A clean slate for commenting on today’s session.
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Mike Glyer's news of science fiction fandom
A clean slate for commenting on today’s session.
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rcade – We didn’t need troll defense for 60 years. No competing slates have emerged since last year because Hugo voters of good faith hate the tactic. Sad Puppies didn’t slate.
While no one has mounted an attack on the scale the Pups did, there have been attempts to game and/or buy an award in the past, see:
L. Ron Hubbard.
Now, admittedly the above was only an attempt by the Scientologists to garner a Hugo for their founder, but that’s where the Pups probably got the idea. So there have been attempts, but they’ve only been for one category, not every one on the ballot.
First, we’re talking about a campaign led by a racist, misogynist, terrorist-supporting scum, who is using the award as a playground and as publicity for himself. I have no interest in trying to “rank” this as worse or less worse than sexual harassment – but I honestly find the implied assertion that I’m a bad person for being upset about it, and for wanting WSFS to take more decisive action against it, offensive.
Second, that “it’s not a big deal”-knife cuts both ways. Despite my first point above, I tend to agree that voting for an award is not, relative to other problems the world faces, a big deal. But that also makes me willing to say “I notice that your ballot is almost identical to the slate published by a known griefer. Sorry, but that means we’re not counting your vote.” We shouldn’t treat participation as akin to a fundamental human right. I think it’s enormously inconsistent to say that “False positives here is a humongous deal where your talking vote disenfranchisement and violation of CoC.” – and then be offended because you think other people blow things out of proportion.
@Johan P. You know, it is possible to sympathize wirh someone else’s pain, and even to apologize for triggering it, all without agreeing with them.
@Rick Moen: it seemed to me that SP4 amounted to little more than a curated reading list, created via an open and transparent process, and I don’t see how I could possibly object to that, even if my tastes and opinions differ rather considerably from Kate Paulk’s.
But I can’t help bearing last year in mind, too. Now, it seems to me that the Puppies (both breeds) were actually kind of a mixed group, representing several different strands of opinion… but the actual distinction between SP3 and RP1 was a lot more exiguous than some of them claimed. Yes, Beale went off and created his own slate on his own initiative… as far as I can see… but the SP3 guys were, for the most part, content enough to ride on his coat-tails. Very often, it looked to me as though the Sads were simply using the Rabids as a shield for the more excessive sorts of behaviour. The whole “don’t blame us Sads for the terrible things the Rabids have done! (but vote for their nominees anyway)” schtick from the Sad camp rather failed to convince me, I’m afraid.
But, yes, Sad Puppies 4 was just another recs list (which – considering the toxicity of the brand name – probably did more harm than good to the people it recommended), and I’ve got no problem with that.
@Standback:
Exactly. (And by the way, FWIW, I also strongly second Hampus’s pithy dissection.)
Here, and pretty much everywhere else WSFS people gather including the most recent Business Meeting, there’s always someone who says ‘All we need is much bigger turnout for nominations.’ There was an attendee who did so during MACII’s Business Meeting, and we were all perfectly polite about her comments, but I swear that the eye-rolling was so strenuous that we risked setting off the New Madrid Fault.
Ja, sure. You bet, friend. Now, feel welcome to find us 8,000 more regular nominators and get back to us, please.
People who raise that point are basically not at all serious about engaging with the subject.
@Tasha:
You’re not wrong, I’m sure, but I wish to point out that the text of 3SV as proposed doesn’t dictate any explicit time-frame for the Qualification (semi-final) stage, but instead leaves the details up to the Hugo Administrators. (Link is to the 73-page tree-murdering monster I spent time stapling for the BM attendees. Scroll to page 12. Note that the reference to January 31st will be corrected to December 31st by the WSFS Secretary in 2017 if December Is Good Enough gets ratification in Helsinki.)
@Johan P.
Wow, harsh dude. Maybe get a clue on empathy. Or at least how to fake it. It’s a useful skill here: acting like a caring human being. Triggering someone is bad, not apologizing tends to make them hurt and either disappear or stay and be brutally honest. I consider this one of my safe spaces so I stay.
