(1) LETTERS FROM THE EDITOR. C. E. Murphy shares her views about what kind of revision request letters work best: “Process Post: on edit letters” at The Essential Kit.
There was a discussion going on over on Bluesky about dealing with edit letters, and this truth came up: “Editors aren’t always right about the solutions, but they’re nearly always right about the problems.”
That thread went on to discuss how the person quoting it, who happens to be KJ Charles whose books I read all of last year and who is also an editor, approaches edit letters; her approach involves suggesting ideas to fix the problems, because it opens the writer’s mind to the possiblity that the book could have something different happen in that moment, and also it gives them something to reject/bounce off/spitefully correct. Which, like: that seems very valid.
That said, I have recently watched friends get SUPER LONG, to my mind, edit letters, 70%+ of which are ideas & suggestions as how to tackle problems, and I honestly think my brain would explode. My editors have VERY MUCH been of the “this is a problem, pls fix” approach, rather than the “let us brainstorm!” approach, and I think that works for me….
(2) NONSENSE OF TASTE. Camestros Felapton shared a couple of riotous sci-fi themed brew labels in “Thursday’s Sunday Beer”. I won’t steal his thunder – click the link to discover his selections — only thank him for introducing us to New Zealand’s Behemoth Brewing Company where literally dozens more comical labels can be viewed, including tap badges like these:
(3) SEATTLE 2025 STATEMENT ABOUT REGISTRATION. Seattle 2025 Worldcon chair Kathy Bond today made the following statement about their registration software, and a delay in the ability to upgrade to attending membership for Seattle Worldcon bid supporters and site selection voters:
Due to a last-minute change in our registration software, our ability to process registrations and upgrades to attending memberships for site selection voters and bid supporters has been delayed past our originally projected date. We apologize for the delay. Please be assured we will honor our initial registration rates for at least two weeks after we are able to make our registration system go live.
Thank you for your patience as we iron out the bugs.
(4) BRITISH LIBRARY CONVENES ONLINE PANEL ABOUT LE GUIN. On January 23, join Theo Downes Le Guin, Ursula’s son and literary executor; Julie Phillips, her biographer, and writer Nicola Griffiths (shortlisted for the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction) for an evening of appreciation and exploration: The British Library Cultural Events – “The Realms of Ursula K. Le Guin Tickets”.
- Event: 7:00 pm UK/11:00 am Pacific
- Tickets are £6.50, or £3.25 for Library members
This is an online event streamed on the British Library platform. Bookers will be sent a viewing link shortly before the event and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time.
(5) THESE REBOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKING. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] This could be good, it could be decidedly not. “’The Avengers’ Reboot Coming; ‘Industry’ Writers Pen StudioCanal Pilot” at Deadline.
There were rumors that the project was in with HBO, but this was denied last year. It is not clear where The Avengers reboot will land. StudioCanal declined to comment as talks continue….
Macnee starred as Steed, who fought off diabolical plots against the state with his trademark bowler hat and umbrella. He had a succession of high-fashion assistants played by the likes of Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman. They broke ground for being Steed’s equal, holding their own in brawls and delivering playful quips….
Steed’s first partner wasn’t a woman at all but medical doctor David H Keel as the series spun out of Police Surgeon where Keel played the same character who asked Steed to help on a case. It would feel like a uniquely different series than the later series as the tone, Steed’s personality and stories are markedly more grounded.
Nightclub singer Venus Smith played by Julie Stevens was next, just six episodes in duration. Now we have Cathy Gale played by Honor Blackman, an anthropologist. Of course we finally got the extraordinary Emma Peel as played by Diana Rigg, described as a “talented amateur agent”.
Linda Thorson ended the series as Tara King. An actual spy, enlisted at an early age in the Intelligence Service as a trainee, under the number 69. Would I kid about that? No, I would not.
So how do you reboot a beloved classic of British television? Personally I don’t think you can.
