(1) DISCON III REACTIONS. Today’s decision by the 2021 Worldcon committee to remove Toni Weisskopf as a GoH (“DisCon III Removes Weisskopf as a Guest of Honor”) is being widely discussed.
Toni Weisskopf posted a concise response on Facebook.
The committee of Discon III approached me this week to discuss the allegations about Baen’s Bar that were posted at Patreon. Baen is conducting a thorough investigation, which we feel we cannot rush, and has taken down the Bar while we conduct the investigation.
I do understand the immediate appeal of Discon III wishing to act quickly to respond to their community. Today they informed me of their official decision to remove me as their Editor Guest of Honor.
While I strongly disagree with the committee’s decision, I will regretfully accede to their wishes.
These excerpts for the Scroll are primarily by authors who condemned the decision (except for the final one).
David Weber responded on Facebook.
So Toni Weisskopf has been formally disinvited by WorldCon and DisCon. Can’t say it was a surprise. I will however remind people of the personal policy I adopted years ago and reiterated in the case of ConCarolina and John Ringo. I will not attend a con which has disinvited a guest. You are always free to invite —or not—anyone you like. Any con which disinvites someone after the invitation has been issued and accepted, especially when they do so under pressure, however, does not deserve to be trusted by future guests.
He said more in the comments on his post, including —
Bob Eggleton made this comment —
Chuck Gannon also made a comment on Weber’s post, repeating one of his quotes linked here yesterday and extending it as follows:
…So Toni Weisskopf activated the most proactive, realistic option available to her: she closed the Bar, thereby ending any possibility that it might do further ostensible injury.
36 hours later, however, she was disinvited without any additional cause.
You will note, however, that no one asserted that she did not respond quickly enough. In fact, in disinviting her, there were no further/new discoveries added to those put forth in Mr. Sanford’s essay.
So what had changed? If the concom believes that 36 hours is enough time for her to resolve the matter completely, I once again point out that
a) any business person operating in the real world would *know* that is not enough time to conduct anything like a thorough review
b) in order to ensure that what Mr. Sanford reported could not expand or remain as a potential threat, SHE CLOSED THE WHOLE BAR DOWN.
If she had meant to stonewall, or not actually investigate the matter, she would not have taken the step of closing the Bar.
Do I repeat myself in this post? Assuredly so . . . because these are salient points which are being repeatedly, perhaps purposively, overlooked.
For anyone familiar with the musical Hamilton, cue “The Room Where It Happened” as we ponder “so what changed in 36 hours?”
Larry Correia shames the SMoFs in “An Open Letter To The Old Time Fans at WorldCon” [Internet Archive link].
…Then several years later, after the old controversy I caused had died off and most of us barbaric outsiders had said screw cheesy WorldCon and moved on with our lives, some of you still felt guilty for how you’d treated Toni, so you extended an olive branch. You offered her the Guest of Honor spot at your little convention. How nice. How fucking magnanimous.
Toni, being a far better human being than any of you could ever aspire to be, thought the offer over. She knew there was risks. She knew that she’d take heat from people on the right (and she has). Morons on my side of the political would call her a sell-out, quisling, traitor, boot licker, so on and so forth, and they did. She got attacked by the useless grifters on both sides, looking for hate clicks. But unlike you, Toni ignores the baying mob and always does what she thinks is the right thing to do. She looked at your peace offering, and said fine, If you want to try and mend fences, okay, I’ll take the heat, I’ll be your guest of honor. She was the bigger person.
She talked to me about her decision. I told her I understood, I wouldn’t do it, but I respected her call, but that she’d surely get yelled at by the idiots on both sides. She already knew, but she thought it was the right thing to do anyway. Because unlike you, Toni actually has a moral compass. Your moral compass is a windsock. Her one mistake in all this was assuming that any of you old time Smofs would have a spine….
A very large number of people today are reaching for rhetorical flourishes to complain about what happened. RS Benedict made this connection. (If you don’t recognize Isabel Fall’s name, run a search here. Also let it be noted that Weisskopf has been removed as GoH, not banned from attending.)
Mike VanHelder, an experienced conrunner, tried to understand the decision from a convention running perspective. As part of that he wrote this How It Should Have Ended scenario, in addition to other insights. Thread starts here.
(2) NO ONE TO FOLLOW. While we’re at it, let WIRED’s Angela Wattercutter tell you about “The Crushing Disappointment of Fandom”.
