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Yes, because people are pushing laws stating he cannot practice his religion or marry who he wants. He's so oppressed.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Persecuted is perhaps not a good word choice. There certainly isn't a systemic attempt to shut him or his religion down using the official structures of government. However, I think the repeated insistence that he is not only wrong, but personally evil, cruel, hateful, and deserving of serious bodily, financial, and other harm is unwarranted.
Posts: 428 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:However, I think the repeated insistence that he is not only wrong, but personally evil, cruel, hateful, and deserving of serious bodily, financial, and other harm is unwarranted.
quote:However, I think the repeated insistence that he is not only wrong, but personally evil, cruel, hateful, and deserving of serious bodily, financial, and other harm is unwarranted.
I'd agree. Unwarranted. Also, pretty much non-existent.
You apparently haven't read the Comment sections of the recent news articles about Card. There are plenty of people wishing him all kinds of harm.
Posts: 298 | Registered: Sep 2011
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Why are you reading comments sections. They're the horrible background radiation of humanity.
Death threats in commentary are completely non-noteworthy. Welcome to the internet. There are death threats in comments for Lets Play videos because a guy has a nasally voice, or because he didn't take the Future pole in Quartz Quadrant of Sonic CD. Having a political position will bring you death threats one hundred percent of the time always everywhere always. I receive death threats in my inbox and everything. I don't categorize my opposition based on the fact that I do.
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What would it demonstrate about your logic if I were to post the first google result for "conservatives are homophobic" and note that there are fourteen million results for that query?
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I'm not claiming that it's necessarily unusual to have death/injury threats on the internet. I don't think that their ubiquity is a reason not to 1) say that they're unwarranted (in all circumstances, certainly not just in this one); 2) notice that it's not just the comments sections, but almost every blog post, even sites that tend to be more professional.
Posts: 428 | Registered: Nov 2006
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quote:However, I think the repeated insistence that he is not only wrong, but personally evil, cruel, hateful, and deserving of serious bodily, financial, and other harm is unwarranted.
I'd agree. Unwarranted. Also, pretty much non-existent.
You apparently haven't read the Comment sections of the recent news articles about Card. There are plenty of people wishing him all kinds of harm.
Of course I didn't. As a general rule, I don't read anonymous internet comments. From what I can see, this is absent from any of the people who are going on record or representing legitimate groups that are advocating a boycott.
However, after you said that this was from comments after news stories, I went to several news sites and did read through the top comments and I didn't find what was claimed. Could you point out to me where you are seeing this happen?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by millernumber1: I don't think that their ubiquity is a reason not to 1) say that they're unwarranted (in all circumstances, certainly not just in this one); 2) notice that it's not just the comments sections, but almost every blog post, even sites that tend to be more professional.
As I said, I'm not seeing these comments. Could you link me to where they are?
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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The "Orson Scott Card" and "Ender's Game" tags on tumblr are my biggest exposure.
I think there's also a difference between the way someone who thinks that opposing same-sex marriage is evil and reads "I hate Orson Scott Card and he's such a dick" and the way someone who opposes same-sex marriage would read that kind of remark.
I mean, if you think that the reactions of people who oppose same-sex marriage are automatically worthless, that's certainly your prerogative. But the comments on news stories seem extraordinarily hostile and rude to me, while they struck you as unoffensive and perhaps justified.
Posts: 428 | Registered: Nov 2006
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You didn't say they were rude. You said that they said he was deserving of serious bodily harm. I signed up for Tumblr and looked at the tags that you suggested and didn't find anything of the sort in the first 30 or so entries for each.
Surely if this is really common as you have claimed, you could show me one example of it.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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You may have a point. I went on a backwards trek through the tags, and I think I may have gotten a mistaken impression, since I check the tags several times a day, and thus might have seen a few of the posts so many times I thought there were more of them than there were.
The posts that I was referring primarily to are (warning: links are fairly offensive. I thought about excerpting them here, but then there's a chance that OSC or his family might read them, and that's just mean. I provide them only to give context for what I was talking about earlier.):
posted
Asking a Mormon what he thinks about conservative issues is about like asking a Wolf what he thinks about vegetarianism. Why bother asking?
It doesn't appear that Mr. Card uses his fictional art to promote or oppose any of these "hot topic" views. I have read them all. I can't say that about the liberal writers of television fiction.
When people ask Mr. Card for his opinion, and he actually gives it (fairly courageous) he is then persecuted for his reply. He is not running for political office. Good grief, if people stopped watching TV shows based on the political opinions of the screenwriters, most shows would go unwatched. I don't fully agree with Mr. Card's philosophy about gay marriages, but he is NOT trying to impose it on us, is he?
I think OSC will be categorized with the other great, blacklisted authors. Read the history of S.L Clemens).
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2013
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quote:Originally posted by roadranger: Asking a Mormon what he thinks about conservative issues is about like asking a Wolf what he thinks about vegetarianism. Why bother asking?
