(1) FATHER’S DAY AND THE NIMOY FAMILY. “I absolutely adored Spock. Loving Dad was much more complicated” – by Adam Nimoy in the Boston Globe. (I usually hit a paywall at the Globe, but I was able to push past the pop-ups and read this article, so maybe you will too.)
…“We are now passing Beacon Hill, home to John F. Kennedy, John Hancock, and John Kerry, the three Johns. And we’re coming up on the West End, formerly an immigrant neighborhood that was demolished in the 1950s to make way for quote-unquote urban renewal. Of course, the most famous resident of the original West End is none other than Leonard Nimoy, who starred as Mr. Spock on ‘Star Trek.’ Do we have any ‘Star Trek’ fans on board?”
About a half dozen people raised their hands. Some yelped their excitement. I got all warm and fuzzy inside. Dad sat with his arms crossed over his linen jacket and gave one of his approving nods. Paul Revere, John Adams, John Kennedy, and . . . Leonard Nimoy. What a lineup — “highly illogical,” as Mr. Spock would say.
The trip to Boston gave me the chance to see the city through my father’s eyes while giving Dad an opportunity to relive the events that shaped his life and career. Father and son closeness was relatively new to us….
Dad’s zeal for work had its downside. His career always came first. He was not one to come to Little League games, for example — a regular source of disappointment for a boy who just wanted to please the father he so admired….
Alternatively, CinemaBlend hosted this Nimoy tribute: “Leonard Nimoy’s Daughter Julie Pens Sweet Father’s Day Letter To Late Star Trek Actor”.
In the world of Star Trek, Spock was never a father, but the actor who played him, Leonard Nimoy, certainly was. The actor juggled a busy career along with being a good father to his two children, Adam and Julie and, on Father’s Day, Julie Nimoy shared a special letter with CinemaBlend to her father on this special holiday….
“…Forever my rock, I could always depend on him for his wise advice. Like most dads, he was very protective, but always encouraged me to be independent, starting at very young age….”
(2) INFLUENTIAL IDEAS. Samuel R. Delany shares his experiences reading and meeting Arthur C. Clarke on Facebook.
…(I’ve incorporated a lot of his ideas into my own, such as his early defense of the space program as a money saver on the large scale, because of the weather damage it prevented.) I met him—possibly, but I don’t even remember for sure—at a gathering at Michael Moorcock’s home at the end end of my first (’66) or in the midst of my second (for three weeks, covering Christmas/New Years ’66-’67) trip to London. The gathering was overshadowed by the presence of J. G. Ballard, whom most of his friends called Jimmy, and the growing pains of the “New Wave” and *New Worlds.* To me he was always Dr. Clarke—and when I met him the second time, in this country, at the opening of his, I-can-only-call-it World-Changing collaboration with the consistently greatest American filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” he recognized me as “Chip.” (That made it into the first volume of my journals and the review I wrote, one of a pair—the other by filmmaker/artist Ed Emshwiller— that were published on the film in F&SF.)…
Delany’s post mentions the side-by-side ads taken out in 1968 prozines by writers to express either their support for or opposition to the Vietnam War. Todd Mason blogged about it (in 2012) and included a screencap of the pages here: “1968: Judith Merril and Kate Wilhelm put together an ad against the Vietnam War…”
…it appears in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and in Galaxy, Worlds of If and International Science Fiction magazines (the latter three of which are published by the same publisher, Robert Guinn of the Galaxy Publishing Co., and edited by Frederik Pohl, the first edited by Edward Ferman and published by his father Joseph Ferman), along with a corresponding ad from “hawks” who are moved by Wilhelm and Merril’s canvassing….
(3) NOT THROWIN’ AWAY MY SHOT. Black Gate presents Sara Light-Waller’s commentary: “Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen: Piper’s Connecticut Yankee Tale”.
…As mentioned, Lord Kalvan is part of the Paratime universe. It was originally published in two parts, the second posthumously to Piper’s death. “Gunpowder God” first appeared in Analog in November 1964. The second part — “Down Styphon” — was published in the November 1965 issue. The novel, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (1965), is a compilation of the two which also includes new material expanding on the original stories.
In our reality and timeline, Pennsylvania state trooper, Corporal Calvin Morrison, is part of a group of police about to burst in on a criminal hiding out in an old farmhouse. As he walks forward with pistol drawn, he is accidently caught up in a Ghaldron-Hesthor temporal field….