…When we really, truly admire someone, whether they’re an Avenger or Anthony Fauci, there’s a tendency to mimic their personality, even their morality. Media theorists call these bonds “parasocial relationships”; parents of kids with one too many Star Wars posters (probably) call it “over the top.” But the people in it, the ones who write fic and spend days making cosplay before the next convention, call it part of their identity, the fabric of who they are.
Until it’s not. Earlier this week, actress Gina Carano lost her job playing Cara Dune on The Mandalorian. The former MMA fighter had been facing criticism for months for her anti-science views on mask-wearing, mocking transgender-sensitive pronouns, and tweets about voter fraud. Then, on Wednesday, after she shared an Instagram story that suggested having differing political views was akin to being Jewish during the Holocaust, the hashtag #FireGinaCarano began to trend on Twitter. That night, Lucasfilm issued the following statement: “Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future. Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
Carano’s comments are harmful for a lot of reasons, but they seem to carry an additional weight for fans. Cara Dune was a hero, someone who fought for people, a tough, competent female warrior in a genre often dominated by men. Fans looked up to Cara, and by extension Carano, but the actor’s comments on social media left one of those things harder to do….
(3) BY POPULAR DEMAND. The UK’s Daily Mail proclaims: “WandaVision: Fans CRASH Disney+ to stream latest episode”.
Viewers of WandaVision crashed Disney+ on Friday morning as the latest installment dropped on the streaming service.
There was a brief 10-minute outage in the early hours of Friday as episode seven of the Marvel Cinematic Universe-based series was made available, PEOPLE reports.
Fans expressed their frustration on social media after experiencing issues as they signed on in droves to catch the latest installment of Wanda and Vision’s Westview adventures.
(4) RECOVERED. Claire O’Dell has released a second edition of her award-winning River of Souls trilogy with new covers and updated text: River of Souls Series. The author blogged about the books here.
…Once Tor returned the rights to me, I decided to release a second edition, with new covers and updated text. I commissioned new artwork from the amazing Jessica Shirley. I badgered my long-suffering spouse into designing new covers. And I spent several months editing and proofreading the manuscripts. The e-books are now available at my on-line bookstore (here), individually or as a bundle, and will appear at all the usual vendor sites later this week….
(5) PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT. James Davis Nicoll helps us keep these two things straight: “Five SF Works Featuring Dyson Shells (and Not Dyson Swarms)” at Tor.com.
…There are at least two kinds of Dyson Sphere. The first—the one Dyson intended—is made up of a myriad of independently orbiting objects. While this presents an interesting traffic control challenge, the Dyson Swarm has the advantage that not only can it be built incrementally over a very long period, but the components are gravitationally coupled to the star in question.
The second option is a solid shell with the star in the middle….
Here’s one of James’ picks:
“Back to Myan” by Regina Kanyu Wang (2017)
Retrieved by the Union from certain extinction on the ice-encrusted world Myan, Kaya is somewhat less than entirely grateful. After all, the reason Myan was freezing in the first place was Project Saion, the Union’s vast energy-gathering structure blocking Myan from its star, Saion. While the Union did belatedly notice the Myan natives and rescue them, this didn’t come to pass until 997 out of every 1000 of Kaya’s species had perished in the cold. Still, the Union is very, very powerful, while the handful of Myans are not. There is nothing Kaya can do to save her home world. At least, that’s what the Union believes…
(6) GREG BEAR INTERVIEWED. Frank Catalano, who was SFWA Secretary back when Greg Bear was SFWA President, pointed out a good profile of Greg Bear in the Seattle Times today, including his thinking that his newest novel may be his last one, and the trouble he had in finding a publisher for it: “Lynnwood’s Greg Bear, stalwart of modern science fiction, starts writing his life story”.
The 69-year-old Lynnwood-based author and first-class raconteur still has a lot to say. He’s published four novels since aortic dissection surgery left him with a titanium heart valve six years ago and has plans for more. But he’s just not sure he wants to deal with the business of fiction publishing anymore after having a hard time finding a buyer for “The Unfinished Land,” eventually published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt imprint John Joseph Adams Books.
“If I had written it and no one wanted to publish it, what would I do right at that point?” Bear said. “I considered just retiring. And I think I’m still making that decision at this point.”
Catalano reacts: “It’s end-of-days when Greg Bear can’t find a publisher. Ack.”
(7) ENDLESS RIVER. “Doctor Who’s River Song Alex Kingston writes new novel” – Radio Times has the story.