If the best argument you can come up with to support using the CoC for banning slates is its = to sexual assault & easier to prove you aren’t going to get far with the Worldcon business meeting.
You still haven’t defined what a slate vote looks like: what % must match similar ballots or a publicly posted one?. To get anywhere you have to define a slate, get co-signer(s), it’s a good idea to get a fair amount of support from members, and convince 2 business meetings to make unhappy Hugo Admins remove “slate ballots”.
One of the things you’ll need to convince members of: Hugo Admins of the quality and integrity we’ve had so far will continue being willing to volunteer now they have a really big target on them.
Regarding two months: well, that worries me. I was opposed to the upvoting proposal, which is in some ways superior, partly because I thought it would take up too much time; but now it seems the downvoting proposal will take just as much time.
Proposals that shorten the length of time available for nominations seem to me to be geared to the needs of those who read new stuff throughout the year, and will already have, on January 1st, a list of things they might nominate, rather than those who rush around at the beginning of the year looking for stuff to nominate, on the basis of what has emerged as most discussed, most recommended.
@Rivk Moen
Urg, missed doing my research today again. I should have reread the doc. It went back and forth a few times in discussions here I’m like 60% positive. 😉
@Johan P.: What Lenore said. It costs nothing to be kind.
(I’m reminded of a review of Sense8, saying that it’s a superhero story where the protagonists’ superpower is that of empathy.)
Nobody was trying to passive-aggressively undercut your argument, and nobody claimed you were a bad person. It was just that the metaphor was unfortunate. Which I’m sure you can see if you envision the world from the perspective in question.
You and I can be thankful we don’t have that perspective, while trying to be empathetic towards those who do.
@ Steve Wright
a lot more exiguous
OK, you made me look that word up! 0_0
Thanks, I learned something new to stump friends and family with!! :^]
Rick Moen: SP4 was essentially indistinguishable from those two well-accepted efforts, except (IMO) for a severe case of bad attitude and a persecution complex. I am thus obliged, on pain of being a hypocrite otherwise, to plead their case: They’re a totally legitimate part of the WSFS community, in my view, and I’d appreciate more-consistent recognition of that fact.
Yep, and as soon as they choose a brand name which does not include the word “Puppies”, I’ll be happy to distinguish them.
But I still remember all the false accusations and the vicious, hateful rhetoric (which, incidentally, still occurred a great deal this year) they’ve engaged in the last 3 years — not the least of which was defending and supporting the words and actions of VD and his Dead Elk.
As long as they continue to cling to and use that toxic Puppies brand name, they’re saying that they’re happy to “own” all those horrible words and actions comnmitted under that name in the past (and let’s be honest, some of it is still going on to this day).
@JJ: I’m happy to agree to disagree.
FWIW, my attitude is in part because I’m an existentialist (wonderfully out of fashion in this century). I.e., I put primary emphasis on what people actually do. Sure, words are of course deeds along with more tangible ones, but rather more ambiguously so[1], and I am also keenly aware that the Sads were backed into a rhetorical corner by the drubbing we WSFans delivered them at Sasquan, hence their persecution narrative and interminable post-Sasquan pity party.
As someone who’s often been guilty of pushing people further into crazy positions with the result of them doubling down and going crazier, I’m trying to turn over a new leaf. Hence, as a matter of practical politics if nothing else, IMO I’d rather stress to the Sads that their recommendation list is a welcome addition to to the BASFA, NESFA, Locus, and Google Docs efforts, and that even as a cat person I’m willing to magnanimously overlook their animal totem. ;->
[1] Beware, too, of judging a movement by its Internet-random hangers-on — not that Green, Paulk, and Hoyt themselves have over the past year been models for sober judgement and discretion, admittedly.
Tasha: I apologize for triggering bad memories. And I’ll leave it at that.
@junego: glad to be of service! Let me know if you need more – I can provide a plethora of rebarbative sesquipedalianisms.