Back on Home timeline, paracops quickly figure out what’s happened. Our old friend Verkan Vall, Special Assistant to the Chief of the Paratime Police, is there to see the damage.
“A man who can beat a Paracop to the draw won’t sink into obscurity on any time-line,” he says and decides to take charge of the case himself…
(4) WELLINGTON PARANORMAL. The New Zealand show has been mentioned here a few times – and now it’s coming to U.S. screens says SYFY Wire: “Wellington Paranormal: What We Do in the Shadows spinoff gets U.S. premiere date and trailer”.
Before What We Do in the Shadows became a hit TV series on FX, the first spinoff from the iconic 2014 mockumentary arrived on TV in its homeland of New Zealand. First announced in 2017, Wellington Paranormal began broadcasting into Kiwi homes in 2018, and has since produced three successful seasons and a holiday special, all without being widely available to U.S. viewers who’ve been enjoying a spinoff of their own. Next month, that holdout finally ends.
Back in the spring, The CW announced that it would begin airing Wellington Paranormal for American audiences this year, with episodes made available to stream the next day on HBO Max. Now, a new trailer’s here to get us all excited about finally seeing this show in all its clumsy paranormal cop glory. Check it out:
(5) CRT 451. “Opinion: To leave out these discussions of history is akin to burning books” writer Howard Stacy in a letter to the Gainesville Times.
Visiting a local book store recently, I bought the book “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury. I had read some of Bradbury’s books in the past (I’m a science fiction fan) and thought I would enjoy this one. Unfortunately, the book written in 1951 has so many parallels with today’s political climate that I am not sure I can finish it.
The plot covers the life of Guy Montag, a fireman in the not too distant future. The occupation of the firemen in Bradbury’s story is markedly different from the firemen today. Montag’s crew of firemen are tasked with burning books as well as the houses of the people that own them. It does not matter what books are in the house; their mere presence qualifies for destruction.
The firemen pull their hoses from the fire truck and start spraying kerosene on the offensive house. The kerosene is ignited, and the fire destroys the house and the books in it.
If the owner of the house refuses to leave, then the firemen burn him or her, too. The government has ordered that this is to be done because books contain dangerous ideas.
The similarity to today is the effort of the Trump Republicans and the Georgia State Board of Education to limit the discussion of Critical Race Theory. The full definition of CRT is complicated, involving White privilege and economic advantage based simply on the color of skin. However the CRT acronym makes it something that the Trump Republicans can get excited about. It looks good on a poster held up at a school board meeting, and it allows a racist to appear as someone that is only interested in having the youngsters in public schools receive the “correct” history instruction….
(6) WALTER SCHNEIDERMAN (1922-2021). The acclaimed makeup artist Walter Schneiderman died April 8 at the age of 98 reports The Guardian:
…The complex makeup required for the title character of The Elephant Man was nearly the undoing of that celebrated 1980 film. … But applying the resulting designs, which had been modelled from a cast of the real Joseph Merrick … fell upon the makeup artist Walter Schneiderman.
Schneiderman, who has died aged 98, called the film “one of the hardest pictures I had to do”. It took seven hours each day to put the makeup on Hurt, and another two to take it off again. Schneiderman was acclaimed for his work on the movie, which was nominated for eight Oscars. The lack of official recognition for … Schneiderman caused a furore, which led to the implementation the following year of a new Oscar category for best makeup.
Uncredited early work came his way on … Powell and Pressburger’s Tales of Hoffman (1951).
He spent five years, first as makeup artist and then as makeup supervisor, on the television series The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955-60). He moved into more film work with … One Million Years BC (1966), … Rollerball (1975). Schneiderman was makeup supervisor on the fantasy Labyrinth (1986), starring David Bowie as the flamboyant Goblin King.
Although an inventive and resourceful practitioner, he was always practical. “Directors think you open your box and out pops magic,” he said. “It does. But you’ve got to know how to apply it.” After his retirement, he went on to create and sell a line of commercial products under the name Make-Up International. Among them were Quick Action Powder Blood, Bruise Simulation Gel and Omaha Action Mud.
(7) MEMORY LANE.