… Alex Kingston is releasing a brand new River Song novel, taking the popular companion on a brand new adventure.
The book, entitled The Ruby’s Curse, promises to tell a thrilling story set in New York in 1939, featuring both River Song and her alter-ego Melody Malone. It is Alex Kingston’s first foray into writing Doctor Who fiction, following in the footsteps of Tom Baker, whose story Scratchman follows the escapades of the Fourth Doctor….
“Having absolutely no idea of the journey I would be taking with River Song when I first uttered those words, “Hello Sweetie,” I cannot begin to express how excited I am to be able to continue not only River, but Melody’s adventures on the written page,” she says.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
- 1961 — Sixty years ago at Seacon in Seattle, A Canticle for Leibowitz, a fix-up of three short stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, written by Walter M. Miller, Jr. wins the Hugo for Best Novel. It was published by J. B. Lippincott. Other nominees that year were The High Crusade by Poul Anderson, Rogue Moon by Algis Budrys, Deathworld by Harry Harrison and Venus Plus X by Theodore Sturgeon. Surprisingly this is the only award this novel won.
(9) BLACKBURN OBIT. Graphic designer “Bruce Blackburn, Designer of Ubiquitous NASA Logo, Dies at 82” reports the New York Times. He died February 1 at the age of 82,
…In 1975, NASA introduced the worm, a sleek sequence of winding red letters, and the logo quickly became a tangible symbol of a boundless space age that lay ahead.
“We did get what we set out to accomplish,” Mr. Blackburn said. “Anybody we showed it to immediately said, ‘Oh I know what that is. I know them. They’re really great. They’re right on the leading edge of everything.’”
But in 1992, a few years after the Challenger explosion, NASA dropped the worm and revived the meatball in a decision that was said to be intended to improve company morale.
Mr. Blackburn and other designers lamented the choice. “They said, ‘This is a crime. You cannot do this,’” he said. “‘This is a national treasure and you’re throwing it in the trash bin.”
“His design sensibility was offended by what happened,” his daughter said. “He thought the meatball was clumsy and sloppy and not representative of the future.”…
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
- Born February 19, 1923 – Alan Hunter. Fan and pro artist; founded the Fantasy Art Society (U.K.); fifty covers, three hundred fifty interiors, for Banana Wings, Dream, Fantasy Tales, Matrix, Nebula, New Worlds, SF Chronicle, Vector, the Millennium Philcon Program Book (59th Worldcon), the LoneStarCon 3 Program Book (71st Worldcon). Artist Guest at Fantasycon 1981. Here is the Spring 53 Nebula. Here is an interior from the Mar 53 New Worlds. Here is an interior from Dream. Here is the Oct 86 SF Chronicle. Here is Vector 112. Here is Banana Wings 38. Our Gracious Host’s appreciation here. (Died 2012) [JH]
- Born February 19, 1937 — Terry Carr. Well-known and loved fan, author, editor, and writing instructor. I usually don’t list awards both won and nominated for but his are damned impressed so I will. He was nominated five times for Hugos for Best Fanzine (1959–1961, 1967–1968), winning in 1959, was nominated three times for Best Fan Writer (1971–1973), winning in 1973, and he was Fan Guest of Honor at ConFederation in 1986. Wow. He worked at Ace Books before going freelance where he edited an original story anthology series called Universe, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies that ran from 1972 until his early death in 1987. Back to Awards again. He was nominated for the Hugo for Best Editor thirteen times (1973–1975, 1977–1979, 1981–1987), winning twice (1985 and 1987). His win in 1985 was the first time a freelance editor had won. Wow indeed. Novelist as well. Just three novels but all are still in print today though I don’t think his collections are and none of his anthologies seem to be currently either. A final note. An original anthology of science fiction, Terry’s Universe, was published the year after his death with all proceeds went to his widow. (Died 1987.) (CE)
- Born February 19, 1963 — Laurell K. Hamilton, 58. She is best known as the author of two series of stories. One is the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter of which I’ll confess I’ve read but several novels, the other is the Merry Gentry series which held my interest rather longer but which I lost in somewhere around the sixth or seventh novel when the sex became really repetitive. (CE)
- Born February 19, 1946 – Rosemary Ullyot, age 75. Early member of the Ontario SF Club. Fanzine Kevas & Trillium with Alicia Austin and Maureen Bournes. “Kumquat May” column in Energumen. Twice finalist for Best Fanwriter. [JH]
