    That this is, in 2015, somehow controversial, is amazing to me.

    Brian Z is not making appeals to his background (that I have seen) when he wrings his hands over EPH. I’m not making any appeal to my own experience as reader, writer, or editor when I ask people to point to the baaad Hugo winners. It has nothing to do with arguments except when someone makes some personal claim to back up their arguments from within an Internet Dog Costume.

    When varieties of pseudonymity are being discussed seriously and in good faith, it’s not a terribly controversial issue.

  17. TNH: What’s your real name, by the way? Is there any reason I should take you seriously?

    Irony meter spiking…

  18. On her blog (carriecuinn.com) Carrie Cuinn has made an additional statement about Antonelli publishing her (edited) e-mail on his page.

  19. Disclaimer:

    I’m not speaking here on behalf of Macmillan, Tor, or any other entity doing business in the professional publishing world.

    Again, anyone who says otherwise is at minimum an idiot.

    Lou Antonelli in a nutshell:

    I recommend reading “Candidate Antonelli has a depressing day”, a newspaper story published 03 November 1982 in the Columbia Spectator.

    Background: Election Day 1982 has ended. Lou Antonelli has been defeated as the Republican candidate for an Upper West Side congressional seat he had zero chance of winning. He’s known from day one that he was going to lose. He’d run in the kind of district where recent graduates run as Republicans in order to pad out their resumes, safe in the knowledge that there’s no way they’re going to get elected.

    And how does he react to this 100% predictable defeat? With self-pity, resentment, and a disregard for the facts. He admits that in a district that doesn’t vote Republican, he’d been running a minimal campaign, just going through the motions; yet it’s clear that he resents losing. That’s like jumping off the roof while resenting gravity. He also blames the phase of the moon (full) for making him grouchy, the weather (good) for encouraging voter turnout, and the voters themselves: “The people have spoken … the bastards.”

    I’ve ceased to have much hope that Antonelli’s behavior during the Puppy thing represents a recent and temporary aberration.

  20. @ULTRAGOTHA

    Well, I guess whatever small redemption Lou earned has been un-earned in record time. And so begins his exclusive publishing contract with CH?

  21. Yeah, and even I was ready to cut him some slack for the apology. And maybe even look at his publishing her e-mail as stupid cluelessness. Not so much now.

  22. @ULTRAGOTHA

    Interesting, in a depressing sort of way. I’m struggling for a reasonable explanation for why he would edit the email in that way.

    @TNH

    Amusing, but however he acted at age 25 there seems to be quite enough of his behaviour at age 58 to pick over. (Nice disclaimer, BTW)

  23. To give credit where credit is properly due, the line “The people have spoken, the bastards.” was uttered by Dick Tuck, who was a political prankster that got on Dick Nixon’s bad side. Quite a character.

  24. I’m struggling for a reasonable explanation for why he would edit the email in that way.

    I don’t think there is one. I think he knew what he was doing, and knew the consequences of doing it.

    And I think it is clear that Antonelli is not an aberration among the Puppies. This is a group that has shown both poor impulse control and a willingness to resort to threats over trivialities. Williamson threatened to kick someone in the teeth over reporting his racist posts on his Facebook page (and said he had his lawyer working on finding out who had done it so he could make good on the threat). Beale thinks Brevik will be honored as a hero in the future among the many other violent fantasies he indulges in. Wright thinks the natural reaction of straight men to seeing gay men is to want to beat them to death. The Marmot threatens to show up and fight anyone who says mean things about his writing. And so on and so forth.

  25. @Aaron
    The Marmot threatens to show up and fight anyone who says mean things about his writing.

    To be more accurate, I saw The Marmot make such threats in response to a commenter casting doubts on his military service. (Note I didn’t say “To be fair.” Nothing fair or excusable about Marmotlike behavior no matter what he claims set him off.)

  26. I, being a basically good-natured and trusting soul–stop laughing, all of you, I really am–was actually rather willing to accept that it was a heaping ton of blindness that caused Antonelli to post what he did without realizing that people would go after Cuinn. I mean, *I* get surprised by the overreactions on the internet, so hey, maybe somebody else who is obviously stuffed to the gills with unexamined…something…might not realize what was happening.

    But the edits…no, that’s actively malicious at that point. He was trying to put someone else on the hot seat. He might not have known what would happen, but he’s damn sure responsible that it did. (At the very least, once it became obvious that it was happening, he could have taken the e-mail down! Slapped down the commenters talking about tracking her down! Jesus!)

    I hate it when people suck.

  27. Not wanting to cast doubts on David Gerrold’s good judgment, but in my opinion buying Antonelli a beer may not be the most responsible thing to do, considering the kinds of things he’s blamed on his drinking.

  28. Speaking of pseudonyms: yesterday at a birthday party, I was sitting around with a small group of parents, some of whom were saying complimentary things about the writing of Ursula Vernon, and mentioning at least one character who’s a wombat. I, of course, asked about the color of said wombat, and got confused looks, and an answer of “… wombat colored, I guess …”

  29. buying Antonelli a beer may not be the most responsible thing to do
    Root beer or ginger beer ought to do. Or one of the non-alcoholic beers.

  30. Am I the only one to be snickering loudly at DR. Mauser’s apparent inability to consider that he might be blocked on Facebook instead of his alternate theory (which has as much support as all his theories) that David Gerrold had deleted his entire Facebook? Ego, much?

    Oh, and clearly since DR. is important for credentials blah blah blah (haven’t gone to look at his actual name or publications, but may not be able to resist), I’m going to insist that he call me DR. Rrede if he responds…..although of course since this is a pseud, nobody can tell *draws cloak of shadows close and darts away*.

