Wednesday, June 25th 2014
The Curious Liberal Apologies for Marion Zimmer Bradley
Posted Wed Jun 25 2014 14:03
Jason Cordova writes a guest post on Sarah Hoyt's blog that boils with justifiable outrage over liberal Fantasy authors and fans flocking to support their late High Priestess, Marion Zimmer Bradley, over revelations that she and her boyfriend were serial child abusers. If you're not familiar with the story (and have a strong stomach) I urge you to check out these links and others.
As a boy, I enjoyed some of Zimmer Bradley's works like Mists of Avalon, while others seemed to exist solely to score leftist political points -- while these were often lost on my adolescent self, the sexual politics certainly detracted from the storyline. Knowing what I know now, I'll never be able to pick up one of her works again without feeling dirty.
The publisher in me wonders what her editors and publishers knew at the time. Were they in the dark? Did they have an inkling, but decide to turn a blind eye in order to protect a valuable author? I don't ask in order to judge, but because these questions are much tougher for a publisher than they are for a reader.
As a reader I can choose to tune out any author based on their politics or their character. But as a publisher, sometimes you wonder whether you have a responsibility to the work and to readers to give a work of substance and quality an audience -- even if the author is otherwise odious.
My inclination is to apply a test of character as well as one of quality to authors I want to publish, but is that fair? Seldom is the case as clear cut as Zimmer Bradley's. As a young editor I pursued Stephen Glassas an author before it became known that he was a phony, despite warnings from a couple of smart folks that his stories didn't ring true. If I had succeeded in landing him, would I be complicit in his fabrications?
Here at Liberty Island we do our best to make sure the authors we publish are folks you would be happy to have as next door neighbors, but it seems inevitable that (being human) we'll fail that test at some point. And when that happens people will have the right to question and judge us based on the decisions we made. It's only fair.
Why are all the white people picking on my favorite team?
Posted Tue Jun 24 2014 15:47
Just once, I'd like to turn on the radio, TV, or Facebook first thing in the AM without being told what thoughts are unacceptable that day.
The latest crusade launched by our intellectual betters concerns my beloved Washington Redskins. It turns out that I have been a racist for the past 47 years because I cheer for a team with an "offensive" and "racist" name.
Never mind that the people telling me this are all white (I have nothing against white folks, heck half my family is white and unlike the president I don't resent them for it). Or that it's highly unlikely any of them actually knows an Indian (at least of the American kind). They know better; it has been decided; and my thought crime must be eliminated.
But that is the bizarre age we live in. It's no longer about whether the majority should listen to, and be sensitive to, the sensibilities of minorities - after all, in a democracy that's just good sense and good manners and thankfully that's become a settled question in most circles.
Rather, we see a small but vocal group of cultural elites adopt the supposed causes of minorities as a cudgel to beat submission out of their political adversaries -- and even more to prove their own moral superiority.
Someone please save us from scolds, wannabe commissars, and spoiled brats.
Posted Tue Jun 3 2014 11:23
"When Edith Murray [his black maid] first sat down to table
with us--and we were the first white people who has ever asked her to sit at the
same table with them--she showed fear, then embarrassment. I will not presume to
say what her final feeling was. In any case, what we had to give her was not a
place at our table. What we had to give her was something that belonged to her
by right, but which had been taken from her, and which we were merely giving
back. It was her human dignity. Thus, by insisting on acting as Communists
must, we found ourselves acting as Christians should."
-Whittaker Chambers,
Witness
With those poignant words, Whittaker Chambers proffered the
best explanation of the socialist impulse--what motivates otherwise intelligent
and well-meaning people to fall in lust with radical and dehumanizing ideologies.
It is, simultaneously, Utopian hopefulness for the future coupled with profound
disillusionment with the present. At its root, though, it is something more raw,
more immediate: the human impulse to be repelled by hypocrisy and cruelty.
If you've ever read the autobiographical Witness, you know
that the book is full of profound insights into human nature, both individually
and collectively. If you haven't ... I urge you to pick it up today (as well as
the definitive collection of Chambers' other writings, Ghosts on the Roof).
Alongside his deep pessimism about mankind's future Chambers presents an uplifting
vision of what we can, and should, achieve.
All of this is prelude to pointing attention toward a
project that is worthy of your support. Liberty Island Contributing Editor Mark
Judge is working on a screenplay of Chambers' life. If you're not familiar, it's
a true-life story worthy of an epic spy novel. We can't think of anyone better
than Mark, who has a terrific visual and literary sensibility, to bring this
project to life. Chambers is someone the younger generation should study if
they are to understand the mistakes we made in the past so we don't once again
fall prey to the temptations of radical socialism.
If you're able, please support Mark's Kickstarter campaign
here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1818359616/whittaker-chambers-screenplay
Weighing in on the important PJ Lifestyle debate.
Posted Thu May 8 2014 09:43
In a discussion over at PJ Media Lifestyle people ("Nerds") are debating the oldest question in comics: Marvel or DC?
Like most children of the 70s, I preferred the irreverent, super-cool Marvel heroes over their overly-earnest, one dimensional DC counterparts. Spiderman over Batman...Thor over Superman...Iron Man over Wonder Woman...
But by the time I was into my pre-teens, comics had become an afterthought; I filled my leisure time with more mature pursuits like sports, D&D, music, and Mattel Electronic Football. Until one day a friend introduced this nerdy, 13 year-old Jewish boy to a nerdy, 13 year-old Jewish girl named Kitty Pryde. Like countless other teens I fell in love, and the X-Men forever cemented Gen-X's loyalty to Marvel through the greatest literary device of the late 20th century -- the Hot Nerdy Chick.
Still in wide use today, I might add.