- Born February 19, 1957 – Jim Rittenhouse, age 64. Founded Point of Divergence, alternative-history apa. Guest of Honor at DucKon 12, Windycon 32. Judge of the Sidewise Award. Has read As I Lay Dying, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Suetonius’ Twelve Caesars, Adam Bede, Lolita, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “Why do I like fountain pens? The smoothness and ease of writing, the clarity and solidity of the line, the profound coloring and the strong saturation of the ink.” [JH]
- Born February 19, 1964 — Jonathan Lethem, 57. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a weird mix of SF and detective fiction, is fantastic in more ways that I can detail briefly here. I confess that I lost track of him after that novel so I’d be interested in hearing what y’all think of his later genre work particularly his latest, The Arrest. (CE)
- Born February 19, 1966 — Claude Lalumière, 55. I met him once here in Portland at a used book store in the the SFF section, and his wife wrote reviews for Green Man once upon a year. Author, book reviewer and editor who has edited numerous anthologies including two volumes of the excellent Tesseracts series. Amazing writer of short dark fantasy stories collected in three volumes so far, Objects of Worship, The Door to Lost Pages and Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes. Tachyon published his latest anthology, Super Stories of Heroes & Villains. (CE)
- Born February 19, 1968 — Benicio del Toro, 53. Originally cast as Khan in that Trek film but unable to perform the role as he was committed to another film. He’s been The Collector in the Marvel film franchise, Lawrence Talbot in the 2010 remake of The Wolfman, and codebreaker DJ in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Let’s not forget that he was in Big Top Pee-wee as Duke, the Dog-Faced Boy followed by being in Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas as Dr. Gonzo which damn well should count as genre even if it isn’t. (CE)
- Born February 19, 1970 – Victor Ehikhamenor, age 51. Writer, visual artist including photography and sculpture. Exhibited in the first Nigerian pavilion at the Venice Biennale (57th Biennale, 2017). Here is I Am Ogiso, the King of Heaven. Here is The Unknowable (enamel & steel), Norval Foundation, Cape Town. Here is Hypnotic Lover. Here is Wealth of Nations, Nat’l Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution. Website. [JH]
- Born February 19, 1973 – Nikki Alfar, age 49. A score of short stories. Three Palanca Awards. Manila Critics’ Circle Nat’l Book Award. Co-editor, Philippine Speculative Fiction. Interviewed in Fantasy. [JH]
- Born February 19, 1984 – Marissa Meyer, age 37. Re-told Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White in the Lunar Chronicles; the first, Cinder, MM’s début, was a NY Times Best-Seller; later Fairest, a prequel. Heartless has the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland. Half a dozen more novels, a dozen shorter stories. Introduction to Yolen’s How to Fracture a Fairy Tale. Has confessed to writing (under another name) twoscore pieces of Sailor Moon fanfiction. [JH]
(11) COMICS SECTION.
- Lio is always bizarre – this time it’s even funny.
- Non Sequitur chronicles the Alexa / Siri conspiracy.
- The Flying McCoys reveals that Superman buys outfits off the rack! (When they’re in stock.)
(12) HE’LL BE REMEMBERED. Milton Davis reports the GoFundMe was successful and that the headstone and monument for Charles R. Saunders’ grave have arrived. The grave of famous fantasy writer Charles R. Saunders was without a headstone until friends raised money for it.
(13) REPURPOSED AND FUNNY. [Item by rcade.] The paranormal fantasy novelist Richard Kadrey has been reading some obscure science fiction paperbacks from the golden age of the lurid cover. Authors include Supernova Jackson, Cliff Zoom and Brawny Magnum.
The titles of Kadrey’s novels in his Sandman Slim series would be right at home on a shelf with these classics. They include Kill The Dead, Aloha from Hell, Ballistic Kiss and King Bullet, which comes out in August.
He’s also the founder with cyberpunk author Bruce Sterling of the Dead Media Project, which sought to save obsolete and forgotten forms of media. But it died.
(14) NOT A FAN. Variety’s Caroline Framke is not amused: “’Superman and Lois’ Brings The CW Superhero Brand Back Down to Boring Earth: TV Review”.
…It makes sense on paper for a new show about Superman to fast forward through the stuff that’s been done to death in order to find some new way into the man, the myth, the legend. Why not make him a harried dad juggling apocalyptic threats with teenage boys, one of whom might have the same kind of powers as he does? The CW’s dads are already supernaturally hot, so hey, might as well lean into the brand. (Hoechlin, like Tom Welling before him, does not at all have a Christopher Reeve level of charisma to bring to the role — but to be fair, who does?)
