You know what's almost as bad as homossssssssssssssssssexuals?

[james_davis_nicoll]

English majors! Elitist English majors!

Contains OSC

Comments

[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.

[heron61.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.

Well said, that's exactly what happened with me. In the late 70s, I was a happy teenage reader to Card's fiction in Analog, then I read and enjoyed a couple of his novels (Hot Sleep & A Planet Called Treason). I loved his work, until I read Songmaster. After that, I largely stopped reading his work. I enjoyed the first three Alvin Maker books (the only works of his I read after Songmaster - I tried them because I loved the setting, and the books had considerably less creepy in them than his other work), but then I read his story "Lost Boys" and decided he was way too creepy to ever read anything by again.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

He's basically a Tea Party intelectual.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

.... how would that even work? Teabaggers are antiintellectual - that's one of the two things (the other being racism) that DEFINE the movement.

Saying "Teabagger intellectual" is like saying "non-racist Teabagger" or "non-homophobic NOM member". It's adding a trait that is the opposite of a requirement for membership in that group.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

Saying "teabagger intellectual" is like saying "everything in his imagination of himself exists to support and nurture his self-hatred".

Which is the sad thing about Card, nearly drowned out in the tidal way of loathsome and creepy; there's a capable mind in there. It's been absolutely convinced that it should hate itself for possessing some of its particular fundamental traits, and it works really hard at doing just that.

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

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

[david wilford (from livejournal.com)]

Yeah, Card wanted to privilege religion at Rushdie's expense, but Rushdie's story is every bit as valid as Mohammed's or Smith's is.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Wow, I hadn't run into that particular bit of nastiness.