You know what's almost as bad as homossssssssssssssssssexuals?

[james_davis_nicoll]

English majors! Elitist English majors!

Contains OSC

Comments

[bibliofile]

BOO.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

still shaking his cane at youngsters who write in the present tense, I see.

[firstfrost.livejournal.com]

I do love how he criticizes the present tense as artificial impossible language only appropriate for jokes - in the present tense.

[bwross.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he claims it isn't a "natural narrative choice" except for "jokes and anecdotes", and that "natural spoken English" does use the "true present tense". So it is appropriate for answering interview questions, because that would be speaking, not narrating.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

It's perhaps not unexpected to see that he's a multi-dimensional crank rather than merely being a homophobic one. I'm also deeply amused as his characterization of all atheists being cut from the same confrontational and antagonistic mold as Richard Dawkins - especially in Western Europe (which seems entirely invisible to Card, perhaps he believes this entire region of the world only exists in liberal propaganda), people who rarely think about religion seem far more common.

I followed some of the links, and my one criticism with comments about "what happened to OSC" is that it's pretty darn clear what happened - the seeds of all of the creepy are clearly present even in his writing from the 1970s, it's just that his ideas were far more mainstream then and so he felt far less need to speak out about them. I challenge anyone to read Songmaster (1980) and not conclude that the author has some serious issues regarding both children and homosexuality.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

That book is possibly the creepiest thing I ever read and when I read it, it cast a pall over everything else of his I read. Because once you see it so clearly in that book, it's impossible to ignore in all the others.

One thing I would say though is that his ideas were not mainstream then: they were just not as embattled, Now there are far more people who embrace his wacky, creepy, vile ideas, and also more people who actively oppose them. Then I think people thought it was jus eccentricity rather than politics.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

He's basically a Tea Party intelectual.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

We also should never forget Card's "Salman Rushdie had the fatwa coming" pronouncement.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Am I to understand that I am the only person here who has experienced the self-absorbed crap he describes so vividly from English "teachers"?

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

No. There is in fact a reasonable critique to be made of the various (different) teaching methods out there for high school and college students. But Card doesn't make that critique.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Dear me, but the man is deluded about porn.

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

I must admit that I at first read that as a problem involving English military people. We don't major at UK universities, we read a subject, and retired English majors are known to be reactionary, writing incensed letters to newspapers. (I'm sure disgusted of Tunbridge Wells was a retired major.)

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

English majors are terrible, but captains and colonels are all right. It's a phase they go through, like teething.

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

Well, one does one's best.

[icedrake.livejournal.com]

"There is no human being without religion."
OK, I think we're done here.

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

Yeah, I chortled a bit at that.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

This means that I have an awful lot of imaginary friends.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

Yeah; not everyone's parents were screaming "OH GOD! OH GOD!" at the moment of conception.

[montedavis.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that what he meant was that there is no true human being without religion.

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

Try as I might, I can't think of one instance where an artist has demanded public funding for their work as Card claims. Can anyone else?

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

One of my colleagues is one of the NEA Four (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEA_Four), which I suppose is the sort of thing he's thinking of. He's tilting at a windmill that was torn down years ago, though.

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

" in English, where our real present is present progressive" HUH?

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Our real present is being present progressive.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

So now that gay marriage is legal how's his armed revolution thingie coming along?

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

I'm just wondering whether there's either a Maximum Daily Requirement or a Minimum Safe Exposure Level for OSC/mpr?

--Dave, and GOSH that abbrev. is close to "mpreg"