I am hoping, of course, that future shows will also portray sadomasochism and bondage in a positive light -- we are all looking forward to FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO GOR, I hope.Well, someone hasn't seen Flesh Gordon.
Why is this one vice singled out for awe and reverence and glorification? Why is it that the lack of self control in sexual matters, where self control is paramount, is held to be immaculate and beyond reproach, whereas the lack of self-control when it comes to something trivial smoking tobacco is scorned?... sure as hell does. It was blink-worthy. It sounds as if he thinks that everyone is just on fire with the urge to get their gay on, and must bravely abstain. As if every placid, pipe-carrying Ward Cleaver, after a couple of wine coolers, is going to wolf out, howl once, then tear their cardigans in half to reveal a leather harness and begin humping the leg of the hairiest thing within reach. That is what repression looks like, the projection of your own urges and disgust with them onto everyone else.
A little earlier, because someone suggested that unconscious anti-Semitism might be the reason I was having trouble getting Campbell to buy my stories, I devised the pseudonym 'Calvin M. Knox' as the most Protestant name I could think of, the 'M', however, standing for Moses. Campbell bought the first 'Knox' story he saw. However, he also bought a Silverberg-byline story a week or two later, and when I told him, eventually, the rumours of his anti-Semitism that had led me to invent the pseudonym, he said, 'Have you ever noticed in my magazine the stories of a certain Isaac Asimov?'posted by The Tensor at 3:43 PM on August 13, 2009 [2 favorites]
"Campbell liked stories in which human beings proved themselves superior to other intelligences, even when those others were further advanced technologically. It pleased him to have human being shown to possess a unique spirit of daring, or a sense of humor, or a ruthless ability to kill when necessary, that always brought them victory over other intelligences, even against odds.He goes on to say that the Foundation universe exists because he didn't want to have to adopt Campbell's views (which he found "repugnant") to get a sale, so he sidestepped the issue entirely by writing a human-only galaxy.
I sometimes got the uncomfortable notion, however, that this attitude reflected Campbell's feelings on the smaller, Earth scale. He seemed to me to accept the natural superiority of Americans over non-Americans, and he seemed automatically to assume the picture of an American as one who was of northwest European origin.
I cannot say Campbell was racist in any evil sense of the term. I cannot recall any act of his that could be construed as unkind, and certainly he never, not once, made me feel uncomfortable over the fact that I was Jewish. Nevertheless, he did seem to take for granted, somehow, the stereotype of the Nordic white as the true representative of Man the Explorer, Man the Darer, Man the Victor.
I argued with him strenuously on the subject, or as violently as I dared, and in the years to come our relationship was to be as nearly strained as it could be (considering our mutual affection, and all that I owed him) over the civil rights issue. I was on the liberal side of the issue, he on the conservative, and our minds never met on that subject."
...Read on, I think it's worth it.
You claim to want a rational answer, but your alarmist hysteria no more invites a rational response than some medieval anti-semite's froth-mouthed demand to know how good Christians can suffer the "Christ-killers" plotting in their midst, working wickedly in the shadows to exert their evil influence. You complain that you won't get a rational answer but you sound like one whose antipathy clouds all judgement, one whose revulsion is so extreme, their disgust so bound to fear and hate, that it manifests in outright delusion, in conspiracy theories of covert and overt ideological Powers-That-Be, Evil Forces aligned against all that is good and decent. Paranoid fantasies born of prejudice do not invite a rational response. How can society have come to this, you cry, this depth of depravity, this sink of iniquity, that the head of the SyFy Channel cowers before the Elders of Sodom? How can others not see the headlong plunge into filth that will result from this the headfirst dive into acceptance of incest, paedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, fornication, wantonness, sin, sin, SIN?!
You seem incapable of conceiving that Stern could hold to a sincere ethical judgement that "homosex" is acceptable and that the absenting of it from television is a product of prejudice to be countered. You seem incapable of imagining that anyone could hold to this notion for any other reason than that they are a) wicked, b) gullible, or c) afraid to stand their ground. Those of us who hold exactly that opinion are more inclined, to be honest, to the fourth option: that you are d) nutso.
This is not an accusation that you are nutso, mind, merely an explanation of how you come across, offered as basic advice in how to perform the amazing feat of understanding how other people think differently than you do. If you genuinely want to understand how society has come to this, how we can all hold to ethical opinions you consider utterly invalid, then you need to start by accepting that we do indeed hold to those ethical opinions. Honestly, you really want to try and understand why the following is just crazy talk to most of us:
John Wright said...And he seems to have deleted the offending post from his LJ
"Cut the crap."
Good suggestion. I will follow it. If I take down the offending post, however, I will be criticized for that as well.
Friend, I am not as irrational as you paint me. I will think about what you wrote.
John C. Wright
7:34 PM
More Diversity and More Perversity in the Future!You stay classy, Mr. Wright!
The Sci-Fi Channel (I cannot bring myself to type the phonetic/stupitastic new version of their name) has recoiled in craven fear and trembling when lectured by homosex activists, who gave the SF channel an "F" rating on their political correctness. Alas, the thoughtcrime! Not enough perverts on TV! The children have to be indoctrinated!
I kid you not. Here is the article: http://www.seattlepi.com/tvguide/408807_tvgif28.html
The head of Sci-Fi channel has contritely promised to include more homosex in future shows, and to do it nonchalantly, just as if this abomination is normal and natural and worthy of no comment. The shows will not actually come out and say sexual perversion has no bad side effects. They won't actually lie and tell you homosex won't destroy your life. But they will imply the lie. They will play along. It's only polite! It's so tolerant!
