james_davis_nicoll | The Great Heinlein Juveniles Plus The Other Two Reread 10: Time for the Stars

Was it I Will Fear No Evil where the protagonist stopped the action to complain about restaurant chairs, and explain to the reader that if you kicked up a fuss about every single thing people would see how right you were? I read it as a young teen, and that, and not any of the squirmy sex stuff, was the end for Heinlein and me. Even at the time I could tell that this was somebody who thought that his food tasted funny without the familiar tang of waiter spittle.

Edited 2014-10-17 21:49 (UTC)

I wonder how much of that is from Admiral King? Browbeat a subordinate until they do the job perfectly.

On the other hand, when Heinlein travelled, allegedly he learned the names of all the waitstaff and porters and so forth, and personally thanked them for their work.

His ideal was to be a bigger asshole than he ever permitted himself to be? I'm not sure if that says good or bad things about him.

On the other hand he did that in South Africa - treating the porters, etc. more politely than they usually are, by SA standards, is not all that great...

Except that his advice on travelling to Russia is essentially "Browbeat and insult everybody you meet".

With the exception, IIRC, of the little old ladies who ran the hotel buffets.

explain to the reader that if you kicked up a fuss about every single thing people would see how right you were?

Ooh, is that why the interet's unofficial motto is "Home of the Guys Who Go Off Like Car Alarms Until You Finally Stop Arguing With Them and They Can Declare Default Victory"?

A certain something about your comment makes me think that this is as good a time as any to say that, as a longtime reader of Mamatas' and a general admirer of his perception and rhetorical skill, it makes me sad when he gets like that. Watching him grind grimly on towards the last word, in a direction orthagonal to the larger conversation, is neither fun nor edifying, and in my observation it's worse when he knows he's on shaky ground. It was sloppy of him not to read the whole conversation before commenting, and his original comment on ello may have been satirical, but it wasn't particularly Swiftian.

He was wrong in more than one sense to call you stupid, which you certainly aren't. To be fair, you made a mistake about what he was referring to with the "Swiftian" thing, but the way he seized on it was closely argued, powerfully expressed, and ugly and stupid. I almost said as much at the time, but by the time I got back to the conversation you seemed to have taken it in stride and the thread had wound down. Perhaps I should have, sorry.

Maybe Nick will show up to explain that i'm wrong, and I can tell him this to his face.

I was very disappointed by his further explanation on ask.fm.

Did I "out" RH? Nope. I reported on her outing. Liz Williams had already been sending emails, as a way to warn recipients of the "shit-storm brewing" (that is, the one she was helping to brew) and once any such email got anywhere, it got everywhere.
Of course, everyone already *knew* except for the willfully ignorant. (1) (I don't mean that it was obvious; I mean that enough people knew as-a-fact from the beginning that eventually everyone found out. (2) We played the I-dunno game because it was fun to do so, and RH seemed to wish us to, as she played it with us.) This is also important. If there's a lesson it is this; never be so self-righteous that you are ever the subject of gossip but never the recipient of gossip. (3) You want to be approachable enough that people will tell you things, even if sometimes they only tell you because they know you'll tell others, including original sources.

1. "Liz Smith was telling people in her circle" did not mean "everybody knew", unless "everybody" is restricted to mean "people in publishing who knew Liz."
2. Where "everyone" is a tiny subset of what most people would call "everyone".
3. It's really her fault.

This is just sloppy reasoning, used to obscure an unpopular act.

e: Very belated HTML fix

Edited 2014-10-19 05:13 (UTC)

I guess he links to the ask.fm things on twitter, which I'm not on. I didn't see this until after the fact. I agree that it's disappointing, and weak sauce.

Whelp, now that you brought up Nick, no one will believe me, but I swear I was thinking specifically of film critic Simon Abrams and his behavior on Twitter when I said what I did.