But for all the logical storylines and character journeys that “Superman and Lois” includes, it nonetheless lacks the spark to make any of it very interesting. Despite solid efforts from Tulloch, Garfin, and especially Elsass to bring life to their stiff scenes, these Kents feel more stuck than striking
(15) DO YOU REMEMBER. [Item by Mike Kennedy.[ Hugh freakin’ Jackman does the “announcer guy“ voiceover for a movie teaser… Io9 points to “Reminiscence First Look: The Sci-Fi Mystery Romance Is Out 9/3”. The clip is in Hugh Jackman’s tweet:
[Thanks to Michael Toman, rcade, James Davis Nicoll, John Hertz, Danny Sichel, Jeffrey Jones, Andrew Porter, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Steven H Silver, Frank Catalano, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Chris R.]
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@HowardB – I can clear this up quite easily – what you heard was inaccurate. Actually she had a history of tweets mocking people for wearing masks, engaging in COVID denialism, insulting trans people over pronouns, claiming that the election was rigged with “fake votes” and eventually wrapped it up with a good ol’ fashioned “disagreeing with other people’s politics is just the same as the Holocaust” schtick.
Which one of those was the straw that broke the camel’s back is anybody’s guess (I actually lean toward COVID and anti-masking since that makes your coworkers pretty uncomfortable these days) but I’ll point out that Disney never said they fired her, they said that they were no longer working with her but condemned her speech. I haven’t seen any proof that she actually had a contract at all going forward, given that Disney’s delaying the next Mandalorian season to film the Book of Boba Fett. She might well have assumed…but as the next season will be Mandalorefest, I don’t know that’s actually a safe assumption.
I hope this helps! Go forward armed with your new knowledge!
Peace Is My Middle Name: Bob Eggleton? Well. That’s a disappointment.
Meh, I think it was apparent which way he was going back in 2018 when, the day after the Chesley ballot was announced and he was on neither that nor the 2018 Hugo ballot, he threw all of his toys out of his cot and stomped off.
I haven’t had to think about George Will for years and I guess I’d hoped I wouldn’t have had to for a while longer.
And @howardb re: (6), I haven’t read a Greg Bear book since, I think, “Moving Mars” in the mid-90s so I don’t know what he’s been doing these last 25 years, but authors of any caliber are capable of putting out real clunkers. Going by goodreads and amazon reviews, “Unfinished Land” might be one of them.
Not to name any names, of course, but I think anybody who’s been reading this genre for a while can think of at least a few examples where the works late in an author’s career are a big step down from those that came earlier. (And plenty where they’re just as good! Or better! Or just different!)
(Also Lynnwood isn’t even in the same county as Seattle! )
Indeed, how dare we not act like the storybook villains some confused people believe us to be? We should be rubbing our hands and cackling at any misfortune to anyone who might slightly dare to disagree with us! We should be more evil, dammit, so that the folks who don’t like us can feel more self-satisfied and smug!
I mean, if the “good” guys are actively plotting murder and violence against those they disagree with, the least we bad guys can do is act a little bit bad!
If it makes you feel better, Martin, I did pet a cat, and, if you like, you can imagine that it was white and sitting on my lap as I ordered my minions to perpetrate more foul deeds.
@Xtifr: I’m ashamed to say I panicked and ordered my onions to perpetrate more foul deeds.
Martin Wooster: The Left has won the cullture war here. Discon will be a leftist convention, the cultural equivalent of a social democratic political party convention.
So according to you, the “culture” of non-leftists is that agitated discussion of, and incitement of, the best ways to murder large numbers of people and overthrow the government is acceptable? And since you’re a libertarian, you are thus saying that this is your culture.
I suspect that there are some libertarians and non-leftists who would take serious issue with you lumping them in with your endorsement of agitated discussion and incitement of the best ways to murder large numbers of people and overthrow the government.
Or perhaps your employment of the word “culture” to describe this is a deliberately false and dishonest one, and it’s actually that this is not an issue of “culture,” but one of ethics and morality.
So yes, people who have ethical and moral values have won the ethical war here. DisCon III will be an ethical convention to the best of all the participants’ ability; the cultural equivalent of a convention where ethics and morals are valued, and violent speech inciting violent actions are not valued.