- 1981 — Forty years ago at Denvention Two, The Empire Strikes Back which was released the previous year by Lucasfilm, won the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation. Other nominated works were Lathe of Heaven, the Cosmos series, The Martian Chronicles and Flash Gordon. It was directed by Irvin Kershner from the screenplay by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan with story by being George Lucas.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born June 20, 1897 — Donald Keyhoe. Early pulp writer whose works included the entire contents of all three published issues of the Dr. Yen Sin zine. The novels were The Mystery of the Dragon’s Shadow, The Mystery of the Golden Skull and The Mystery of the Singing Mummies. He would create two pulp characters, one with ESP who was a daredevil pilot and one who was blind that could see none-the-less in the dark. He’s best remembered today for being one of the early believers in UFOs and being very active in that community. (Died 1988.)
- Born June 20, 1913 — Lilian Jackson Braun. Author of The Cat Who… series which I think is genre. The two cats in it are delightful and one, Koko, certainly has a sixth sense, but the author never suggests is psychic. The first, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, was published in 1966. She’d publish twenty-nine more novels plus three collections of The Cat Who… shorter tales over the next forty years. Good popcorn reading. (Died 2011.)
- Born June 20, 1928 — Martin Landau. I’ve got his first genre role as being on The Twilight Zone as Dan Hotaling in “Mr. Denton on Doomsday” episode. Of course his longest running genre role was as Rollin Hand on Mission Impossible though he had a good run also on Space: 1999 as Commander John Koenig. His last role was in Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie voicing Mr. Rzykruski. (Died 2017.)
- Born June 20, 1951 — Tress MacNeille, 70. Voice artist extraordinaire. Favourite roles? Dot Warner on The Animaniacs, herself as the angry anchorwoman in Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, Babs Bunny on Tiny Toons and Hello Nurse on Pinky and The Brain.
- Born June 20, 1952 — John Goodman, 69. Some may know him as the TV husband of a certain obnoxious comedian but I’ve never watched that show. So I picture him as Fred Flintstone in The Flintstones, a role perfect for him. Mind you he’s had a lot of genre roles: voicing James P. “Sulley” Sullivan in the Monsters franchise, a cop in the diner in C.H.U.D., and he’ll even be the voice of Spike in the Tom and Jerry film that came out recently.
- Born June 20, 1947 — Candy Clark, 74. Mary Lou in The Man Who Fell to Earth which of course featured Bowie. She also was in Amityville 3-D, Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye and The Blob inthe role of Francine Hewitt. That’s the remake obviously, not the original. Oh, and she’s Buffy’s mom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Wiki being Wiki lists that as non-canon because it’s not the Whedon Buffy.
- Born June 20, 1967 — Nicole Kidman, 54. Batman Forever was her first foray into the genre but she has done a number of genre films down the years: Practical Magic, The Stepford Wives, Bewitched (I liked it), The Invasion (never heard of it), The Golden Compass (not nearly as good as the novel was), the splendid Paddington and her latest was as Queen Atlanna in the rather good Aquaman.
- Born June 20, 1968 — Robert Rodriguez, 53, I’ll single out the vastly different Sin City and Spy Kids franchises as his best work, though the From Dusk till Dawn has considerable charms as well. ISFDB notes that he’s written two novels with Chris Roberson riffing off his The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D film, The Day Dreamer and Return to Planet Droll.
(9) COMICS SECTION.
- Garfield is a superpet.
(10) FIRE IN THE SKY. Did the monks see what they say they saw in 1178? Connie Willis is rooting for them in her Facebook post. Astronomers and scientists have their own ideas:
Canterbury Cathedral was part of St. Augustine’s Abbey, a monastery founded in 598 A.D. It endured Viking raids, William the Conqueror’s invasion, a large fire (in 1168), and the murder of its archbishop, Thomas a Becket, and was finally done in by Henry VIII. But possibly the most important event in its long history was something happened on a summer night in June in 1178.
That night, “after sunset when the moon was first seen,” five monks were sitting outside looking at the sky and the crescent moon when the upper part of the horn “suddenly split in two. From the midpoint of this division, a flaming torch sprang up, spewing out fire, hot coals, and sparks. The body of the moon writhed like a wounded snake. Afterwards it resumed it proper state. This phenomenon was repeated a dozen times or more, the flame assuming various twisting shapes at random and then returning to normal. Then, after these transformations, the Moon, from hook to horn, that is, along the whole length, took on a blackish appearance.”