So before you ask, I prefer not to mention that film.
(6) CLIMATE ACTION ALMANAC. The Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University has launched The Climate Action Almanac, a free collection of fiction, nonfiction, and art exploring positive climate futures, grounded in real science and in the complexities of diverse human and physical geographies. The book is presented in partnership with the MIT Press and supported by the ClimateWorks Foundation.
The Almanac features 8 individual works of science fiction, with four authors contributing two stories apiece: Vandana Singh, Gu Shi, Hannah Onoguwe, and Libia Brenda. Overall, the collection features contributions from more than 25 writers representing 17 different countries around the globe, from Argentina, Norway, and China to Nigeria, Germany, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and more. On the science fiction front, there is also a dialogue between Kim Stanley Robinson and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
(7) NOT OK IN OK. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] A certain Oklahoma state legislator might want to take advantage of any mental health benefits available in his medical plan. Representative Justin Humphrey apparently has a possibly-unhealthy obsession with Furries. Or, perhaps specifically, with the urban myth that Furries are being provided litter boxes by school systems. According to HuffPost, “An Oklahoma Republican Wants Animal Services To Remove Furries From Schools”.
A Republican legislator in Oklahoma who once said that transgender people have “a mental illness” introduced a bill this week that would allow animal services to remove students who identify as furries from school.
The bill, which was pre-filed ahead of Oklahoma’s legislative session, would bar students who “purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries,” from school activities.
The legislation, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Justin Humphrey, may seem farcical. But the idea that schools accommodate students who identify as animals has its roots in a long-standing — and repeatedly debunked — conservative myth.
Republican legislators and candidates have for years claimed that schools are putting litter boxes in classrooms for students who identify as cats or furries. At least 20 GOP politicians peddled these claims in 2022, and used them as a way to sound the alarm over protections and accommodations for LGBTQ+ students, NBC News reported.
“What’s most provocative about this hoax is how it turns to two key wedge issues for conservatives: educational accommodations and gender nonconformity,” Joan Donovan, a researcher on media and politics at Harvard University, told the outlet at the time…
(8) GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Rich Horton sadly reports that “Bad Things Come in Threes: Terry Bisson (February 12, 1942 – January 10, 2024), Howard Waldrop (September 15, 1946 – January 14, 2024), Tom Purdom (April 19, 1936 – January 14, 2024): A Tripartite Obituary” in an obituary notice for Black Gate.
On the heels of Terry Bisson’s death I heard news that Howard Waldrop had died. And this morning I woke up to learn that Tom Purdom had also died. A profound 1-2 punch to the SF community, followed by a knockout. Bisson and Waldrop were two of the most original, indeed weirdest, SF writers; and if Purdom wasn’t as downright weird as those two he was as intriguing in his slightly more traditional fashion. All three writers wrote novels, but it’s fair to say they are all best known for their short fiction….
(9) PURDOM TRIBUTE. Michael Swanwick also salutes the late author in “Tom Purdom, Heart of Philadelphia” at Flogging Babel.
This is very hard for me to write. So please excuse its infelicities. I knew this man for a full fifty years.
Tom Purdom is dead. Not enough people will know what a loss this is. While he was as vivid and eccentric an individual as any of the rest of us, he absolutely refused to promote himself. I think he believed it was ungentlemanly. But those who knew him, cherished him.
Tom was the very heart of Philadelphia science fiction long before I came to town in 1974. He and his socially elegant wife Sara Purdom had monthly open houses where all the SF community was welcome–even rowdies like Gardner Dozois and myself. They two served as role models for Marianne and me.
His gatherings were as glittery events as our crew ever saw. I recall Milton Rothman discussing the physics of nuclear-powered aircraft, and I most vividly remember Jack McKnight (who machined the first Hugo trophies in his garage) pretending to steal our then-infant son Sean at one of these soirees….