And since you are lamenting this, you don’t seem to value ethics and morality, and don’t want to attend Worldcon.
I’m fine with that. Really. Worldcon doesn’t need attendees who endorse incitation of murder and insurrection and pretend that “ethics” and “culture” are synonymous.
It’s always weird to see people complain about a ‘culture war’ in defense of people proposing mass murder — of their own fellow countrymen even! — in the name of a political purge.
Wouldn’t such an event be, definitionally, a culture war? Or does that only apply to when it gets noticed and mild consequences ensue?
Personally I have no idea who George Will is, and don’t feel any great need to find out.
Nicholas Whyte: And yet you call yourself a baseball fan!
Oh wait, you don’t. Never mind.
Also entirely in the dark on the George Will front.
I remember George Will from The McLaughlin Group…
@Joyce Reynolds-Ward: “I would think that it would be simple enough to freeze the members who had come on board since the November elections and check out their postings. Easy enough to hire someone to do that job and keep them on the job, or so I would think.”
Little problem there: The member who posted three of the messages that Sanford screencapped and shared as evidence joined the Bar in December of 2012… eight years ago. Freezing new members would leave him free to continue his shitposting.
@Madame Hardy: “I’m willing to bet they aren’t plotting the destruction of Muncie, Indiana. Gary? Not improbable.”
I’ll bet my copious loose change that Chattanooga, TN is also on the “safe” list, despite being a metro area of around 400K people.
@Martin Wooster: “for the record, I’m a libertarian, which means I’m just as opposed to violence and the use of force to achieve political goals as you are.”
So, a failed Republican, then? Because that’s who their candidates have been lately.
(I used to be a Libertarian. Even campaigned for Browne in the ’90s. But then I grew up and realized that infrastructure maintenance costs money, and that means taxes, because people don’t chip in to fix buses or install sewers out of the kindness of their hearts. Since I firmly believe the government has no business telling people who they’re allowed to fuck or marry, I became a Democrat instead.)
Where libertarianism has been tried, it has been a complete failure. I have links if you want them, but that’s probably best discussed elsewhere.
HowardB says Perhaps Gina Carrano reacted that way because of all the bullying I mentioned? But she lost her job and the strong female character she played won’t be recast because the part was written specially for her so I suppose the mob has tasted blood and will be happy for a few minutes.
No, you don’t. Gina is wholly and completely responsible for her actions. No illusory mob can be held responsible for what happened to her. It fascinates that y’all on the Right who are into personal responsibility for everyone else suddenly aren’t willing to apply to yourselves and those you think that the so-called non-existent Cancel Culture are attacking.
Same here. Plus, with that common a name, there’s probably dozens of George Wills.
You are projecting. The “leftists”, which seem to cover in this case everybody who is not loudly and vocally in favour of white supremacy, don’t live in a world where the best thing in life is smiting your enemies and gloating over the lamentation of their wives.
Various: Announcing that you don’t recognize the name of an author that you could Google in less than a minute is not an attractive look.
I remember George Will from The McLaughlin Group.
I don’t recall Will on the McLaughlin Group – that was Mort Kondracke, Eleanor Clift, Fred Barnes, and Jack Germond, plus, of course, John McLaughlin until he died. Sometimes Clarence Page or Pat Buchanan.
I think Will was a regular on Meet the Press.
I’m not too on top of things political, but come on, I know who George Will is. He’s a political analyst of a certain kind of intellectual-Rightwing bent, has worked for major newspapers and broadcasters for decades.
Only if you know who this George Will person is, or any of the other guys you mentioned. I think you might be overerestimating their cultural relevance.
Mike Glyer says Various: Announcing that you don’t recognize the name of an author that you could Google in less than a minute is not an attractive look.
If you’re talking about George Will, he’s hardly that obscure as he’s been an influential member of the American conservative movement for many decades now. And yes, he’s to find with Google.
Maybe, but he kept using it as if it was a shared knowledge, and that kinda assumed a) that all who participate in this forum are from the US and/or b) that his cultural hero (whoever he might be) is widely known to the wide public. I think b) is excusable, but a) is not a particularly good look either.
For the record, I am more familiar than the majority of people in the UK with US politics and the name George Will sound only a very very faint bell, mostly connected to Hofstadter.
@ Martin Wooster: So, can I assume that as a “right-wing libertarian” who claims to share at least some of George Will’s ideology, you agree with his assessment of Donald Trump and his Gang of Deplorables (especially those in Congress who spent the last four years sucking up to him)?