The five monks told Gervase of Canterbury, the chronicler of the Abbey, what they’d seen, and he wrote it all down, adding that the monks were “prepared to stake their honor on an oath that they have made no addition or falsification in the narrative.” Unfortunately, they were the only people to have seen it. According to European chroniclers of the time, the continent was “fogged in” that night, so the five Canterbury monks were the only witnesses, and nobody paid any attention to their account for nearly eight hundred years, at which point geologist Jack B. Hartung proposed a theory for what they might have seen: a giant asteroid slamming into the moon.
If it had, there should be a crater at the place the monks described the explosion as being, so Hartung went about looking for one–and found a likely candidate…
(11) THE DAWN OF HARRY. Harry Harrison started out drawing horror comics in the 1950s. Here is a post by G. W. Thomas which looks at his comics work: “Harry Harrison… Beware!”
Harry Harrison… Beware! Not of Harry Harrison’s writing because that’s excellent. Beware he drew horror strips for more than just EC Comics. While he and Wally Wood produced some classic comics there, HH began selling off other strips to packagers for a fee. The authors are not know for sure but Harry wrote most of these, including the writing in the fee. Some of these free market sales ended up at Youthful’s Beware and later Trojan’s Beware when the comic changed hands….
(12) NEFFY NOMS. The National Fantasy Fan Federation, in the June issue of TNFF, corrected the omission of Elizabeth Bear’s novel Machine, and the fanzine Outworlds, from the previously-announced list of finalists for the Neffy Awards.
(13) SENTENCES OF DEATH. “The Becoming of Italo Calvino” in The New Yorker discusses the collection Last Comes the Raven.
… The Calvino of “Crossed Destinies” is a familiar one, the magical realist with a playful approach to the author-narrator-reader relationship. But the book also captures one of his spinier qualities: his aura of danger. He likes to pry things open, often in uncomfortable ways; “Crossed Destinies” throws together characters who can communicate only through tarot cards, and ends when the deck scatters, along with their identities. This is formal violence, the story flying apart like a tossed hand, but a bodily analogue is never far away: one man describes being dismembered, how “sharp blades .?.?. tore him to pieces.” And yet, because much of Calvino’s cruelty is abstracted, it seems free of malice, which makes it all the more magnetic. Even before they disintegrate, the characters in “Crossed Destinies” are subject to bizarre structural rigors: pulled from the forest, stripped of their voices, severed from their pasts. When brutality occurs at the level of form, flashing in every choice (or “renunciation”), it can surface how narrative is not just an act of creation but—for the unseen, unwritten alternative—a death sentence….
(14) KEVIN SMITH NEWS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Kevin Smith says he really enjoyed his time running the He-Man and The Masters of the Universe universe and 12-year-olds of all ages will love Masters of the Universe: Revelation when it comes to Netflix in July.
[Thanks to JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Lise Andreasen, Cora Buhlert, James Reynolds, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
(10) This was a plot point in one of the episodes of the original Cosmos series back in 1980.
I’m remember seeing the The Empire Strikes Back at the theater forty years ago. It was spectacular. I’ve watched it again many times since then and it holds up remarkably well.
(1) The Boston Globe piece made clear that Leonard Nimoy wasn’t going to be easy for fellow passengers to identify: “We sat in the back. Dad was incognito, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. No one knew that Spock was sitting at the rear of the bus.”
(8) I’m not going to look her up, but Candy Clark must have been born earlier than 1957, yes? If that’s the correct year, then she was only 16 when American Graffiti was being filmed.
(8) He wasn’t in it much, but I did enjoy John Goodman in “Now and Again”.
fifth
(5) [Setting buildings with people in them on fire] is similar to [decisions about school curricula]. No, I’m not seeing it.
(8) There’s certainly things you can criticize Rosanne about, but she was brave (and smart) enough to cast the other two adult leads in her show with people who were much better actors than she was (Laurie Metcalf and John Goodman).
(8) John Goodman is absolutely terrifying in 10 Cloverfield Lane.
Bill: (5) [Setting buildings with people in them on fire] is similar to [decisions about school curricula]. No, I’m not seeing it.
Burning books because you don’t want people to be exposed to the ideas in them is indeed similar to blocking true history from school curricula because you don’t want the kids to find out the truth.
But hey, nice attempt to palm that card there.
And nice attempt to glide over the bit about burning people alive, which was a part of the original comparison, and the basis of my naysaying.