Nick's rhetorical skill is highly overrated, by the way. He calls everyone who disagrees with him stupid, and no one takes his assessment of their intellect seriously. Further, he flatly lies, while calling others liars. It's all juvenile Usenet trolling. Take this part of that lengthy thread, where he clearly tells an anon that they have gone back and "deleted and reposted" their anonymous comment. Two people tell him that's impossible, at which point he claims he never told the anon she "deleted and reposted" her comment. He then goes on to imply James edited the comment for the anon.

It's ridiculous, unfair to everyone especially James, who was already getting stuff he didn't deserve on Twitter about the IP addresses of the anons. Nick does that kind of thing all the time. You don't notice it, I guess.

As long as people like you praise his "skill" and say "well, to be fair, you made a mistake" as some kind of rhetorical out whereby the person being intimidated, harassed, trolled and called names kinda-sorta deserves it on some level, he's happy. As long as people who never get on his bad side let the women Nick attacks -- and yes, start paying attention to gender ratios, and how often Nick threatens screencapping or brings up four-year-old tweets and six-year-old LiveJournal comments to women, and how often he does it to men -- do all the objecting while everyone else sits back and says nothing, Nick's happy.

And as we all know, Nick's happiness is of utmost importance.

Of course you didn't deserve it on any level. I wasn't giving Nick a rhetorical out. I was pointing out the rhetorical lever he used to be an ass. I've never noticed what you say about gender ratios, I will start paying attention.

The thing is, this is how Nick does it: he was full of shit in the subthread you point out, but in the post you link to, he doesn't say, clearly or otherwise, that the anon went back and deleted and reposted their comment. In a parent comment to that one, he said he took a screenshot "on the off-chance you quickly edited," which is impossible except through a chain of hugely unlikely circumstances. Then he saved his ass with a bunch of technical what-the-words-actually-mean fancy footwork. This is, as I say, bullshit, and it's the kind he pulls when he's on shaky ground. And you're right that it was unfair to James, as well as to you. But he was actually telling the technical truth when he said he never told the anon that. He's very careful about that kind of thing, which is why he gets away with it. It is a certain kind of rhetorical skill, although not an admirable one. I do notice it. That's why I brought it up.

Next time I'll address this to Nick in the moment. As I say, I'm sorry I didn't. At the time I didn't want even more of the conversation to be about him, but in retrospect I was also wimping out.

Huh. No, actually, he very clearly says that anonymous comments can be deleted and reposted as long as the editing is done before someone has replied to them. He continues, to the same anon: "Not only are you likely to do it, you actually have done it."

If you want to think the use of the pronoun "it" makes things unclear and that, technically, Nick is completely right because he changed the meaning of "it" after the fact, thus saving his ass, that's your prerogative.

A final note: mme_hardy makes good points, and I'd just like to note that, in conjunction with her comments, all this screencapping and saving of links of things women have said was being done by the same guy who linked Sriduangkaew with her troll personae. And he admitted in his own words that he'd always told her to come out, and when she didn't, he took it upon himself to decide the situation was "getting dangerous" so he "stepped in" with his ello post. Then he went to great and sloppy lengths, as mme_hardy pointed out, to justify his actions as not outing.

Just a couple things to think about.

I'm not saying Nick is "completely right". He does say that posts can be deleted and reposted, that's the unlikely chain of events I mentioned. The exchange after that is:

Anon: Though nice touch, trying to dismiss my credibility by implying that I'm likely to want to hide evidence, or change my words.

Nick: Not only are you likely to do it, you actually have done it, with your "stupid" schtick.

I don't think that's unclear, "it" refers to the back-and-forth about who said what was stupid, above that. He is implying that anon is capable of editing a reply if they could, which is a dick move, and he doesn't acknowledge that this would require James' extremely unlikely collusion, which is a dicker move, but he did not, technically, say that they did. Again, that's how he gets away with it, and that's why I think it's worth pointing out.

LOL

Nah, man, Nick gets away with it because of his years and years of personal branding, his choice of targets, plus a host of reasons within the fandom that always come up during every kerfuffle, fail and scandal.

The Great Heinlein Juveniles Plus The Other Two Reread 10: Time for the Stars

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