George Will on Donald Trump and Co in June 2020.
I mean, I was shocked (as a queer feminist atheist progressive woman who was raised by two Goldwater Republicans but then radicalized by the Kent State Massacre and became one of those English professors dedicated to Destroying Western Civilization TM by teaching Alice Walker and all sorts of other writers who were not Dead White Men, including a whole lot of sff mostly by women) to find myself agreeing with George Will (who famously went after the cultural Marxists in the Modern Languages Association during the 1990s iteration of the Culture War) on anything. But such is the age of Trump.
@Howard B:
Poe’s law means I cannot tell if you are serious or not, but just in case: Washington state does not have a state income tax, nor do the cities (Seattle OR Lynnwood). The sales tax is not likely to go up due to protests. Washingon tax calculator.
@foamy:
Well, as a long-time veteran of the U.S. Culture war (been on the front lines as an English professor specializing in gender and critical race theory, and teaching marginalized literatures since cracks knuckles since 1993–though am now retired!), I can ‘splain the way the white supremacists position themselves in this “culture war.”
They consider their violent actions against the “libtards” and traitors (aka Mike Pence for cripes’ sake) are self-defense against the cultural Marxist/identity politics mobs who are destroying Western Civilization through immigrant rights, women’s rights, civil rights, reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, environmentalism, unions, etc. etc. etc.
Their rhetoric is that the left is forcing the poor innocent deplorables into picking up their guns and taking back their country. That was what was going on in Baen’s Bar, and on Eric Flint’s posts, and has been going on in the U.S. for some time, culminating in the attacks on state houses, on various state health directors (many of them women), and on the U. S. Congress.
I snark as a self-defense mechanism–one of the reasons I retired earlier than planned (last May when I was 64) was because a greater percentage of students in all my classes felt emboldened by Trump to trumpet their racism, sexism, and homophobia. I taught at a small university in rural NE Texas–the SPLC identified twenty white supremacist groups in the region, and I believe it. And as soon as we could after retiring, we left Texas.
@various people: the whole issue of what white supremacists wanting to destroy “cities” and which cities those would be. Along with “urban” this rhetoric is focused on African-Americans. The cities that they want to destroy are those with significant Black populations (see: Trump on Detroit).
@Kurt Busiek In other words, a sealion.
@Mike Glyer
I did, actually. When it was first commented. But that didn’t change my exasperation with a USA reference that was wholly opaque outside of such, used as if totally obvious to all and sundry.
George Will was a really significant conservative political commentator for many years. However, I’m not surprised that either non-Americans, or Americans who are not at least Gen-X at a minimum, have not heard of him or, for non-Americans old enough to have been likely to have heard if them if interested in American politics, he might have faded from memory.
Because while he is still active, at 79, he’s neither so active, nor as broadly prominent as he was in past decades.
And Martin Wooster might not be thrilled at Will’s current view of the Republican party, and Trumpublicans.
@Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
If you give a person as a touchstone, that person has to be from some country, and naming that person doesn’t assume that everyone else reading is from that country. It’s just a point of comparison that some will get and some won’t.
I think you’re reaching here.
@Paul Was George Will on The McLaughlin group? It’s hard to remember all the people who were on that show, but I don’t recall Will. I think my standard Gang of Four was Buchanan or Novak, Jack Germond, Eleanor Clift and then Morton Kondracke, Freddy Barnes or Michael Kinsley. I’m probably combining different periods as my memory is hazy.
(Fun fact: There’s a McLaughlin group in group theory. It predates the TV show.)
Will was on the panel for This Week with David Brinkley which wasn’t quite as spirited as The McLaughlin Group.
I did read Will on baseball. He tended to edge more towards nostalgia than SABR. He and Bob Costas were of similar tone. On the whole, I prefer Roger Angell.
Rev. Bob: Actually, I’m a libertarian member of the Republican Party.
When I said my views were like those of George Will’s, I meant ALL of his views (except he quit the Republicans and I didn’t).
The assumption is the problem.
If I wanted to compare someone to, say, Andrew Neil, who has a bit of an international presence after Ben Shapiro made a bit of a twit of himself on his show and it went viral but is otherwise mostly just a UK guy, I’d give some context to go along with it. If only so people didn’t accidentally find the wrong Andrew Neil during further research! For example: BBC journalist known for pugnacious and rigorous interview style and strongly conservative views. Jonathan Ross I could explain as someone with two public personas: the serious, nerdy, enthusiastic film&general geekery documentary and review host, and the obnoxious&rude loudmouth chat show host.