(And banning CRT does not mean blocking “true history” — you can still teach the events [I learned about Tusla, KKK, Jim Crow, etc.] without viewing them through the Marxist lens of CRT).
Bill: And nice attempt to glide over the bit about burning people alive, which was a part of the original comparison, and the basis of my naysaying.
No, it wasn’t a part of the original comparison. It was part of the description of what happens in Bradbury’s book. Nowhere does the piece compare suppression of Critical Race Theory to burning people alive.
Bill: And banning CRT does not mean blocking “true history” — you can still teach the events [I learned about Tusla, KKK, Jim Crow, etc.] without viewing them through the Marxist lens of CRT.
You can teach about those things without teaching CRT, but most American primary and secondary schools don’t. I grew up in the Midwest and we were told about the KKK. I was not taught about Jim Crow, Tulsa, or the Internment of Japanese Americans. The latter I happened to stumble upon in a library book while I was in high school (the high school that didn’t teach those things), and the two former I didn’t learn about until I was well into adulthood.
And the application of the “Marxist” bogeyman word here is certainly deceptive on your part. The term here merely refers to the fact that racial inequality is built into the way our economy is structured. And that is the truth.
(14) I’m not sure how much of a closer look I got at He-Man: Revelation from that video, but I certainly got a closer look at Kevin Smith.
OK, half-kidding. Skip to 4:12 or so to get to where he actually talks about the show itself, rather than just his boundless enthusiasm for the show (which is adorable and relatable, but, wow, Kevin! get to the point!). As a childhood fan, and as someone who very much thought Teela needed a bigger role (and really wished the original show had delved further into the implications of her “secret” rather than just hinting at it for an episode and moving on), I’m very much looking forward to this.
I grew up in Tulsa, and went to possibly the best high school in town, one that considers itself to have a healthy social conscience – where I never even once heard about the Greenwood Massacre.
Clickity
@JJ — It sounds like you believe that the “truth” of racial history cannot be told except via CRT. If that is the case, then we disagree (and I and many others are existence proofs that you are wrong).
“Marxist” with respect to Critical Race Theory is not a bogeyman. A short explanation, which is vastly insufficient for nuanced discussion, is that Marxism views the world as a class struggle, ending in revolution, and that CRT replaces class with race. Marxism didn’t catch on in 20th cent America because there was a large middle class which didn’t see itself as either bourgeoisie or proletariat. CRT replaces bourgeoisie with whites, and the proletariat with racial minorities (specifically blacks). For details, look at Kimberle Crenshaw’s Critical race theory: the key writings that formed the movement: CRT came straight from Critical Legal Studies in the late 1970s, and Critical Legal Studies is a Marxist view of the law. The “critical” in Critical Race Theory refers back to Marx’s critical methodism.
Bill: It sounds like you believe that the “truth” of racial history cannot be told except via CRT.
No, but I think an understanding of racial history will not be sufficient if it doesn’t examine the institutionalized aspects of racism. I have an MRA-Kool-Aided nephew who insists that there is no such thing as systemic or societal racism or sexism, it’s just individual incidents of people who behave badly – which is, of course, far from the truth, and it’s a philosophy that would prevent us as a society from making true progress toward eliminating (or at least reducing) racism and sexism.
(1) I love the picture of Adam on the bridge in his Vulcan ears.
If you want to know people about certain points in history, teaching those in school is a good idea, you will not reach everone but the knowledge will be higher.
You shoulf also tell at last teenangers about the darker side of history.
More I will leave to others.
IMHO, and in my experience, most conservatives deny that institutional racism even exists, or that it is long gone and buried (some seem to say that it ended as late as when President Obama was elected, others says it was with MLK) so of course teaching anything like CRT is prima facie illegitimate or dangerous
So, Bill, when do YOU think institutional racism ended in the US?
Meredith moment: Poul Anderson’s splendid Norse fantasy Mother of Kings Is available from the usual suspects for a mere buck ninety nine.
Another Meredith Moment: Greg Bear’s duology The Infinity Concerto and The Serpent Mage is available in ebook form for $3.99 from the Usual Suspects.
P.S. Ask George Floyd and Eric Turner if America has gotten rid of systemic racism.
Congratulations, Bill, on the quality of your history education. Considering how few USians even know that the Civil War was fought over slavery, you are a rare bird indeed.
