quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: /me is sad Lovelock will never be finished.
Indeed.
(Edited to add quote, since it was a page rollover.)
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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zlogdanbr
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posted
quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz:
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Unfortunately I'm basically always going to be lost when talking about Brazilian politics. I know only the most rudimentary history, I don't speak Portuguese, in fact I'm not even certain that is the language spoken primarily in Brazil without checking. I don't even have any Brazilian friends or acquaintances, to my knowledge. Card himself probably knows a fair bit, if I'm not mistaken, since he's traveled extensively in Brazil or at least South America?
Have you not read Speaker for the Dead? Lusitania is a Brazillian colony and they speak Portuguese. And yes, Card did his mission there (so the choice of country to make the colonists was not random).
That is true. One of the places OSC has lived was in Ribeirao Preto that just happens to be the city I was born. My parents moved from there back in 1975 but the rest of the family stays there until this date.
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zlogdanbr
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I have supported our "left government" party until 2004. It was back then that I have seen myself illuded, still, I have never thought seriously about their associations and committiment to the Communist cause until recently when I have realized their "plan" was not just a crazy conspiratory theory.
This is not to say I believe the same thing will ever take place in USA, e.g , communist parties taken the power hidden themselves as moderate lefts specially because moderate left is what I have called myself all my life. But I think I will read about Gramsci and peers.
Thanks for all the opinions. As I said I was not trying to be an authority.
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Without calling anyone in particular a committed, entrenched bigot directly, I suppose I should say now that it would be consistent with a committed, entrenched bigot to shift gears and spontaneously find their way, post-primary, to supporting a candidate who has long been asserting that he wants to institute a blanket ban on immigration and travel specifically for people of the islamic faith. Without calling anyone in particular insanely demented for doing so, I imagine it would be 100% appropriate for that consideration to apply should someone suddenly find their footing in the general and say that for the good of the nation, this candidate must be president because the alternative is ew liberals. Bonus points if this is a person who has now had repeated turns of saying, essentially, that as a democrat, they of course desire nothing more than to ensure the democrats lose and nothing the democrats do is good and they are literally trying to destroy the nation on purpose with their incompetence.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I'm pretty sure such a person would have not argued to vote for Trump, but rather to ensure the GOP retains control of Congress for the next four years.
It sounded like our hypothetical possible bigot wasn't voting for either candidate for President.
Posts: 1194 | Registered: Jun 2010
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posted
Well at least this time, it wasn't a *total* segue into a political rant as CA:CW has obvious political considerations for its story. But god I miss the man who had some freaking nuance in his politics. There are a lot of problems with the UN (many of them, it seems to me, built right into its structure), and it is tiresome to hear brutally repressive regimes pretend to any sort of position of moral authority to lecture, particularly since the preexisting bias is often paper thin.
But for pity's sake, the UN simply isn't an anti-American anti-Israeli institution. Are there such elements in it? Undeniably. Do they have disproportionate power? That case could be made (from a citizen of a nation permanently seated on the security council). But that's not all it is. Does Card even believe that, or is it more 'speaking to his audience'?
As for WWII, before anyone starts climbing up on the cross of its righteousness, let's just remember our alliance with the Soviet Union, our willingness to turn a blind eye to fascist accession, and our turning away of Jewish and other refugees. I know Card knows his history better than that. It was a war that had to be fought, but the truth is it should have been fought years earlier and would have been millions of lives cheaper. Also not to forget that we don't tend to regard as icons of righteousness actions which profited the doer enormously.
As for the film itself, well, Tony Stark aside from his decades of weapons manufacturing and negligent sales, created Ultron. In any rational world questions of criminal negligence would be asked.
BB, it's difficult to see how you read that and think he's not saying 'vote for Trump'. He is on record as agreeing with his wife in thunking that a Trump presidency would be better for the Supreme Court, the Constitution, the American military, and by proxy literally the world as a whole. *Then* he starts talking about Congress.
Of course it wasn't a speech so we won't be able to judge for sure if his words were transparently deceptive, such as his 'best option for the country' Trump's remarks, "...some, I'm sure, are good people." where both tone and context make it abundantly clear that's mere political cover.