(But I’m still not related to JCW. I’m not. Honest, I’m not.)
Sure, @Steve Wright. You say that and then you use words that smart people have to look up… 😉
@Rick Moen – They’re a totally legitimate part of the WSFS community, in my view, and I’d appreciate more-consistent recognition of that fact. And their taste in SFF doesn’t even suck. ;->
When I talk about wanting and respecting diverse voices, I don’t confine that to people whose experience is different from mine because of how they look or what language they speak at home. I also want to hear from people whose major difference is they don’t think the way I do. It’s why I applauded after the first time Kate Paulk spoke at the business meeting. It wasn’t because I particularly agreed with her point, but I was celebrating her participation in a process that might well have felt unfriendly and fraught. There was a fair amount of applause by the way and no booing or hissing.
I never ran across her to tell her so and when I went to Mad Genius Club to see if there was a way to convey my appreciation there, she was fully encased in her grievance goggles by the time she wrote her last post, so I didn’t bother. I actually think it’s important that the +2 proposal was called to a vote almost as soon as it was proposed and soundly trounced, but Ms. Paulk and her adherents seem to think it’s evidence of sinister anti-democratic leanings that it was even proposed. Whatever. I still think the Sad Puppies are fans and there’s room for them and their (to me) strikingly weird ideas about the way the world works.
@Steve Wright
I can provide a plethora of rebarbative sesquipedalianisms.
OY!!! Dude…one a day, please! It’ll take me more than 24 hours to wrap my tongue around the sesquiwhatevers.
I may have to see a family tree to believe there’s no relationship after this. Genetics may be involved. :-9
Steve Wright: But I’m still not related to JCW. I’m not. Honest, I’m not.
Methinks the sesquipedalian Wright doth protest too much. 😉
JJ is too fast tonight – said what I was going to. Figures.
Sad Puppies need to drop the brand name, stop encouraging people to vote for Teddy’s slates, and drop the “oooh, we are SOOOO persecuted” with the bitterness goggles (TM Cheryl S). And stop insulting other people. Quit changing your mission statement (Larry’s Hugo? No liberal cooties? Quality? Sorry, all the stuff gamed onto the ballot disproves the last).
There are plenty of fen out there who are politically conservative and like the old school pew-pew (as evidenced by the Retro-Hugos being awash in Heinlein), but didn’t want to have anything to do with the Sads because of their whining, rewriting their own history (first Larry says he had a great time at Worldcon, then he says it was horrible), and sense of entitlement (we DESERVE these Hugos!).
Come up with a new, positive, forward-looking name. Make it clear that you don’t support racism, sexism, homophobia, any kind of bigotry. Clearly state your POV and then stick to it. Is it conservative work? Is it retro stuff? Is it milSF? Is it happy endings? Is it quality? All of those? Well, go on with your bad selves then! Set some goals, stick to them, become ambassadors for them. Paulk and Hoyt tried this year, but since “(adjective) Puppies” makes people think of Teddy and his racist self-interest, they had an uphill battle.
They need to plant their flag in new, positive mindspace. The old one has been dirtied by a pathetic loser.
I really think they’d find a solid audience if they could wipe the slate clean. Obviously people like their stuff; Larry sells a lot, Baen does just fine, the MGC are solid if not superstars. The success of “Old Mars” and “Old Venus” shows that retro can be popular and quality. Heinlein STILL wins Hugos. And pew-pew spaceships against evil tyranny is… “Star Wars”, which seems to be as big as ever.
It can be done.
@Tasha Turner: sorry if I was heavyhanded; I don’t \search/ for opportunities to correct people, but I try to get hard numbers close to correct in discussions I’m involved in as I’ve seen too many slips quoted as gospel.
@the_rest_of_you: you’re obviously not reading enough old SF ?. (See another thread re cane-stomping.) I remember “exiguous” from a story in Spectrum III (the Amis/Conquest anthologies of the 1960’s, not the more-recent art books), and “sesquipedalian” from the first Harold Shea story, both read ~50 years ago. I could point to SF as broadening when people sneered at it (yes, they did when I was a new reader, just after books starting coming out on papyrus instead of stone tablets…).