I am hoping, of course, that future shows will also portray sadomasochism and bondage in a positive light — we are all looking forward to FLASH GORDON'S TRIP TO GOR, I hope. Love affairs with corpses, small children, and farm animals will also be on display in a natural nonchalant fashion in the new raft of progressive shows, titles such as I DREAM OF STINKY, PEDERASTY JUNCTION, and OLD MACDONALD HAD A SHEEP — but no Mormons, whose moral standing we all abhor. The only good thing about Mormons, as we all know, is their polygamy. That we can approve of. Anything that offends the Patriarchy, we like. Evil is our good.
On a less sarcastic but still supercilious note: I'd like someone, anyone, to explain to me how my culture reached a position where a public entertainment company can be criticized for failing to contribute to the moral decay of the land, and that the criticism would be taken seriously, and the company would cringe and promise to do better.
Someone explain to me by what series of events persons with serious sexual-psychological malfunctions would somehow be awarded the status of moral arbiters, something like priests and confessors and sages — except that the passkey to being a guardian of public conscience in our age is the absence of moral value, not the presence.
Come, my liberal leftist comrades! You openly boast of your superior intellectual power and more profound moral sobriety than we mere working Joes of flyover country (including working Joes like me with a doctorate in law who works in DC). You have anointed yourselves our superiors: that means you are smart enough to explain it. By what logic is the sole and single standard of virtue in your world view an absolute devotion to vice? By what logic is the sole and single sin the sin of having standards of virtue, what you call being intolerant?
Why are you willing to tolerate sexual perversion but not racism? In a world with no standards, what makes a malfunction of love higher on your standard than a malfunction of hate? Is an irrational lust and longing to mimic the mating act with a sex with which one cannot mate, at its root, any more or less disconnected to reality than an irrational fear and hatred of a Negro? How do we know race-hate is not genetic? Look at how scorned and put-upon racists are! Can we spare them no cheap Leftist pity? Why don't we simply call racism an alternate anti-ethnic orientation, similar to hetero-toleration, but different?
I know I will hear no rational argument to defend the Leftist position. They do not deal with rational answers. They have one and only one weapon in their arsenal: ad hominem. They will not answer, but they will sneer. I suppose a person who gave a tinker's damn about peer pressure or public opinion would fear to be sneered upon by these professional sneerers. For those professional sneerers ready to ignore my words and to condemn me as a "homophobe" let me just ask, why Oh why is it that no one has ever condemned me (or anyone of mine) as a "sunderophobe" — even though I condemn divorce more severly than I condemn sodomy, or as an "adulterophobe" — since I don't approve of cheating on your wife either; or as a "pseudophobe" — since I don't approve of President Clinton.
Why is this one vice singled out for awe and reverence and glorification? Why is it that the lack of self control in sexual matters, where self control is paramount, is held to be immaculate and beyond reproach, whereas the lack of self-control when it comes to something trivial smoking tobacco is scorned?
No answer? Well, then. Back to sarcasm:
In other news, Timothy Leary will be giving Sci-Fi an "F" grade for failing to portray drug abuse positively. Castro and Pol Pot will be giving Sci-Fi an "F" grade for their show BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, which portrays the mass slaughter of innocent human beings in a negative light. Dean Martin will be giving Sci-Fi an "F" for failing to portray drunkenness as life-affirming. Don Juan will be giving Sci-Fi an "F" grade for failing to have a show that portrays serial adultery in a positive light — but Don gives BATTLESTAR GALACTICA an "A" for sleeping with robots. Uncle Screwtape reminds me the any form of sex that is sterile and selfish wins the approval of the Lowerarchy.
UPDATE! A reader reminds me that on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA sex with robots is fertile after all: indeed, the whole point of the latter story arc was to produce a human-cylon hybrid. I do not know if this portrayal of the sex act was sufficiently selfish and sterile to please Don Juan — we will see what grade he gives the Sci-Fi channel in the future. What the Lowerarchy wants is to make fornication seem normal and marriage seem abnormal.
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"My disagreements with Orson's politics are hardly limited to his views on gay marriage," David told Kotaku in an e-mailed statement. "We are at opposite ends of the political spectrum on pretty much everything. Why, then, did I agree to work on the game? Because among my most cherished beliefs is that, while I disagree with everything you have to say, I will defend to the death your right to say it. [Comic book creator] John Byrne has said no end of vicious things directed at me personally; I still buy his comic books because I like his work. I never, EVER, allow someone's stated opinions to impact on whether I support his work so long as those opinions don't transform the work itself into something that I have no desire to support.on a side note, or back to the regular note maybe, thanks to this thread I finally went out and picked up Dhalgren, just 10 minutes ago. I had never heard of Delaney until someone had mentioned him on metafilter. the fault is entirely mine, as I've never been very good at figuring what on the store shelves was stuff I'd like and what wasn't. either way, I'm really excited to get started reading this.
"Shadow Complex wasn't a huge paying gig for me but I took it because I thought the developers were a nice couple of kids, and I found the story of a reluctant warrior being forced to find something worth fighting for to be a compelling narrative. By the same token, all the money in the world could not have gotten me to be involved if the story was something I personally found repellent."
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posted by Afroblanco at 7:46 AM on August 13, 2009 [3 favorites]