It doesn't appear that Mr. Card uses his fictional art to promote or oppose any of these "hot topic" views. I have read them all. I can't say that about the liberal writers of television fiction.
When people ask Mr. Card for his opinion, and he actually gives it (fairly courageous) he is then persecuted for his reply. He is not running for political office. Good grief, if people stopped watching TV shows based on the political opinions of the screenwriters, most shows would go unwatched. I don't fully agree with Mr. Card's philosophy about gay marriages, but he is NOT trying to impose it on us, is he?
I think OSC will be categorized with the other great, blacklisted authors. Read the history of S.L Clemens).
First: not all Mormons are politically conservative, and even if they are they're not animals and don't get a pass on it (or extra credit, mind) just because they're 'doing what comes naturally'.
Second: I do actually think it takes some guts to be open about opinions he knows will be unpopular. Though really that applies now much more than it did ten much less twenty years ago. Opposed to gay marriage in 2003? Not surprising. Common even, and hardly courageous. Opposed in 1993? not even remotely surprising and not at all courageous. And it needs to be said: given his activism over the years it would take a lot of work to begin to walk back his expressed opinion at this point, 2013, when the issue is (finally) beginning to turn decisively against him. So sure, he gets some guts-credit for not shying away from the issue (though strangely he has begun to, now that it's likely tied to a chunk of money) but it's not as though he could easily do so.
Third: he's not running for political office but he's a soldier in a battle of ideas. He has aggressively and even viciously attacked people and ideas in that particular battle in the past. No sense trying to hold him up as being unfairly treated given that.
Fourth: absolutely he's trying to impose something. NOM and all that.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Uh, have you really read his books? Look at some of the Bean ones. One had a speech from a gay dude about getting married and having babies being the only way to be part of the web of life. 90% of Ender in Exile was nagging and lecturing about monogamy and babies. Just about every character had to stop and preach. Someone in Law and Order SVU, for example might spout on about the importance of vaccinating kids or something but another character is at least allowed to disagree. Like how Stabler is like, I am anti-abortion. And Benson is like, well I am pro abortion. And they are partners and such and both can spout their points. Get OSC to write Law and Order SVU (DON'T WRITE LAW AND ORDER SVU! It's one of my favourite shows!) and it would be like this-
Benson-I think I should quit being a cop and get married and have babies because heterosexual marriage is the only way to create a healthy family and as a woman I really should be pumping out the babies.
Stabler-I agree. Why am I a cop when I too could be impregnating my wife some more? I already have 5 kids, but what's several more kids?
Rapist-Why should I run around raping women, when I too could just marry one and have babies with her?
Stabler-Yes, because the meaning of life is having babies, babies, more babies, but only if you are married heterosexuality.
Benson-I agree.
(They all skip off into the sunset)
And no, it's not a defense when you are saying that certain members of the population are playing dress up in their parents clothes. Dude is being a jerk and should never, ever, EVER write law and order SVU.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by roadranger: He was not soliciting his opinion, he was asked for it.
He should be allowed to defend his opinions and character with as much vigor used by his attackers.
His harsh-sounding verbal "attack" was actually a "defense."
He would probably avoid talking to people who are incapable of listening to the "whole answer," but they look like everybody else.
In this particular case? Alright. Please don't try to suggest, though, that this is the usual flow of these sorts of reactions to Card's statements. He offers his opinion wholesale, through columns, books, and his own political activism, frequently. At some point he loses the defense of 'why are you coming to pester me'?
He's certainly allowed to do so. You, however, are criticizing people for being antagonistic and aggressive towards his opinions as though he hasn't done much worse himself-and for longer. Or are we to pretend that over the generation he's been politicking and writing about these matters, he's been the victim?
I've been reading Card for almost twenty years now and have read his work from before that and when it comes to politics over the past decade, he's rarely missed a chance to mingle attack and defense quite vigorously.
It's interesting that you assert people won't listen to his 'whole answer'. Can you provide an example, or is your suggestion to be accepted at face value?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Wow. I've read him for about 21 years. Dang. Longer than I've read Neil Gaiman. And I've read quite a few books, columns, read the Ender series several times. Heck, even when he was doing his whole GAYS ARE BAD spiel I was still reading him.
For a while until he started LECTURING. It's even annoying when people I agree with do it though. Like having every character in a story go, "I believe in treating everyone with equality and respect."
"Well I am the bad guy having exploded everyone, but I believe that we should never smash spiders. Ever. We should instead leave them alone."
"And I'm some random nun that just walked by and I also believe we should not smash spiders, gays should get married, we should never circumcise infants ever, and that everyone who sees Synesthesia should give her chocolate, live spiders and money."
"Yes, I'm some random old man who has seen war and doom and I also agree with all of those things too."
If I do that as a writer, find me and put centipedes in my underwear or force me to look at tryophobia pictures. I hate the writer possessing characters and making them nag the reader about their political and social points of view.
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