He's not a Democrat, and that's fine. I don't care if he claims to be anymore, he's lying to at least two people-himself and/or everyone else. And he hasn't explicitly endorsed Donald Trump, he *did* explicitly endorse the GOP and guess who will be their candidate for the presidency in November? Did he ever say 'I can't vote for Trump'? In fact he states that it is 'silliness' to vote for neither.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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I recently had to distance myself from a friend I've known literally half my life...not because of what he did...but because I finally got it...he had ALWAYS given unasked for advice, he -consistently- refused to discuss or admit to negative behavior, for 18 years he treated me like a child.
And I couldn't be mad at him. I knew he had these traits...heck, his advice was quite helpful for the first decade or so.
I just got over it. No yelling or fighting or anything...just kindness & thankfulness for the good times we had.
And here's why I mention it. Card used to be my hero. Used to be. Since his views changed so strongly, he has been pretty consistent.
I'm just kinda over it now. Just like with my friend, I struggled for awhile before I came to accept that you can't change people...you only get to choose if they are in your life or not.
I don't read OSC's articles. I know what to expect.
I'm not sure why you guys still get worked up over it. Card is who Card is. Getting angsty about it doesn't change a thing.
Posts: 6683 | Registered: Jun 2005
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quote:Originally posted by JanitorBlade: I'm pretty sure such a person would have not argued to vote for Trump
Yet. I am not saying that anyone in particular has outright stated it. It would only apply if they did outright argue to vote for trump, or if it becomes wildly obvious that they're clearly implying to vote for trump while trying not to get caught saying it outright.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
I'm amused at Card's image of a Quebec caring about French signs in the rest of Canada. Well, I would be amused if it wasn't appallingly ignorant.
I thought Hollywood was the domain of the Evil Left. So how is it that Civil War clearly comes down against the UN (darling of the Evil Left)? I'm confused.
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The general rule of thumb is this: either Card likes the movie, which means it must have somehow subverted the evil intentions of its leftist creators who are obviously too stupid and ignorant to understand that the writer has tricked them into revealing their own foolishness, or he hated the movie, in which case its leftist creators are to blame for its lunatic adherence to extreme left.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
I would like to submit that thread where I was so fed up with someone that i just started talking about mountain dew. i cherish that moment more than any of my moments, which are numerous
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posted
Since I've contributed literally nothing to this thread while silently judging you all, I going to throw my hat into the ring for veep.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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quote:Originally posted by PSI Teleport: Since I've contributed literally nothing to this thread while silently judging you all, I going to throw my hat into the ring for veep.
You need to have switched your party affiliation to jatraquero within 90 days in order to be on the ticket. Did you switch your party affiliation to jatraquero within 90 days?
Posts: 1194 | Registered: Jun 2010
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quote:I was thrilled to miss Hamilton because a few weeks ago, I heard some horrible noise coming from downstairs, and when I rushed down to see who was getting murdered, my wife was jigging to the first song on the Hamilton CD.
I knew I could never stay in a room, even a large one, where that noise was being produced at top volume, so the quiet hotel room where I sang children's songs to my granddaughter was by far the better bargain for me.
posted
gonna just put it here for no reason at all, now
Anyone who pens up a screed against being tolerant of islamic individuals in the united states in the wake of these attacks, using any variation or theme of the argument that this shows that muslims are not to be trusted and it is foolhardy not to specifically and legally discriminate against them (and there will be many people who do this), will be showing us that they are small-minded, shitty bigots, whose moral weakness and pathetic aspirations towards autocratic religious favoritism would legitimately make our country a terrible place, and they deserve to be called out for being foul idiots that deserve the misery and personal insecurity that comes with watching society pass them by and judge them as ignorant holdbacks whose toxic bigotry should be curtailed and kept from bleeding into future generations.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
For me, the issue is the genuine bewilderment at negative reactions toward bigotry to the LGBQT community, as if it were a subject lively debate with no real-world consequences, such as which direction to orient your loo roll. Rather, the intolerance of intolerance always had murder as one of its motivators.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Originally posted by theamazeeaz: Best old man blog ever.
quote:I was thrilled to miss Hamilton because a few weeks ago, I heard some horrible noise coming from downstairs, and when I rushed down to see who was getting murdered, my wife was jigging to the first song on the Hamilton CD.