@Johan P.
Apology accepted. That is all.
@Chip Hitchcock
I’m still working on making a Proper Apology(TM) when I screw up. You weren’t heavy handed.
My other part of the comment was in hope other’s coming along wouldn’t pick up and continue based on my bad numbers. I may not have worded it well. It’s been a long tough day.
@lurkertype
But it won’t. The Sads have improved their methodology. That is the best that can be hoped for, because they will never change their rhetoric.
A big chunk of their market demand is based on this whole “poor conserv^H^H^H-libertarian writer who is oppressed by the mean EssJayDubya, please buy my book and support Goodthink”, and moving away from that will kill their branding with their fellow travellers and existing customer base.
The Sads are no longer relevant as a bloc-vote, and this is a good thing. Yes they have a recommended reading list that winds up having stuff I don’t like, but so does the SFWA (srsly, Barsk? WtF was that???). It’s just that theirs comes with a side order of massive vitriol and – as many of them are always willing to throw themselves in front of a bus for Day and his mental midgets – victim complexes.
Re Joe Rhett: People were actively trying to tell him what he needed to do in order to get his concerns heard, and he was angrily rejecting them. I was seated 2 rows behind him, and I got a strong sense of both “the rules don’t apply to me” and “words mean whatever I say they mean” from him; he may predate the Puppies, but he was definitely using Puppy talking points and Puppy phrasing. And yes, at one point I quite thought he was going to take a swing at Kevin Standlee, and got up and moved out of melee range.
As he stormed out of the room in his tantrum, someone yelled, “Thank you for leaving!” after him — which was mean but understandable. After that things got much less volatile, as though everyone else had decided that no matter what objections they had to a given proposal, they didn’t want to be That Asshole.
While sitting thru last year’s and this year’s Business Meetings has given me a better understanding of why RRO is the best way of handling them, it has also not changed my opinion that the primary effect of RRO is to turn any discussion, no matter how trivial, into Entmoot. Hoom, hrrrum.
WRT the various proposals, my feeling is that yes, any single approach is vulnerable to gaming. So rather than letting the perfect become the enemy of the good, a better solution is to put in multiple protections which will each require different (and, with luck, mutually contradictory) gaming strategies. I think the combination of EPH/EPH+, 5 and 6, and 3SV may do the trick. I would have said this in the meeting if I had been able to get the floor, but I was always too slow.
I have made a table showing what effect E Pluribus Hugo and 5 and 6 would have had on the Hugo nominations this year and last, using the reports provided to the WSFS Business Meeting.
@Chip Hitchcock
read ~50 years ago.
If I read any of those words that long ago and chased down the definitions at that time, those definitions are mired in over 50 years of living, a brain too rapidly approaching its use-by date, and unavailable for retrieval! Don’t be so smug. ;^}
@ Steven desJardins: You have an error on the 2016 results for Best Short Story. “Wooden Feathers” should swap places with one of the “Cat Pictures Please” in the EPH list.
Whoops! Fixed (along with another error I just noticed), and thank you.
@ rcade: From here, it looks as if you’re falling into the common argument fallacy of, “If I could just find the right words to express myself, they’d understand.”
We do understand. You have already (and repeatedly) made yourself very clear. We just don’t agree with you, nor are we likely to. Give it a rest.
@Lee
Wrong thread..?
@lurkertype:
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the number of Internet ideological efforts that listen when net.randoms tell them ‘You need to do [X]’ is equal to the number of people who need ‘open letters’, e.g., iota above zero.
@Lee:
So, just so you know, Jo is about as far from a social conservative as I can imagine. And I’ve certainly never inquired about his IRL voting, but am pretty sure he’s hard left of some sort.
So, not Puppy material. Overly excitable, yes. Puppy, not in this universe.
