Did Archon make the right decision when it cancelled Tim Bolgeo as fan guest of honor? Those voting “no” include the following bloggers —

Jason Cordova at Jason Cordova’s Website – ”Uncle Timmy and the Thought Police”

The reason I am coming to his defense so vociferously (ah hell, biracial man with a vocabulary is rolling up his sleeves) is that back when I was first starting out on the convention scene, not a single con wanted this no-name biracial guy who wrote a book as a guest. Not a one. Cons who pride themselves for their “diversity” told me to kindly “piss off”. Cons that I lived less than five minutes to wanted nothing to do with a local author. Cons who are always claiming to want to showcase new and upcoming authors wouldn’t touch me with a ten foot pole.

Then I got this email from Uncle Timmy and his daughter, Brandi Spraker, completely out of the blue. They’d heard about me through Travis S. “Doc” Taylor and wondered if I would be up to being a guest at Libertycon. I was thrilled. I was also confused, because after asking around, I’d heard that only “Baen authors” wanted anything to do with Libertycon. Which didn’t bother me much, because I enjoy almost all of the authors in Baen’s stable. Eric Flint, Charles Gannon, David Weber… all of them I’ve read, and all of them I enjoy. So I accepted and flew across the country to be a guest. And you know what?

I’ve never felt so welcomed at a convention as I was at that Libertycon.

Reblogged by Tim Gatewood at Minister Is A Verb – “Uncle Timmy and the Thought Police”

Uncle Timmy is one of the most decent men I know in fandom and his influence can not be overstated on fandom in Memphis and the entire state of Tennessee. Archcon will not see me or anyone who respects Southern fandom until they reverse this decision. Letting one whiny-baby who does not even know Tim Bolgeo keep him from the honors that he richly deserves is beyond cowardly.

Reblogged at Mishaburnett— “Yep. The haters win again.”

Stephanie Osborn at Comet Tales – “Archon Does Itself a Disservice by Disinviting Tim Bolgeo”

Uncle Timmy is not some redneck unlearned hillbilly. He is a nuclear engineer who made a successful career at the Tennessee Valley Authority, working on nuclear reactors, only recently retired. He is a thinking man. He puts out a newsletter of information, jokes, and other such that he and his readers (I’m one) run across, and he discusses them, and he invites and prints discussion by his readers on that information. Sometimes this involves putting a distasteful story into the newsletter so that he can point out a fallacy. Somehow some anonymous person took a couple of these and twisted them around to make it look like Uncle Timmy believed that tripe AND AGREED WITH IT.

Nothing could be farther from the truth — I’ve had any number of conversations with Timmy, and he is fair-minded, “color blind,” and I have never, EVER, heard the word “bigot” used in the same sentence with his name until today. And yes, I said today. Insofar as I have been able to determine, from the original protest to the revocation of the invitation took less than 24 hrs. To say that I am dismayed and dumbfounded is a massive understatement. To say that I am disappointed in Archon’s convention committee is putting it mildly

C. Blake Powers at Laughing Wolf — “In Defense of Timmy and Calling Out Fascists and Cowards at Archon”

He was guilty of double-plus-ungood-think, and the usual manufactured evidence was presented and pushed by an anonymous source seeking to have Timmy removed as Fan Guest of Honor at Archon.

Larry Correia on Monster Hunter Nation — “The latest from the fainting couch brigade, they go after Uncle Timmy”

First off, anybody who has ever talked with Tim Bolgeo knows this allegation is crap and Archon is being stupid. Uncle Timmy is no racist. His crime was reposting jokes that would have been okay to laugh at if they’d been told by a comedian on TV. One lone ANONYMOUS jackass threw a fit so Archon tossed him….

Second, I’ve met Tim Bolgeo several times, and I’ve met members of his family. He’s a good dude. He’s a decent human being. I’ve had conversation with him about various controversial issues, and he was never anything but polite, funny, smart and articulate. He helped me out when I was first starting my career, and the first out of state con I ever attended as a pro writer was one that he’d been organizing for 25 years….