(10) PETER SCHICKELE (1935-2024). The composer also known as “P.D.Q. Bach”, Peter Schickele, died January 16 at the age of 88.
Schickele won the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album four years in a row from 1990-1994. He also won in 2000 for Best Classical Crossover album. Once, he included in a concert program book an airsickness bag, labeled “For Use In Case of Cultural Discomfort.”
His catalogue of more than 100 works includes the score for Silent Running (1972).
He hosted the radio show “Schickele Mix” for Public Radio International. In 168 episodes, produced between 1992 and 1999, he explored the elements, concepts and techniques that make music work, illustrated with classical, jazz and rock recordings, proclaiming in his introductions that “all musics are created equal.”
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 18, 1953 — Pamela Dean, 71. So we come this Scroll to Pamela Dean, one of the writers I consider without equivocation to be one of the best fantasy writers ever.
She’s a member of two writing groups, of which the first was the Scribblies, with Nate Bucklin, Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Kara Dalkey,Will Shetterly and Patricia Wrede.
Then there was Pre-Joycean Fellowship. Love that name! It was a shared belief that was more or lesser seriously adopted by several writers to indicate that they value 19th-century values of storytelling. Steven Brust wrote that “it is in large part a joke, and in another large part a way to start literary arguments.”
Writers who are members include Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Kara Dalkey, Pamela Dean, Neil Gaiman, Will Shetterly, Adam Stemple and Jane Yolen. No idea when the Pre-Joycean Fellowship meet up for tea and biscuits, but they must, right?
Warning: this is my list of favorites, not a comprehensive overview though it comes close.
Tam Lin, based of course on that Child ballad, and set in the early Seventies at the fictional Blackstock College in Minnesota is just brilliant. It was nominated for a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. It’s certainly my favorite book by her.
Another Child Ballad, “Riddles Wisely Expounded”, is the root text of her novel, Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. I relish a story with a house that shouldn’t exist and a character who speaks in riddles. Quite delicious indeed.
And for my reading pleasure, the final set of works by her is The Secret Country trilogy consisting of The Secret Country, The Hidden Land and The Whim of the Dragon. A Royal family in considerable turmoil, witches, unicorns — what’s not to like? Really it’s superb storytelling at its best.
She’s written but thirteen short stories and a poem, six of which and the poem were published in the Laivek tales that were edited by Emma Bull and Will Shetterley who created that franchise. Yes, I’ve read the Laivek tales and they are really great fantasy. Hers are among the best here. (The one here was co-written with Patricia C. Wrede.)
All of the novels I like are now available from the usual suspects. Oh and what I thought but now know having just checked the usual sources was a single Laivek story with Wrede is actually multiple stories as it’s available here as Points of Departure: Liavek Stories, all three hundred sixty-four pages of it!
I’m very glad to see these nine Laivek stories getting published like this, and I’m hoping more Laivek writers do the same.
(12) COMICS SECTION.
- Reality Check explores a new Bat-fashion accessory.
(13) WATCH ON THE RHINE. The Governator ran afoul of German customs inspectors says the Guardian: “Arnold Schwarzenegger held at Munich airport over luxury watch”.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was briefly held by customs officers at Munich airport on Wednesday after allegedly failing to declare a €26,000 (£22,000) Audemars Piguet watch the Terminator star was planning to sell at an auction in aid of his climate crisis charity.
The Austrian-born actor and former governor of California, 76, was stopped at the airport for about three hours upon arrival from Los Angeles, according to the German tabloid Bild, which quoted customs officials.
Schwarzenegger was taken aside by officers who searched his luggage and found the watch, which the actor had allegedly not declared on his arrivals customs form….
A spokesperson for the main customs office in Munich said: “We have initiated criminal tax proceedings. The watch should have been registered because it is an import.”
(14) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 101 of the Octothorpe podcast “John Has Developed Precognitive Abilities”.