I know I have to do this because I am a British person on the internet, my culture is not universal, and I want people to understand what I’m saying. USA culture isn’t universal either. Just because my googling fingers work just fine doesn’t mean it isn’t mildly irritating when a USA person forgets that.
With respect to Chuck Gannon and the 36 hours, TW has been an editor at Baen for many years and the Bar has been active for many years. Some things can be unforgiveable, and doing something about them only once you’re caught out isn’t going to be enough regardless how quickly you act.
@Martin Wooster on February 20, 2021 at 4:20 pm
Thing is, you’ve already given me a clear idea of your actual political views when you implied that A. disinviting as GOH someone who foments violent rhetoric in a forum space for which she is responsible B. means that DisConIII will be wholly leftist, which C. makes you sad.
That also gives me a clear idea of how accurate your claim to be “just as opposed to violence and the use of force to achieve political goals as you are” is. (Spoiler: not very.)
By name-dropping George Will and/or labeling yourself as a right-wing libertarian, you’re only telling me which political identities you wish to tar, rightly or wrongly, with the same brush.
Nicole: If you want to know my “actual pollitical views,” you can Google “Martin Morse Wooster” and read tens of thousands of words by me. Then you can look me up on unz.org.
Then you can buy my three books.
Start reading.
@Martin Wooster. I’ve never found “I wouldn’t do what I’m doing” to be a reasonable defence,
Martin Wooster:
So you also think rape victims are conferred privileges. Ok.
HowardB:
I heard you ate a badger for breakfast this morning.
While yes, I could Google and reason that probably Martin was talking about the journalist rather than the golfer, trying to work out the political significance of such a person isn’t at all easy. Is he an Ian Hislop? A Brendan O’Neil? An Andrew Rawnsley?
RE: George Will and the Mclaughlin Group.
it’s possible I misremembered or transferred him there from some other pundit TV show. after all. Google does not support my memory of him on the show. My mistake.
George Will has been writing Washington Post columns for 46 years and used to be glued like Statler and Waldorf to a chair on the Sunday morning talk shows. In recent years he became such a Trump critic you could get a lot of “Even George Will” mileage out of it, as in “Even George Will says Trump and his Congressional enablers must be removed from office.”
To those who don’t know him at all, you lucky bastards.
Will was a regular part of the “Roundtable” on THIS WEEK WITH DAVID BRINKLEY (and continued on in that role when Sam Donaldson replaced Brinkley as host).
As noted above, I confess and admit to misremembering where George Will did his pundit thing.
“You can’t really know my political views relevant to this discussion from my posts on this discussion. Go buy my books and read them, and then you’ll know!”
…is a terrible debate strategy, and also a terrible book sales strategy.
From how @Martin Wooster has represented his political views on this thread, I am disinclined to know them further nor to spend money for the privilege.
Having once read half of a Larry Correia novel. I am surprised he came out with a line as good as that one about having the moral compass of a windsock. I don’t think I will give him another try though.
I read all the Puppy entries on the various Hugo ballots I voted on. (I do that for all the Hugos I vote for. I feel it’s only fair to the authors.)
The best of them were, in my opinion, flat and pedestrian. The worst were … really, really bad. Not a one of them was anything I would have expected to find in the running for a prestigious award.
Given that they said that was the best they had to offer, I haven’t been terribly eager to seek out their other work.
George Will, baseball…
Okay, I’ll bite, what team did he play for? /s
I know him, but only because I’m old. He was a lot more active/known back in the 90ies.
@Ca he didn’t play but a longtime fan, probably fairly called an expert on same. He has at least one book published on it.
(I feel more confident on this than on my McLaughlin Group goof)
@Russell Letson – thanks for the explanation of Ave Books versus Ace books. It stands to reason, but then falls down, laughing.
Hampus: If I were Swedish, I’d be a Moderate.
Dave Kyle says you can’t sit there.
@HowardB: Carano retweeted a grotesquely, unambiguously anti-Semitic cartoon. (Fair warning, clicky folks.)
https://twitter.com/ginacarano/status/1341715805583491072
I thought of this too late for the edit window. A Hey Alma explanation of what’s wrong with that image, and what else Carano did. TW: includes the original “conservatives are treated as badly as Jews” post, which contains Holocaust imagery.