  31. Yeah…the selective editing of the email shows bad intent on Lou’s part.

    So, the goodwill I was willing to offer for his sincere apology to Gerrold? Gone. How would anyone reasonably think its sincere, after what he pulled with Cuinn.

    Worse, maybe he was sincere with his apology to Gerrold but figured Cuinn was a soft target. That’s even worse.

  32. rrede:

    although of course since this is a pseud, nobody can tell

    Well, that would be true for most people, but you just announced your latest scholarly book in a comment here the other day.

  33. @Mike: I have a pretty open pseud because I blab a lot. OTOH I could have been lying ;).

    This is actually my 70s Apa pseud not mt slash fic pseud!

  34. Another thing in the story that pisses me off: If what Cuinn says is correct, then Antonelli didn’t apologize until after his behaviour had already started to affect his career. And to then both edit her email before making it public and adding her email adress.

    No, no more sympathy from me. Enough is enough.

  35. Publishing a private e-mail without consent isn’t appropriate behavior. Editing the e-mail and then making the edited e-mail public is a reprehensible act.

    Lou Antonelli has zero credibility at this point and I don’t ever expect that to change.

    I’m not particularly comfortable knowing he lives on the same planet I’m on.

  36. Pingback: Dishonesty in the service of the oligarchy » Rants and Ramblings By An Old Bag

  37. Let’s be careful here. I see no evidence that Antonelli published anyone’s email address. Here he published her email message, and unnecessarily identified the publication and editor, which were irrelevant to his point, but not her address.
    In this case, I’m willing to believe him when he said that he really didn’t expect this to lead to threats or harassment of Cuinn, and not look for malice behind something that can be explained by simple incompetence. “Actions have consequences” seems to be a difficult lesson that he’s having trouble learning.

  38. My true name must not be spoken, but my longstanding pseudonym is YHWH. A moment’s research will reveal that millions know me.

    I am a six year old silver standard poodle, a spayed bitch. I am not privileged, I’m just naturally better than everyone else and deserve the softest beds, the fluffiest pillows and the tastiest treats. Being omnipotent doesn’t mean you don’t have problems, too.

    I have no need for martial arts but my bipedal servant, who sits on command at my right front paw, has reached the level of Brass Sneakers in his study of Rincewind-fu.

    P.S. I am not a crank, you can believe me. I used my real pseudonym.

  39. @Morris: So what you’re saying is that Antonelli is not only not aware of any internet memes but has never heard of Google or its amazing powers. Uh-huh.

    Because that’s so very likely. As I said on another thread, I don’t care what he ‘intended’ to do so (and I’ve read his ever so weasling fauxpology in which he claims that his intent was to show people why they should not behave like him). The results are another woman is being harassed online. Big surprise there.

  40. Bloodstone75:

    Meanwhile, my impression, Nick Mamatas (from this occasion and earlier), is that you seem to use “pseud” the way BT uses “CHORF”: as an expression of contempt.

    You misunderstand; the pseudonymous who use terms like CHORF and SJW are using anonymity to hide, because people might not like them if was known that they held offensive views.

    The word that comes to mind for such pseudonymous people is “contemptible”. Also “cowardly”.

    JJ:

    I always get a good laugh when white men criticize others for using pseudonyms.

    Because why would anyone who has the courage of their convictions need to use a pseudonym? Just because there are crazies on the Internet who think it is acceptable (even impressive) to doxx you, send you abuse or death threats, show up at your home or work and threaten you, your family, and/or your property physically, or try to get you fired — simply for having an opinion which is different from theirs?

    It’s very easy to “have the courage” to use your own name online when you’ve never been threatened or stalked, and are not in a vulnerable target group.

    I’m willing to bet that most of the pseudonymous who use terms like CHORF and SJW are white males. Again: no courage.

  41. @TNH: “….among the pups Pups were more people who claimed to be ESL speakers than you’d normally see in an online population that size.”

    I always found that fascinating, to be quite honest. There seems to be a class of troll, or a method at least that almost always prefaces their comments with stuff like “oh English is not my first language etc”. Is it just a tactic to gain sympathy? To throw out as a “Y U So MEEEEN” counter later?

    Also, now that we’ve gotten nuanced on the whole pseud discussion, I’m trying to figure out how long I’ve been using this handle (~12 years?) and when the last time I posted using my real name (Usenet in the 90’s?).

    Huh. What the hell did I do in between?

  42. Right-wingers have a preoccupation with being victims. One good way to claim victim status is to claim to not be a native English speaker. It’s almost like being a person of color, but they get to be white white white!

  43. No dogs, no martial skills. Would love to see pictures of people’s dogs.

    Read the update about the edited email LA posted. I don’t know — at this point, I think stupidity is its own punishment for the man.

    Can we go back to talking about books? At least until the Hugo winners are announced?

  44. Quinchan: good idea. I just finished Sarah Avery’s Rugosa Coven and loved it. It won the Myrhopoeic Award and was a series of linked narratives about the lives of a Coven in what seemed like a realistic contemporary setting . . . until the last story. Fascinating.

    What are you reading?

  45. Disclaimer:

    I’m not speaking here on behalf of Macmillan, Tor, or any other entity doing business in the professional publishing world.

    Anyone who says otherwise is at minimum an idiot.

    =====

    Snowcrash, Nick Mamatas —

    There was a period a while back when the same kind of guys were claiming they were female. Possibly they’re just trying to confuse the issue. My own head canon on why they do it goes, “If any special privileges are attached to this status, I want my share of them too.”

    =====

    I need to correct something I said earlier. I just found out this evening that the ESL speaker who asked Irene about the Pups was someone she knows.

    Perfection: we’re getting there incrementally.

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