(So, for example, and I just double-checked with my wife Deirdre, who’s known him a lot longer than I have, to make sure I’m not outing him: Jo is openly bi, and has openly mentioned attending gay rodeo, e.g., in the public BASFA minutes.)
He’s extremely anti-authoritarian, and (I infer) felt that the front table staff were exercising authority abusively, running rough-shod over (IIRC) the assembly’s need to spend time discussing and evaluating what EPH would have done if applied to the 2016 voting data set. (Maybe he thought the existence of only five printouts of the analysis finished at 6 am that day was a ploy; dunno.) As I’ve mentioned upthread, IMO this makes the fundamental error of thinking the assembly were being misled. IMO, we were not. We-plural knew perfectly well how to suspend the rules or appeal from a ruling of the chair if necessary; we-plural felt that unnecessary because we were fine with the information presented.
Jo seems not to have gotten that the front table staff aren’t in change; the attendees are.
That was supposed to be heed ‘open letters’, not need.
(I managed to convince my wife to retitle her blog post called ‘Open Letter to My Sister-in-Law’ to eliminate the qualifier ‘open’, which, next to the word ‘letter’, is pretty much universally understood to mean ‘Please ignore the following, as it will reliably be a grandstanding waste of time, given my choice of title.’)
If all the Sad Puppies do from now on is their current level of obnoxiousness, I think they can be safely ignored for the most part. It would be nice to get some apologies for all of the awful things they’ve said and accused people of doing but I doubt it will ever happen. Rapid Puppies and any future griefers are the primary issue now.
@lurkertype – “oooh, we are SOOOO persecuted” with the bitterness goggles (TM Cheryl S)
I called them grievance goggles, but much prefer bitterness goggles, so let’s share the trademark. 😉
Roberts Rules of Order are kind of a PITA, but they’re clear, unambivalent and invaluable in large meetings, particularly when they might be contentious. In other words, they’re pretty helpful when you’re trying to herd a mixed group of cats, wine grapes and antelope.
My impression of Jo Rhett is that he couldn’t be arsed to read or view any of the lovely Business Meeting how-tos provided and then got frustrated because the meeting wouldn’t do it his way. Whatever his politics, I thought he was volatile and not helpful and I was glad when he left.
@Stephen desJardins, thank you. That’s a very useful chart. My brain keeps trying to tell me there’s still something wrong with Short Story, but it won’t be specific so I’m going to ignore it.
@Cheryl S.
I wish he’d left about three minutes earlier, actually — and I say this as a friend of his. ;->
(I’d tell him ‘d00d, you’re acting out Moen’s Law of Inefficient Immolation. Stifle, man. Zip it. Shush thyself. Chill.’)
Re 3SV again (sorry): It has just struck me that Jameson’s proposal actually said that one of the aims of downvoting was to vote off things that would not have reached the longlist without a slate. That’s quite different from ‘would not (hypothetically) have reached the shortlist without a slate’. A work that would not have reached the top fifteen without a slate isn’t a ‘kingmaker’ nominee; it’s probably a Castalia House product, or equivalent. So voting a work of that nature down would be a lot easier; but on the other hand this confirms that 3SV is not effective as a general anti-slate measure.
EDIT: Bother, this actually belongs in another thread.
… and I just added “A plethora of rebarbative sesquipedalianisms” as the sub-header for that WordPress blog that I really must add to, someday.
Well, it’s a victory for Truth in Advertising, at least.
Personally I don’t think the Sads have given up slating; I think they are attempting a set of experiments to determine how much unfair advantage will be acceptable and how to obtain it. Sure they are fans; they are just a fan group founded for the purpose of slating and griefing (Opera Vita Aeterna was a griefer nomination–a nomination made not for the excellence of the work but for the purpose of upsetting people) that is still yearning back to its roots. Until they really turn their backs on those ideas I don’t think there is much point in changing their name, except to hide their origins.