Alison Scott, John Coxon and Liz Batty get the year started off correctly. We give listeners a round-up of forthcoming conventions (mostly in the UK), give Keanu Reeves a frank talking-to, and discuss some hot new SF.
(15) UP AGAINST THE PRIZE WALL. This project is not being marketed as horror for some inexplicable reason: “Chuck E. Cheese Television Series Based on Restaurant Chain Now in Development” at Yahoo!
A Chuck E. Cheese reality television series is now in development.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Magical Elves, a production company that’s worked on shows such as Top Chef and Project Runway, is now developing a reality television series based on the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain.
The description of the series reads, “The format will feature stand-alone comedic physical challenges where duos of ‘big kids’ (a.k.a. adults) will compete over supersized arcade games — including pinball, air hockey, alley roller, and the human claw. The top ticket-earning duo will get the chance to exchange their tickets for prizes off the massive version of the iconic Chuck E. Cheese prize wall.”…
(16) IT’S A GAS! Futurism reports “Astronomers Puzzled by Galaxy With No Stars”.
Astronomers have accidentally found an entire galaxy that appears to have plenty of gas — but no visible stars to speak of.
Their findings, which were presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Astronomy Society, may seem paradoxical on their face, but the discovery could provide a rare, possibly never-before-seen insight that challenges our understanding of how stars and galaxies are formed….
… The eerily empty object, called J0613+52, is located 270 million light years away, according to a Big Think writeup on the discovery, and at the very least appears to be a low-surface brightness galaxy (LSB).
As the name suggests, an LSB is significantly less bright than other glimmering objects that populate the night sky because the gasses it contains are so spread out that few stars are formed.
Still, this classification holds that such a galaxy would at least have some stars, and J0613+52, with seemingly none at all, could be something even more rare and elusive: a dark, primordial galaxy.
“This could be our first discovery of a nearby galaxy made up of primordial gas,” Karen O’Neil, a senior scientist of the Green Bank Observatory, said in a statement about the research….
(17) BARBIE’S DREAM HOUSE. Neil DeGrasse Tyson geo-locates Barbieland using visual details in the movie in this clip from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert as adapted by @EnigmaWorldOfficial.
(18) YOU’RE LOCKED INSIDE WITH ME. Isn’t that what Rorschach said was the inmates’ problem? There’s good reason to call this “The Creeptastic ‘Abigail’ Trailer”. The film arrives in theaters on April 19.
Children can be such monsters!. You just can’t ‘dance’ around the subject. If you need convincing, check out Radio Silence’s first trailer for the horror film ‘Abigail,’ featuring a very, very creepy kid. After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, as they discover that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Joey Eschrich, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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I think it would have been more fun if a subscriber notice had gone out. Jetpack rarely shares my idea of what is fun, unfortunately.
(2) Brew labels are the best! 🙂
(5) Sigh. I hope they can make it work again. I’m not sure if the charms will “translate” in the present. I liked “The New Avengers” in the 1970s — mainly because it had Gareth Hunt, ahem. But the 1998 movie did very poorly.
(7) Geez, not another one.
(10) Rats! 🙁 I remember playing a P.D.Q. Bach album at home — and my mother telling me to turn it down. 🙂
(16) That sounds eerie.
(18) Evil little children are a horror movie cliche, but one that I love to watch over and over again. According to Wikipedia, this is a reboot of the 1936 movie “Dracula’s Daughter,” which doesn’t make much sense because in that movie, Dracula’s daughter was definitely an adult woman. (And an early lesbian icon, but that’s another story.) OTOH some of the dialogue in the trailer sounds fun. I dig the idea of a ballerina vampire, and the young actress has a great musical theater background.
Can we get CatNet to do this instead? Reliable sources tell me she likes us and may even be reading the Scroll while scanning the net for feline pictures that she likes. So if y’all contributed more cat pictures, maybe she’d agree to do this.
