Something in the water?

[graculus]

What's with all the fail this year? Seriously, has someone put something in the water supply that's making folks act like asshats (more than usual)? Midsummer madness of some sort?

The whole SGFail business where Token Lesbian gets to be on the receiving end of a bodyswapping rape scene... (and it just rumbles on - sheafrotherdon is probably your best source for ongoing informantion)

The Mammoth Book of Sci Fi Writers Who Are Awesome Just Like Me (and the rest of you are just jealous!) fail...

John C Wright gets to have a fail all his own...

The latter has certainly lost some sales over this - I had one of his ebooks, which I've now deleted unread and that's his chances of sales from me out of the window. I doubt he cares, but it makes me feel a little bit better after reading his tedious vitriol.

So, can you separate asshattery from artist? Or does knowing something about someone in the public eye make you run away from what they produce? Personally, if I never see another Mel Gibson movie it'll be a thousand years too soon, and the same goes for Tom Cruise - I'm not all that tolerant of either anti-Semites or crazy Scientologists. And then there's Orson Scott Card...

Comments

[graculus.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether I also have more tolerance for people whose now-dodgy views are consistent with their time period, when everyone would have felt the same way?

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

Honestly, that's a fine, zig-zaggy line for me. Some things I can let slide and some things I can't, and sometimes that changes depending what kind of mood I'm in. Because the fact is everyone didn't feel that way. For one thing, the people who were themselves regarded dodgily didn't feel that way - and in even the most vile of time periods, there was a minority (or sometimes a silent majority) who believed in the rights of others.

*coughs* Long story short, my mother's family is Native and I get bristly when people use this excuse about, say, the Little House on the Prairie books, because I know darned well there were plenty of people writing respectfully about the First Nations in that time period (or at least not making things up entirely in order to make Indians look bestial and stupid) - and knowing that it was written a long time ago didn't make it hurt any less to hear my Grade 3 teacher cheerfully read out, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian!"