I realize other people of good will differ with me on this,
@Rick Moen
I found Jo rather alarming also; I was deeply glad that the Sargeant at Arms who spoke to him was as big as he was. I am not sure that his bi status means he wasn’t a Puppy–a lot of Puppies are actually perfectly okay with individual gay and bi people they actually know, they just tend to not mind when gay or bi people are maligned as a class by other people they actually know. But Puppy or not, someone whose emotions have overpowered them to that extent who is also physically imposing is pretty scary. And some people who behave that way have learned it as a tactic to get their way.
If what this means is there are non-Puppies who behave like scary jerks let the record show that I also dislike non-Puppies who behave like scary jerks.
Rick Moen:
Ja, sure. You bet, friend. Now, feel welcome to find us 8,000 more regular nominators and get back to us, please.
Well, there’s a subtext here, isn’t there? ‘A lot more than 8000 people read science fiction, right? So if we got rid of the voting fee, and broke the link with this weird event called a “convention”, and had everyone who reads science fiction voting, we could get rid of the slates’.
(But do more than 8000 people regularly read short fiction, or read semiprozines or listen to fancasts? ‘Well, if we got rid of these weird categories…’)
I think traditional fandom is partly responsible for this, by its use of the word ‘fan’ and phrases like ‘the SFF community’, and by the narrative that at one time SF was a secret known only to fans, which do give the impression that the Hugos ought to represent everyone who is interested in the field. But it seems to me that the field is too diverse for one awards process to represent all of it., and that in any case if it represented everyone the award would no longer be useful as a recommendation. So it makes sense that the award should come from a smaller group, provided that group has a worthwhile perspective.
@junego: I find remembering things from a few decades ago easier than remembering things from much more recently; I hear this is common even among non-Struldbrugs. And there was \supposed/ to be a smiley in place of the ‘?’; it was in the preview….
I think you are giving far too much credit into the forethought and tactical skills of the Sads, given that everything they’ve done so far seems to be half-assed and made up as they went along.
@Cat
Nor did I so claim, you’ll please note. What I’m saying is that I know this guy, and, short of quizzing him directly on his exact taste in SFF and alleged politics[1] thereof, everything I know about him makes him roughly the last member of San Francisco Bay Area fandom I’d guess to be an advocate of either the RPs or SPs. The point being that to advise the speaker that his/her Puppy radar has gone wonky, and that ‘weirdly upset at alleged parliamentary misconduct’ alone appears to be an unreliable signpost for judging fannish allegiances.
Moreover, seeing bad behaviour and automatically assuming it must be an enemy partisan is a sign one might be suffering a bad case of tribalism, and should get that looked at.
[1] Several years into this nonsense, I continue to find little or nothing in the Puppies’ alleged points of controversy worth taking seriously. E.g., for some reason, maybe penance for some misdeed, I took a glance at JCW’s recent demented screed against ‘Cat Pictures Please’. That’s some strenuous overreading you’re doing, Mr. W.
@Steve Wright:
Something tells me you’ll also enjoy Peter Bowler’s abecedarian insult, and maybe the entire book The Superior Person’s Book of Words, from said Australian worthy. (For about a decade, my Web site was the the only source for that quotation on the Internet, but I see I may have been a sort of Johnny Appleseed for it.)
@Rick Moen: It’s been bugging me that “person that alarmed me” or “this person had non-political attribute X” or whatever (I forget the original comment on this) went straight to “so maybe he’s a Puppy.” Ugh. Thanks for articulating some of why this bugs me.
lurkertype:
Speaking as a socialist Heinlein fan (as well as a fan of Heinlein’s socialist period, which wasn’t quite over in 1941), I think you’ve drawn one conclusion where there may be others, though I will grudgingly admit that the two stories with a little old-school pew-pew won and the other four did not.
@ Rick Moen: seeing bad behaviour and automatically assuming it must be an enemy partisan is a sign one might be suffering a bad case of tribalism
What I saw — or rather, heard — was that he was using arguments and phrases straight out of the Puppy manifesto. You say that was coincidental, and I’m prepared to take your word for it, but pattern recognition is a thing humans do.