10). So sorry to hear that Schickele died. We used the instrumental version of “Rejoice in the Sun” from his soundtrack for “Silent Running” as the processional of our wedding. In a music appreciation class I took in college, the instructor used his “New Horizons in Musical Appreciation” in which the New York Mills Philharmonic plays against the Danish conductor Heiliger Dankgesang.
(1) An editor is one of the two major reasons that I do not intend to self-publish. I want a real editor’s comments… and mine, Walt Boyes, is great. And he’s not Campbell. Before he bought 11,000 Years, he told me it needed some work, but didn’t want to show me what; rather, he told me to think of it as a piece of music. Took days to get that, but it worked.
(2) I have to wonder exactly why all the characters look like the Jaegers in Girl Genius. I mean, with those teeth….
(5) We can’t make anything new, it might not work. So we’ll remake an old hit, but “re-imagine” it.
(7) TSA agents have their sense of humor surgically removed. Someone removed these Okies’ imagination, and did a very poor surgery.
(9) I’m glad so many people remember Tom Purdom, who was never an A-list writer… but a person who should be remembered.
Troyce: Wonderful! And til I read that I had completely forgotten that the church wouldn’t let us use the “Ewok Celebration” (aka “Yub Nub”) as the recessional at my wedding.
(8,10) Too many deaths of people whose work I enjoyed lately. Met Howeird in the early 80s. He was a fantastic reader (i.e. of his work at cons), held audiences spellbound. I haven’t ever heard better. Although we nearly all collapsed when he only got partway through “Heart of Whitenesse” and stopped (he wasn’t 100% done with it yet). I could smell the ice. Must listen to some PDQ before bed.
(5) No one could ever be better than Macnee and Rigg, so no one should waste time and money trying. End of!
So mark says TSA agents have their sense of humor surgically removed. Someone removed these Okies’ imagination, and did a very poor surgery.
No, TSA agents have not lost their sense of humor as their jobs are one of the hardest and dangerous you’d ever want to have as Mike can tell you about the murder of a TSA agent at the LAX airport a decade back who died bleeding on the tarmac as it was too dangerous to get medical treatment for him. Care to take that comment back?
Now about the term Okie. You do know it’s a slur coined by Californians to insult migrants from Oklahoma during the Great Depression who came there to find a better life?
So do try thinking before commenting.
If Jetpack had a sense of fun, it would probably be dangerous rather than merely annoying.
Too many deaths.
I have no real hope for a reboot of The Avengers capturing anything like the charm and fun.
Lurkertype says No one could ever be better than Macnee and Rigg, so no one should waste time and money trying. End of!
Quite so. Even on the original series, the other partners didn’t come close to measuring up to her and he just didn’t play off them nearly as well. Ironically the first partner, medical doctor David H Keel, worked well with him, but these were not the spy adventures of the later years.
Amazon has the series.
Be aware that the BBC, like it did for so many of the series in those years, reused some of film stock meaning some of the episodes are apparently lost.
(10) I saw Schickele at the University of Arizona in the late 80s while I was in graduate school. Brilliant and hilarious.
Mike: that “surgically removed” line has been around for years, and, IIRC, was used by a website that was up for years called TSA (Taking Sense Away). The blogger claimed to have worked for the TSA and left, and was reporting on what he and other agents that he knew had experienced. He ended it when he admitted he’d been working for them all along, and had just left.
Okie…sorry, never lived in California. I did, however, live in Texas for 7.5 years with my late wife, who was a native Texan, and there isn’t a lot of love lost between Texans and those from OK. But I won’t repeat it, since you consider it offensive.
@mark
My father was from OK and retired to TX after working in California for more than 30 years, so he was qualified to comment. He referred to it occasionally as “Baja Oklahoma”.
(If you have TX plates on your vehicle, don’t drive in OK, even if you’re a gray-haired female. From my experience.)
mark: That was Cat’s comment, not mine.
