20 Responses to “My Open Tabs, and, Open Thread (Orson Scott Card is a weenie edition)”

1. Charles Brubaker Writes:
   August 1st, 2008 at 2:56 pm

   To anyone here who was around in the 1970s…do you remember “Kelly & Duke”?

   http://bakertoons.blogspot.com/2008/07/kelly-duke.html
   http://bakertoons.blogspot.com/2008/07/more-kelly-duke.html

   This comment was written by Charles Brubaker.
   Report this comment to the moderators
   
2. Kevin Moore Writes:
   August 1st, 2008 at 3:13 pm

   No matter how sexually attracted a man might be toward other men, or a woman toward other women, and no matter how close the bonds of affection and friendship might be within same-sex couples, there is no act of court or Congress that can make these relationships the same as the coupling between a man and a woman.

   This is a permanent fact of nature.

   Get that? A PERMANENT FACT! Not subject to change EVER! The human species may go extinct, the sun go supernova, and the universe slowly cool down as the stars blink out one by one. But, dammit, the love of opposite-sex couples will always mean more than that of same-sex couples.

   Except in cases of divorce. Or shotgun weddings. Or drunken drive-through marriages in Vegas. Or if human evolution favors reproduction through three or more sexes. Or we meet an alien race that includes more than two sexes. I mean, Card is an SF writer, so he should be able to conceive of such situations.

   All kidding aside, what exactly is the basis of Card’s assertion? Does he have some sixth sense that can plumb the depths of human emotions and thus can accurately gauge the love and commitment levels relative to straight and queer relationships? And, really, why does it matter?

   This comment was written by Kevin Moore.
   Report this comment to the moderators
   
3. Daran Writes:
   August 1st, 2008 at 3:29 pm

   the sun [may] go supernova

   Nope. Not big enough.

   This comment was written by Daran.
   Report this comment to the moderators
   
4. Bjartmarr Writes:
   August 1st, 2008 at 4:09 pm

   All kidding aside, what exactly is the basis of Card’s assertion?

   I’ts called the Book of Mormon.

   And if you view secret golden tablets and magic underpants with skeptecism, then you should probably view his ideas about gay people in much the same way.

   This comment was written by Bjartmarr.
   Report this comment to the moderators
   
5. Molly Writes:
   August 1st, 2008 at 6:11 pm

   Card has always been completely batshit. I’m not sure he’s living in the same dimension as the rest of us

   This comment was written by Molly.
   Report this comment to the moderators
   
6. jennhi Writes:
   August 1st, 2008 at 6:34 pm

   He also didn’t write the first two Ender’s Game books. Theory and proof here:
   http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/5/28/22428/7034

   okay, it only proves he’s an *sshat but well, I’m convinced about the first theory.

   This comment was written by jennhi.
   Report this comment to the moderators
   
7. Ampersand Writes:
   August 1st, 2008 at 7:17 pm

   Jennhi, I’ve read that, but I just don’t buy it at all. The evidence that Card didn’t write his first two novels is incredibly slight, far too slight to sustain that serious an accusation.

   This comment was written by Ampersand.
   Report this comment to the moderators
   
8. Lisa Harney Writes:
   August 1st, 2008 at 7:25 pm

   Angie Zapata’s murderer claims trans panic as a defense.

   This comment was written by Lisa Harney.
   Report this comment to the moderators
   
9. Renee Writes:
   August 1st, 2008 at 7:32 pm

   Well I will take the opportunity to blogwhore and bring up a post I wrote about a blog that publishes the confessions of Johns. It is amazing how honest people will be about their depravity on the internet.
   Katie Couric says, sexism is worse than racism
   and finally a post I wrote regarding the ways in which female sexuality is always constructed as passive and how damaging it is to women.

   This comment was written by Renee.
   Report this comment to the moderators
   
10. Radfem Writes:
    August 1st, 2008 at 9:00 pm

    If you have a blog and use sitemeter, you might want to read this at free episodes:

    Sitemeter Crashing Web Sites Using Internet Explorer on August 1, 2008

    We apologize if you’ve been trying to visit the site this evening and it’s been down.

    We just discovered that the SiteMeter (www.sitemeter.com) tracking code that counts visitors to our site was causing visits from Internet Explorer to crash. We first realized the issue at 8:30pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

    After further investigation, we discovered that SiteMeter is bringing down every site where its counter code is loaded when the visiting browser is Internet Explorer versions 6.0 and 7.0. The error may also affect Internet Explorer 5.5.

    Tens of thousands of publishers use sitemeter to track their content, including thousands of bloggers. The result: sitemeter takes down the internet? not quite.. but its pretty amazing.

    The text of the error is “Internet Explorer cannot open the internet site.”
    How to Fix the IE error on Wordpress, Blogger, and Other Sites

    We removed the Sitemeter tracking code from our site and now the site is loading fine. If you need to remove this from your site, the code you’re looking for is:

    
    

    Status Updates

    Update @ 9:00pm EDT: No Change.

    Update @ 9:30pm EDT: No Change.

    Update @ 10:00pm EDT: No Change.

    Update @ 10:30pm EDT: No Change.

    Update @ 11:00pm EDT: No Change.

    Update @ 11:30pm EDT: No Change.

    Update @ 12:00am EDT: No Change.