On a more meta level… I understand and sympathize with your desire to defend your friend. But when multiple people are saying “this guy was scary” and you keep responding with “but he’s not really like that”, it comes off as if you’re telling us that we didn’t see what we saw. Based on what I observed at the meeting, I have no desire to try to find out whether he’s “really like that” or not; at least part of the time he obviously IS, and that’s a form of Russian Roulette I have zero interest in playing. Your efforts as a friend would be better directed toward encouraging your friend to get a handle on his own behavior so that he stops scaring people with his volatile rage, rather than telling the rest of us how wrong we are to find him scary.
Your efforts as a friend would be better directed toward encouraging your friend to get a handle on his own behavior so that he stops scaring people with his volatile rage, rather than telling the rest of us how wrong we are to find him scary.
This. It’s tiring to have people explain how what you saw in person or how someone behaves online isn’t really them and if you got to know them better you’d see the real them. Consider the possibility that around you they aren’t like that or your perceptions of them might be different from someone else of a different group.
It wasn’t so much the arguments Rhett was making, as the sense that he entered the interaction with a chip already on his shoulder, that made me suspect that he came to the meeting looking for an excuse to convince himself he was being oppressed/victimized, which is the approach I would expect a Puppy sympathizer to take. I agree that it’s worthwhile to question your assumptions, but I think the reaction we should have to this incident isn’t, “Wow, we really should avoid making incorrect assumptions about someone whose Code of Conduct violations merit pulling his badge and throwing him out of the convention.”
@Lee:
Are you having reading difficulties? How many times do I have to say Rhett indulged bad behaviour, was out of control, and was IMO utterly irrational, before you are enabled to correctly parse what I wrote? I don’t think I was in any way unclear on that point.
All I was objecting to is the hilariously and tellingly mistaken inference that he’s a Puppy. Which you-plural might want to fix. Or not, if you like jumping to conclusions and landing in surreal places.
Are you having reading problems again? At no point did I even faintly suggest anyone was wrong in finding him scary. To the contrary, I said I fully understood that reaction, and indeed was quite taken aback, myself.
As to the rest: Jo Rhett is not my problem in the first place, I have rather a lot of other more fruitful things to do, and I don’t actually even have his telephone number. (I could probably chase down his e-mail address if I looked, but see ‘not my problem’.) If I had happened to run into him in Kansas City after that, I might have told him ‘That was really stupid, was utterly clueless about how parliamentary assemblies work, and didn’t have a prayer of a chance at actually, y’know, accomplishing anything. Would you like to learn from the experience, or do you enjoy looking like a fool and menace in public and accomplishing nothing?’ Or, I might not have bothered, as in my experience loose cannons do not voluntarily tighten themselves just because you suggest it. (As it happens, I didn’t run into him.)
@Tasha:
You’d have a point if I’d said anything even remotely like that.
@Rick Moen
Reread the several comments you wrote about him. How much focuses on the point and how much focuses on all you know about him? The ratio is off which is why you are getting flack.
Did you consider I wasn’t talking about you specifically or only about you? We have multiple discussions going on in the ~400 comments on this thread. ETA: also elsewhere on File770
Sorry for spelling your name wrong earlier.
@Tasha:
Do you understand the relevance of my saying I know Rhett personally is to explain why I can say with high confidence ‘No, I can say from personal acquaintance that he’s about the furthest thing you can imagine from being a Puppy, and so you should probably check your assumptions’, or was that somehow unclear? Even if you didn’t understand that, it should not have prevented you from understanding that I totally and explicitly agreed that it was an alarming and impermissible, not to mention counterproductive, public display that did Mr. Rhett no credit at all, as I was abundantly clear about that, too.
I’m fine with your not having bothered to read with context; it happens. But then saying my mentioning several times (for obviously relevant reasons) that I know Rhett is ‘why I’m getting flack’ — treating me as an apologist for him when that’s the exact opposite of what I said — is a bit much.
Very well, I’ll amend that to ‘You’d have a point concerning my comments (if those are among those you’re addressing), if I’d said anything even remotely like that.’
No worries. Tyops happen. ;->