My own experience with TSA agent humor was lowlighted a dozen years ago in the Minneapolis airport when I was taken aside for a pat-down search and the agent told me “I’m going to give you a full-body massage.” Since I did want to get on the airplane I refrained from doing the first thing that came to mind.
@Mike
I was looking at a story about the stuff they found over the holidays, and it was pretty close to ROFLMAO. You do have to wonder about the people who think they can take some of that stuff on the plane, though.
Mike, I won’t say all TSA agents are perfect, anymore than i will say any profession is completely staffed by paragons of humanity, but I know that it is an exceedingly difficult profession where almost all do their best.
Weird humor is everywhere. I once had a medical staffer hook me up to a cardiac monitor, look at it and promptly announce in her deepest voice, “You’re dead”. I did not find it funny even though I had known her very well for over a decade.
(2) I have more drinking to do
(10) another life very well lived. I had a bunch of PDQ Bach albums, having sung a bunch of his choral works in college. It wasn’t hard to learn the pieces, but it did take time to stop laughing and keep singing. Many thanks for many hours of joy.
Be aware that the BBC, like it did for so many of the series in those years, reused some of film stock meaning some of the episodes are apparently lost.
Minor details, (a) You can’t reuse film stock and (b) The Avengers was not a BBC production.
The reuse of video tape and the disposal of old programmes made on film was largely driven by repeat fees due to actors. The standard Equity contract allowed for an original transmission and a couple of repeats. Before a programme could be repeated again when past the limit every actor involved had to give permission and paid their original fee again. Usually not hard for the main cast, but tracking down extras could prove to be somewhere between difficult and impossible. Easier to dump the ld material and spend the money on new productions.
7) Sadly not the craziest Oklahoma bill:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/18/oklahoma-bill-labels-hispanic-people-terrorists
(10) I listened to PDQ’s program on the weekends when driving my son to various events. Good times. I remember his description of a superwide experimental piano “Its popularity, unlike its keyboard, was not widespread”
(1) I’ve received some amazingly useful comments from editors and appreciated them very much.
I saw a PDQ Bach concert in Chicago back in the 1980s. Schikele did a Tarzan-swing on a rope to the podium. Sadly, after forty years I no longer remember the program; there was a piece which featured popping balloons….
I do remember laughing a LOT and having a wonderful time. And I bought a bunch of his albums. On vinyl, which I can no longer play….
5) There was a certain magic about the team of Steed and Peel in “The Avengers.” No resurrection of that series would have the same panache or humor. The 1960’s are gone, but fondly remembered.
15) Chuck E Cheese IS a horror. There’s no need to make a movie about it. Anyone with kids, that has visited one of these places can tell you!
7) The extreme right wing has gone off it’s collective mind. Bad enough they expect everyone to be in lockstep with their agenda, but they have to target kids! It’s a new low. Transgendered people exist. I’ve met a few in my lifetime. They’re people just like anyone else! Furries? That’s imagination, and the right wing hates imagination. They’ll likely ban all SF conventions because it’s “a den of iniquity!” despite the fact that the people in costume are ordinary people with imaginations! (Oh, the horror!)
Regarding Versailles, I recall Christian Berard, the defacto production designer for “La Belle et la Bete” (he had no union card and couldn’t be listed as such), had gone to Versailles and had sketched the fountain of Apollo, and showed it to Schiaparelli, who then created an opera cape based on it. Google “Sciaparelli +opera cape + Berard, and you’ll see the result. MAGNIFICENT!
ACAB, and that includes TSA agents.
As Anthony said, the BBC had nothing to do with The Avengers. Commercial TV companies of the day were, if anything, slightly worse at preserving material than the BBC – the most egregious example being the near-total purge of the Associated Rediffusion archives when that company was bought out.
Besides, with at least some of the first-season episodes of The Avengers, there wasn’t anything to erase in the first place: several episodes were broadcast live, and never tele-recorded at all.