Vox Day on Vox Populi – “SF/F Thought Police Strike Again”

I told you none of this was about me, none of it ever had much to do with me. But now you know why I have never backed down to the petty pinkshirted grotesqueries. SFWA, Archon, Rutgers, Smith, Brandeis, Haverford, it’s all the same. It’s all about control of the narrative, control of the organization, and control of the lines of communication.
That’s why toleration is not an option. That’s why preening oneself on refusing to take a stand is moral cowardice. Those are merely slow forms of surrender and submission. Sad Puppies was the first time the pinkshirts have been punched in the mouth in decades and they reacted like a vampire to Holy Water. But it was a mere splash, when what is needed is an inexhaustible firehose.

Cedar Sanderson on Cedar Writes – “Archon’s Shame”

…Tim Bolgeo was the very soul of kindness and let me stammer at him until I had made some sense, then spent a good fifteen minutes talking to me about ways to approach conventions and promote myself. I doubt he will remember this, as I suspect he is like that with everyone. Approachable, warm, gentle…

I only wish I could say that I could trust a certain convention to behave that way toward its guests. Unfortunately, Archon is now on my list of conventions to never approach as a professional, or even as a guest, I would be fearful to attend, lest they did to me what they are attempting to do to Tim Bolgeo.

Amanda S. Green on Mad Genius Club – “The full moon rose and the craziness came out”

The craziness has just been compounded. It seems if you yell loud enough, concoms will cave, whether you have a valid point or not. The concom at Archon has announced it is withdrawing its invitation to Uncle Timmy to be Fan GoH because people had to go out and find a reason to object to him. Go, Crazies! In fact, go away. Far, far away.

The Archon 38 committee, responding to protests such as those written on its Facebook page, has revoked its invitation to Tim “Uncle Timmy” Bolgeo, the fan guest of honor.

The action was taken May 20 after someone identified on Facebook only by an online handle posted a lengthy complaint, characterizing Bolgeo as a racist and providing examples of ethnic jokes and other relevant remarks published in Bolgeo’s zine Revenge of the Hump Day.

The author of the complaint said he had first e-mailed Archon’s board about his concerns in March after reading issues of Revenge online, and not satisfied with the response, he repeated them at an open meeting of Archon organizers this past weekend. The board voted to keep Bolgeo as a guest, he reports, therefore he resorted to social media in protest.

The committee promptly capitulated:

The board of directors has heard the voices of our attendees. We have decided that it is in the best interest of Archon to withdraw the invitation to Mr. Bolgeo as Fan Guest. We did not make this decision lightly, however. This situation is a lose-lose for Archon, for Mr. Tim Bolgeo, and fans in the Midwest and South. When we asked Mr. Bolgeo to be our guest last year, we made a commitment we were forced to break. Repercussions from these discussions and the resulting decision will affect everyone for months to come. However, this convention is not for the Committee or the Staff, it is for the fans and you have spoken.

Bolgeo’s name has been stricken from the Archon 38 website (though it still remains on Eventbrite.)

Finding these tasteless jokes in Bolgeo’s zine was a bit of a surprise to me because although I’ve never been on his distribution list, I’ve often seen news items from Revenge quoted in other publications and believed they were representative of the whole. Apparently not.

Bolgeo was completely taken aback by today’s complaint, and some of his friends are equal parts mystified and enraged. He set about trying to explain himself in this post, which says in part:

I have really tried my best to be color blind all my life. I think what torques me off the most is that The Revenge of Hump Day was called a Racist Rag by that dude. He even put one of the jokes on the page but left out the “Tacky Alert” point that I always put on something that is of a sensitive nature. Hell guys, I poke fun at Blacks, Whites, Indians, Baptists, Catholics, Italians, Irish, Jews, etc. I was raised with ethnic humor and I still enjoy it. He also cut and pasted all kinds of scandalous stuff from the Revenge only to leave out the headings on where it was or the complete article. I have always depended on the readership of the Revenge to keep me straight and balanced and I had thought that y’all had done a pretty good job of it. Yes, The Revenge of Hump Day is Politically Incorrect, but it is presented with tongue firmly planted in my cheek and hopefully will make people think about the ideas that are presented in it. A place where people can agree to disagree.

Times change. Archie Bunker got away with being an equal-opportunity-offender in 1971. That pose isn’t as widely accepted in the age of social media.

Archon will take place the first weekend in October.