Republican hysterics over CRT are the usual legislating to attack a nonexistent problem while grinning up outrage. CRT is taught in graduate/law schools, not K-12 schools. The Texas law, for example, appears to outlaw telling students about the republic/state’s original pro-slavery constitution(s) or its pro-slavery secession documents because they make Texas “look bad”. Pretty silly to celebrate Juneteenth while forbidding teachers to tell kids why it was needed. The comparison with Bradbury’s classic is useful.
@Bjll
Honestly. Most of your comments these days are setting my teeth on edge, due to their escalating percentages of wrongness.
And banning CRT does not mean blocking “true history” — you can still teach the events [I learned about Tusla, KKK, Jim Crow, etc.] without viewing them through the Marxist lens of CRT
Sure, if the teachers aren’t so afraid of the vague laws against CRT passed by Republicans and how they will be interpreted that they don’t dare teach any “controversial” topics regarding race at all.
“The bill, which is being fast-tracked to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to sign into law, states that social studies and civics teachers aren’t allowed to discuss the concept that “one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,” or the idea that “an individual, by virtue of the individual’s race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.”
It also states that social studies and civics teachers “may not be compelled to discuss current events or widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs” as part of a course.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/texas-republicans-ban-teachers-racism_n_609a96c8e4b063dccea1a3ef
So how, pray tell, are teachers going to discuss the factual concept of white supremacy being woven into this country’s history, and the also factual concept that white people, due to white supremacy still existing in this country’s systems and laws [see “redlining”], still benefit from it today, without running afoul of this law?
MSB: Congrats you shock my whole family. I mean American History is not somethink we learn much of in school, but the huge role slavery played in it, is not obscure knowledge here.
(I mean Präsidents pre-World War 2 would be taugh for me for example)
So huh to that.
Institutional racism exists and is real in the United States.
Just ask any Native American/Indigenous/First Nations person.
I live in a place where it’s unavoidable in the history–the Wallowas, the land that the nimiipuu (Nez Perce) were forcefully ejected from and, well…there’s quite a history.
Or ask the shades of the Chinese miners murdered in Hells Canyon.
Or the Black Southerners who came to Maxville because while the institution still existed, it was better here than in the South.
Correction after the timeout: It didn’t even realise that I started with the same phrase than MSBsposts. Wasn’t mean anythink with that. I can just say, that we were shocked.
Many monarchies in Europe were pro-South in the civil war, btw.
And for me it is always strange, how much of a spook Marx is in America, where we have 2 Parties, that were inspired by him, once of them our oldest party in Germany. (Older than the BRD, moment of proud, only party to say no to the law that destroyed out first democracy completly)
@Msb
If CRT isn’t even taught at the K-12 level, as you say, then how can a law banning it in primary/secondary schools be a problem?
@Bonnie McDaniel
Where is redlining still legal?
And for me it is always strange, how much of a spook Marx is in America,
It’s only a “spook” because outlets like Fox News and some other prominent conservatives have whipped up a frenzy over it, no matter if the facts don’t support it.
@bill
If CRT isn’t even taught at the K-12 level, as you say, then how can a law banning it in primary/secondary schools be a problem?
Did you even read my comment or the links I provided? The laws (at least Texas and Oklahoma’s) are so vague and overbroad teachers are afraid of discussing it at all.
And please don’t hide beside the oh-so-convenient dodge of things currently not being legal. That may be technically true, but it does not mean the effects still don’t linger, and still hinder African-Americans today. See Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article “The Case for Reparations” which discusses this.
@Bill: redlining was always illegal, according to an old court decision (I don’t remember the date). That never stopped them from doing it.
@bill
Age discrimination and sex discrimination aren’t legal, either. But they definitely exist.
@stefan
No problem. That fact shocks me.
@bill
Because legislators are supposed to tackle real problems, especially if they loudly claim to belong to the “party of small government”. Do you really want R legislatures making laws regulating the trade in unicorns, for example? Strange attitude.
In addition, yahoos like AL’s junior senator, who thinks the US fought Russia in WWII, or the dumbest man in Congress, who Recently asked if the Bureau of Land Management could change the orbit of the moon, write lousy laws, as Bonnie McDaniel has already explained, whose effects may be to stop the discussion of race, or gender, or ethnicity, for that matter, in schools. Hey, maybe those Rs were after precisely that, after all.