I knew I could never stay in a room, even a large one, where that noise was being produced at top volume, so the quiet hotel room where I sang children's songs to my granddaughter was by far the better bargain for me.
I might have actually enjoyed a more thorough critique from him.
What exactly didn't he like about it? Just the fact that SOME of the musical (albeit a large part) is rapping? I don't have a hard time imagining someone not liking it just because of the form it takes (though I think he's still fairly harsh even for that).
And did he listen to any more of it than just the opening number?
Seems like a pretty shallow critique.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Old men make the best music critics. My Granddad always hated the Beatles. Considered them worthless hippies.
Posts: 572 | Registered: Jun 2013
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quote:So he gives his perfunctory recognition that Citizen Kane is the greatest movie, ya-da ya-da. But I don't. Because all I see in Citizen Kane is the relentless vanity of an empty blowhard -- not Kane, but Orson Welles -- whose "artistry" is so heavy-handed I'm not sure but what he thought of moviemaking as blacksmithery, with his message the hammer and his anvil the audience.
I will forgive some ineptness in the art of filmmaking for a story that I care about and believe in. But if I hate every character and every word they say, I walk out and never look back. I neither know nor care how Pulp Fiction ended, because the only happy ending for that movie, after the thirty minutes I saw, would be for every character in it to be smashed and instantly killed by the tank that crunched its way up the freeway in Fast & Furious 6.
I have despised the promos for every Quentin Tarantino film because they all seem to be intellectually pretentious and violently childish. I've given Scorsese a few more chances because of Taxi Driver and because in his rare interviews he's not such a vain and empty-headed donkey as Tarantino.
Gleiberman admires both directors for their artistry -- and boasts a little about being real-life friends with Tarantino. All I can see is that Tarantino and Scorsese make appalling, obvious, ineffective artistic choices.
i take it back osc
you can rant about darkies and liberals and musselmen and them transsex'ls and gayfolk all you want as long as you promise you won't talk about movies again
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
Well as everyone knows, the best way to have a worthwhile opinion about a given piece of media's cultural worth is to watch less than half of a single movie, write it and the creator off entirely, and sneer dismissively at any further production for decades.
Jesus. I mean if the objection were going to be 'too violent and/or sexualized', well, there's a case to be made for that. Obviously their films aren't too much of either of those things for my taste but opinions, right? But 'never watched even half of one, it's stupid and awful, and anyway I've seen interviews (and totally watched all of them, despite my opinions regarding the movies) and geeze the guy is a jackass anyway'.
Oy. I miss the Orson Scott Card who wasn't so thoroughly committed to making a life's work impression of a smug, patronizing, moralistic know-nothing jackass. I miss that guy a lot. But at least I've still got a number of books written by a man who didn't share the opinions of a caricature of a grouchy, homophobic old man angry at the world for not thinking like he does.
PS With care I made sure to couch my harshest criticisms with a veneer of 'I'm not saying *he* is these things, necessarily', even though my meaning is I think pretty clear. Thus is civility and my own worthiness preserved.
PPS I very nearly succumbed to massive irony and posted a similar post without actually reading the review, very confident that it wouldn't have been necessary. As it turns out it didn't change his meaning from the bits quoted above, but hey, contempt provoked a useful response. In scorning Card's choice of deliberately avoiding actually taking in an entire Tarantino or Scorcese (after Taxi) film before writing both off as scumbag directors forever, I identified the impulse in myself and quelled it.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Thanks! It was a useful validation, from myself to myself in the form of an avoided behavior, of the idea that being harshly critical of someone and saying so in direct, rude terms is not always a harmful thing.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_: Ummm...I was just on board for the no hypocrisy part.
Oh, I didn't think you'd be onboard with the rest of it, really. After all to agree with that to any extent would invalidate, say, sweeping generalizations made about the utility of being 'mean', and we can't have that.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:I think that, of the two putrid candidates this year, Trump is the less dangerous. Marginally. But he'll probably appoint Supreme Court justices who have actually read and understood the Constitution, and are willing to abide by it, something that can never be said of Obama or Hillary, or anyone they would nominate to the court.
posted
I will at least agree with OSC that Zach Woods in the opener was one of the funniest parts of the movie. I'm a little concerned that he thought Leslie Jones was the funniest, given that her role is the most stereotypically flat as the loud angry black woman (though I think she managed to rise above it at points).