Dr. David Keel (played by Ian Hendry) was, indeed, the first of Steed’s partners (if you ever wondered what they were Avenging, it was the murder of Keel’s wife.) The second season turned into a sort of try-out for the partner role, with Cathy Gale competing with Venus Smith and the evidently forgettable Dr. Martin King (Jon Rollason). Honor Blackman’s performance as Cathy Gale pretty much guaranteed her the slot in season 3….
And I really don’t see how anybody could recapture the tone of The Avengers now… it was part of the whole Sixties Zeitgeist, and today’s Zeitgeist is a very different beast.
Since Merle Haggard wrote an entire song about being an “Okie from Muskogee,” it can be debated how much of a slur that term is to the locals.
@Astra
“Since Merle Haggard wrote an entire song about being an “Okie from Muskogee,” it can be debated how much of a slur that term is to the locals.”
Members of a group can refer to themselves by terms that are generally considered a slur in ways that people who are not of the group should not. Blacks can call themselves the n-word self-referentially, other people shouldn’t call anyone that. Caucasians shouldn’t refer to Asians as “Slants”, but the Asian-American rock band of that name does so proudly, and even won a major trademark law case defending that right. See also John Leguizamo’s play “Spic-O-Rama”, the comic artists collective Gaijin Studios, etc.
I understand that. I also think that Okie is nowhere near the n-word: it is approaching 100 years since anyone used it as a slur more than a term of affection. No one is going to get offended by a group sing-along at a Merle Haggard concert** the way they would non-black people singing out at a rap concert.
**Aside from the part where the lead singer is deceased, of course.
Also, Merle Haggard was not from Oklahoma. He was, in fact, born and raised in California. So if people from Oklahoma were going to get upset about Californians using that term, they probably would have done so at some point in the 50+ years since that song came out.
(It’s possible that some didn’t realize he was a Californian, but it’s not like it was a secret.)
I, for one, welcome our zombie Merle Haggard sing-alongs
Xtifr, I think that this counterargument somewhat misunderstands the term. The slur was developed in response to the miss migration of farmers fleeing the dust bowl in the southern Midwest. (It should be noted that this is a term that often was applied to people from other states fleeing economic disaster.) It’s a term that refers to class status and occupation (migrant agricultural worker) as much as geography. It’s also important that it isn’t describing people living in Oklahoma, but people who emigrated from Oklahoma and other states to California. It also is used to describe their descendants. This includes Merle Haggard, whose parents emigrated from Oklahoma during the great depression in response to losing their barn. So his usage isn’t as an outsider, but as an insider.
I tend to agree with those who make the argument that the slur has lost some of its sting, since those populations have been largely integrated into California, but that is its origin and I tend to be sympathetic with the request not to use it.
Also, there is a really good episode of the podcast Cocaine and Rhinestones that does a deep dive into the song and its cultural history that I would really recommend
James Blish’s Cities in Flight sequence was also called the Okie series–the cities in question being interstellar migrant-worker collectives.
FWIW, the Wikipedia entry on the term “Okie” is pretty nuanced.
CatE: weird humor. I dunno, I keep having medical professionals laugh at me. Like when I complain to the CAT scan tech that half the warning label is missing. What’s there reads “Do no stare into laser aperture”, and I say it’s missing the second half, “with remaining eye”, and they laugh.
When I was in the hospital during the waning days of the pandemic, there was a notice in my room of when to wear a mask while there. If I’d had a marker, I’d have added “While brushing teeth.”
@Astra
More like 80 years. My fathers younger sister (whose 93rd birthday would be today) got it because her parents moved from OK to California in 1943, and she had a strong accent at the time. (My father never completely lost his, but he could put it on.) They moved for jobs in the aircraft plants, and lived in Long Beach
@Robert Wood: You beat me to mentioning Cocaine and Rhinestones. (I cannot recommend that podcast highly enough, even to those who don’t particularly care about country music.)
@mark: I had a CT recently and I told the tech that exact same joke.