@bill “Where is redlining still legal”
You do realize that (a) redlining was never legal, but that never stopped it from being practiced, and (b) racist laws and customs, even when they stop being being legal, acceptable, or overtly practiced, still cast a long shadow forward through subsequent historical events. Racial profiling isn’t legal either, yet it still happens every day, and is still catastrophically damaging.
Bill: Actual critical race theory is taught in university courses. Things that both republicans and the laws they are drafting will ban from K-12 classes while using the bogeyman version of critical race theory will include any and every case of teaching real events in history such as the Tulsa massacre or the ways racism was baked into almost every system.
Instead of asking about redlining, how about you answer the question already put to you: when do you think institutionalized racism ended in the USA? Because the only reason not to teach of its existence to kids still feeling the aftereffects (and yes, white kids also feel the aftereffects — in the form of benefits or of a lack of obstacles) is if you can argue definitively that it no longer exists, and even then there’s an argument to be made that ignoring 300 years of systemic oppression because “it’s done with now” is a good way to let it come sliding right back.
@MSB
maybe those Rs were after precisely that, after all.
There isn’t any “maybe” about it.
there’s an argument to be made that ignoring 300 years of systemic oppression because “it’s done with now” is a good way to let it come sliding right back.
See: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ idiotic decision to gut the Voting Rights Act in 2013 (Shelby County v. Holder). Guess what Republicans have been doing ever since?
5) The level of censorship in Fahrenheit 451 is certainly considerably more extreme than the current CRT bans. Such exaggeration is very much in line with current political discourse though – taking down a statue is erasing history, any restriction is like a concentration camp etc. The article is hardly surprising.
@Bonnie McDaniel: See: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ idiotic decision to gut the Voting Rights Act in 2013 (Shelby County v. Holder).
I don’t think it’s fair to call that decision idiotic: Roberts knew precisely what was going to happen when he declared the day of jubilee and gutted the VRA.
Meredith moment: Samuel R. Delany’s Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand Is available from the usual suspects for the usual dollar ninety nine. I was surprised to discover that he never won a Hugo for any of his fiction.
@Cat: He won Best Short Story for “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones”.
David Goldfarb says He won Best Short Story for “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones”.
Thanks, I missed that as ISFDB doesn’t list that as a WIN but as a number 1.
Two other Goodman genre-ish credits. He played King Ralph in the film of that name – a movie based on an alternate history novel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlong_(Williams_novel) (that was reviewed in Asimov’s and is listed in the isfdb http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?913491). And he played the vice-dean in “Community” a sitcom that is definitely genre-adjacent.
Test
@Cat
My first Delany as it so happened.
Speaking of Delany, I vow before all File770ers that I will restart Dhalgren and finish it by the end of July! So mote it be.
Weird genre role for Goodman: “Uncle sweetheart” in the Bob Dylan movie Masked and Anonymous
@Rob Thornton, Heard and Witnessed.
@Rob Thornton – Witness! Read eternal, shiny and chrome!
It might be common knowledge but there is a science fiction connection in Critical Race Theory. I just learned at the SFRA conference that Derrick Bell, Jr. wrote some science fiction stories, notably ‘The Space Traders’ which was later adapted by HBO as part of an anthology series.
I also thought that this essay by David Theo Goldberg does a good job of covering the current CRT controversy. http://bostonreview.net/race-politics/david-theo-goldberg-war-critical-race-theory
Redlining was definitely legal at one point and was official state policy. That changed with a court decision in 1948 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. That doesn’t mean that there hasn’t been a long institutional legacy of discrimination in housing. Reveal has done some really good reporting on that, which you can find here. https://revealnews.org/article/for-people-of-color-banks-are-shutting-the-door-to-homeownership/
As to reading, I’ve been pretty busy revising my Judith Merril paper for the conference, but I am about to start reading The City of Brass for Hugo reading and am also watching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (I just saw The Man Who Laughs)
Finally, I’d like to thank Cora for the Appendix N Book Club recommendation. It’s a pretty fun podcast.
Meredith moment: Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill’s Stoker Award winning League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is available from the usual suspects for a very reasonable six dollars and ninety nine cents. Just don’t watch the damn film!
@Rob Thornton when you “restart Dhalgren” skip ahead a bit, or let it fall open to a random page. Makes no discernible difference.