I'm also conflicted about Hemsworth, who I thought was funny, but has become a bit of a lightning rod over how you view his role. I looked at it as an over the top commentary about the vapid role attractive women tend to play in movies. Also as an inversion of the original where Murray spent the whole movie lusting after Weaver shamelessly. So part of me thinks they wasted him on a really stupid role, and part of me appreciates what they were trying to do (I'm assuming that's what they were trying to do). And a tiny tiny part of me thinks, well, if equality means men AND women can be portrayed as hot morons, I guess that's something, but wouldn't it be better of neither gender was treated like that? I don't know.
But the fact that he didn't recognize Kate McKinnon as the obvious stand out of the movie makes it hard for me to take anything he says seriously.
quote:Here's another difference: When Trump, on a whim, orders something illegal or unconstitutional, the people around him won't obey him. He'll hate it, but mostly they'll keep him from being an anti-constitutional dictator like Obama and Hillary want so badly to be.
Of course he'll fire them, but as long as he remains a Republican he'll keep having that same "problem" with anyone he appoints. The military especially do not obey illegal orders.
This isn't even true as of THE LAST TIME A REPUBLICAN WAS PRESIDENT.
The idea that Republicans will all refuse illegal orders while Dems will whistle on their way to doing whatever the Furher demands is hilarious.
Apparently he's forgotten about Nixon and Watergate and Regan and Iran-Contra. All illegal. All perpetrated by Republicans AND the military.
Contrary to popular belief, everyone in the military isn't an expert at Con Law. Or on the US Code. Or even the UCMJ. By and large in American history, when the president orders something done, just about everyone does it. The idea that all of a sudden that rule would change with Trump in charge defies the entirety of American history, and frankly defies the logic of human history.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Given that Card is familiar with Nixon, and Iran Contra, and all the rest...well, he's just lying, to be honest. That's how Card does federal political commentary these days: hyperbole and lies.
Anyone familiar with Trump would *never* think that he had a reputation for hiring or appointing strong-minded subordinates who would tell him when he was wrong and stick to their guns if he disagreed. Trump doesn't even say that about himself in the books he's hired other people to write about him. On the federal level, at least, Card's politics are riddled with lies. He's a Republican. He supports Republicans all the while claiming to be holding his nose, but sure enough the next time it comes up he supports Republicans. Probably until the time they stop their doomed, already lost fight against gay marriage, at which point he'll stop supporting them in every federal election ever.
He's lying about nominees. He can't even say what he actually means-that he feels the nominees Clinton would appoint would incorrectly interpret the Constitution. He's got to go ridiculously over the top and lie to suggest they haven't even read nor do they care about the constitution, these potential nominees. I can't speak to his local and state politics, but it's been many years since Card became an utter hack on federal political questions. I don't speak of his being a conservative republican on basically every federal issue, though obviously that's not my politics. But goddamn, it's a freaking let down everytime I read another of his columns. The Maps in a Mirror collection, Ender's Game, Worthing Saga, so many others, with the continual theme of 'everybody is a person, even the bad people, no one is a mustache-twirling villain', among many other themes.
What the hell happened to Card, anyway? Is it possible all of the garbage he puts out now was somehow there back when he was writing Hart's Hope or Songmaster? Or if not, what bizarre personal transformation occurs to make someone so very different and so contemptuous of nuance and integrity, when speaking of a political rival, in so little time?
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:This isn't even true as of THE LAST TIME A REPUBLICAN WAS PRESIDENT.
The idea that Republicans will all refuse illegal orders while Dems will whistle on their way to doing whatever the Furher demands is hilarious.
Apparently he's forgotten about Nixon and Watergate and Regan and Iran-Contra. All illegal. All perpetrated by Republicans AND the military.
Contrary to popular belief, everyone in the military isn't an expert at Con Law. Or on the US Code. Or even the UCMJ. By and large in American history, when the president orders something done, just about everyone does it. The idea that all of a sudden that rule would change with Trump in charge defies the entirety of American history, and frankly defies the logic of human history.
we must presume the party that is irresponsible and broken enough to nominate literally donald trump is the one that will be principled and noble and will stop trump, because reasons
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