    For further status, visit http://www.sitemeter.com in internet explorer. If it works, they’ve probably got it fixed. If you are working from a machine without IE, you can use netrenderer to test the site.

    This comment was written by Radfem.
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
11. Robert Writes:
    August 1st, 2008 at 10:31 pm

    The other problem with the “Bacon wrote Card’s novels!!!” theory is that the tone and style of Ender’s Game matches the tone and style of his other books quite nicely. Not only is the Mystery Hitler Apologist Author uncannily good at masking his secret fascist agenda, s/he’s also an amazing literary mimic. (Or has been doing all of Card’s ouevre in secret.)

    This comment was written by Robert.
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
12. Sara no h. Writes:
    August 1st, 2008 at 10:53 pm

    Eh, I’ve got a quickie about the Death of a Disney Legend, but I’d rather people went and checked out Smitten Kitchen’s blueberry crumb bar recipe, because the pictures are gorgeous, the result is delicious, and blueberries are in season and have I mentioned it’s delicious?

    Food is love, people. Get bakin’.

    This comment was written by Sara no h..
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
13. Doug S. Writes:
    August 2nd, 2008 at 12:26 am

    When I read that Orson Scott Card piece, the first thing I thought of was a line-by-line satire that turned it into a rant against judges who struck down the laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

    Unfortunately, the “leave a comment” box was limited to 1000 characters, so I just wrote a 1000-character comment saying that, by the same reasoning, the Supreme Court was wrong when it issued Brown vs. Board of Education and all the other anti-racism rulings.

    This comment was written by Doug S..
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
14. Angiportus Writes:
    August 2nd, 2008 at 5:15 am

    Is Delta the one that makes the flight attendants be skinny?
    I knew there was a reason I haven’t been on a plane in 30 years.
    Or read anything by Card.

    This comment was written by Angiportus.
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
15. Rebecca Writes:
    August 2nd, 2008 at 9:56 am

    Thanks for the link, Amp — Alas was the first feminist blog I ever found and the first I read regularly, so the pingback gave me lots of warm, fuzzy feelings. :)

    This comment was written by Rebecca.
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
16. Elkins Writes:
    August 3rd, 2008 at 12:52 am

    Probably everyone’s already seen this, but I only stumbled across it today. One more reason why the Stanford Fair Use Project rocks:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJn_jC4FNDo

    This comment was written by Elkins.
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
17. standgale Writes:
    August 3rd, 2008 at 7:18 pm

    Orson Scott Card is my most favourite author of all time - it’s a shame that he’s also such an idiot.

    This comment was written by standgale.
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
18. ms_xeno Writes:
    August 4th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    Know Your Place ?

    My opponent for Congress, Nancy Pelosi is using her month long summer recess from doing nothing positive in Congress to promote her new book: Know Your Power. This book is supposedly a (xenophobic?) screed for “America’s daughters.” Admittedly, Ms. Pelosi broke some kind of invisible “glass ceiling” when she became the first female Speaker of the House, but many of us are wondering if she really knows her “Power?”…

    …Ms. Pelosi also likes to use her “Power” to whine about a laundry list of things that are out of her control that thwart her “Power:” The Senate, The Iraqis, The Blue Dog Democrats (the new enemy du jour), and even incredibly: The Executive Branch which should be under her thumb and under her control and subject to Congressional oversight and accountability.

    A true leader knows his/her “Power” and would vigorously use it to improve the conditions of working class and other oppressed people and not to rigorously defend the establishment status quo… — Cindy Sheehan, *AfterDowning Street, 8/4/08

    This comment was written by ms_xeno.
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
19. nobody.really Writes:
    August 5th, 2008 at 9:22 am

    More evidence that facially neutral rules can create, reflect and perpetuate hidden biases.

    This comment was written by nobody.really.
    Report this comment to the moderators
    
20. elf_man Writes:
    August 7th, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    Seems like Ender is blameless, but as a carefully cultivated tool; you don’t blame the gun. Instead, you have a bunch of people engaging in all kinds of abuse “for his own good”, but really for their own; not just to save the planet, but also to provide a scapegoat. Ender’s feelings of guilt serve two purposes: they provide a front to make him seem less culpable and morally upright, and they make him dependent on his keepers for absolution. They’ve constructed a moral steel cage around Ender’s mind; he blames himself and continues to feel guilty (the unofficial morality of the book) but is through carefully designed training to continue to engage in such acts, the only way out of which is to force down feelings of guilt and accept his keepers’ assertions that he is blameless. And in that constant emotional battle, he is continually vulnerable to abuse, a constant victim in need of release.
    Of course, Card’s use of the “I came to bring a sword” passage shows just how screwed up his personal morality really is, and serves as a clear illustration of the contradictions inherent in biblical morality. Card is preaching the same kind of morality used to justify genocide and terrorism anywhere.

    This comment was written by elf_man.
    Report this comment to the moderators
    

Leave a Reply

If you have questions about the moderation policies here, please read this post. Short version: treat other posters with respect.

If your submitted comment fails to appear, without even an error or "waiting for moderation" message, then our spam-blocking software may have blocked your comment. Please contact the moderators immediately so we can rescue your comment. If this happens repeatedly, you might visit Akismet's comment form to tell them they're falsely identifying you as a spammer.