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I’ve tried to write about this a couple of times since I heard the story from Michael Bérubé, but I couldn’t do it justice because it makes my brain go all woozly. Patrick couldn’t deal with it either. To heck with artful journalism. Here’s the flat telling:
Dafydd ab Hugh, sometimes science fiction writer, has become a right-wing pundit.
No, really. They think he’s brilliant. They think he knows what he’s talking about. He subs for Michelle Malkin.
(We will now pause to give veterans of the old GEnie SFRT time to quit screaming, catch their breath, and wipe off their screens.)
(Patrick, peering over my shoulder, reminds me that Dafydd is still remembered by the veterans of several online SF discussion venues for having repeatedly trashed the discourse. When Dafydd gets into an argument, which he almost always does, his sheer personal obnoxiousness can be so prodigious that, years later, people still talk about it with awe.)
Moving on to the specific occasion of this post:
Dafydd’s quickly gotten the hang of his new gig. He was being truthless and abusive just yesterday at Big Lizards, doing freestyle smears of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen—both of whom are far better writers and political analysts than he is—on utterly specious grounds:
Let’s start with Patterico, since his case is the clearest—and the least important in the grand scheme of things, relating only to the execrable Amanda Marcott of Pandagon and Melissa McEwen of Shakespeare’s Sister—neither of whom contributes much if anything to the national discourse.This is not a line Dafydd should pursue. After all, when Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen landed paying gigs doing blogging for the Edwards campaign, everyone who heard the news and was already acquainted with them did not immediately phone half-a-dozen friends and scream, “YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BELIEVE THIS!” and “OH MY GOD THEY THINK HE’S SMART!”
Patterico is appalled that apparently, both Marcott and McEwen actually resigned because they received (they say) “threats” and “ugly e-mails and comments.” I use the word “apparently” accurately, because in fact, we have no evidence whatsoever that they really received anything, or at least not the e-mails seemingly quoted at Firedoglake.I have many times seen Dafydd refer to having received communications in the mail, some of which were harder to believe in than the hate mail that’s lately been aimed at Marcotte and McEwen. I don’t recall him even once starting out from the assumption that he was required to physically prove that he’d received the mail.
I certainly don’t recall him—or anyone else, ever—arguing the principle that if someone says they’ve received mail, but they don’t immediately provide convincing externally certified proof that said mail was received, you’re entitled to call them a liar and launch into general smears of their judgement and character.
I guess it was all he could think of at the time. That’s the trouble with going pro: you have to keep cranking the stuff out, even when you’re short on inspiration.
What I do recall, quite clearly, is that Dafydd was notorious for making sweeping unsourced claims, and arguing at vast length—but almost never backing down—when the other people present took his assertions apart point by point, documenting their own arguments every step of the way. His usual response was to make more sweeping unsourced claims, and get hurt, angry, petulant, and loud when others were less than polite about them. It was one of the main ways he trashed conversations. Who knew it would turn out to be a saleable skill?
Lefties and liberals make almost a religious fetish out of claiming to have received death threats.Malarkey. Dafydd hung out online with lefties and liberals for years, and nobody was slinging death threats. Well, okay, there was that one memorable incident where someone made one implicitly, and Yog Sysop actually lost his temper; but that was only a right-left thing if foreign nationals and royalists count. Outside the online SF forums, the main source of talk about death threats is the right-wing media, usually because they’re making them. This is sometimes discussed by leftists, almost all of whom illustrate their remarks by linking to specific quotations that were put up online by the people who made the threats.
But let’s take a more general look at Dafydd’s assertion. If leftists and liberals are constantly making a big deal about death threats, shouldn’t the subject show up on Google Trends? It does: one vertical spike, in April 2004, which is almost certainly the story about 9-11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick received death threats at a time when she was under attack by the right-wing media.
Purely by chance, while I was Googling on April 2004 I found this.
Onward.
They use the claim as a truncheon to attack anyone who disputes any portion of what they argue: ‘here’s some of the mail I recieved from the Rethuglican hate machine — now whose side are you on?’Fibber.
People who’ve argued with Dafydd have frequently been far more diligent, responsible, and hygienic than he has. I don’t recall a single one of them using death threats as an excuse.
Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen got hit with truckloads of vicious hatemail after Bill Donohue and the Catholic League pretended to be shocked and offended by Marcotte’s language (yeah, right), and revved up the troops. It was a political hit; nothing to do with Christianity. The result? Both of them have quit their jobs with the Edwards campaign—and they and other bloggers will hesitate before speaking so freely again.
I’ve been the recipient of that kind of abuse, though not in that quantity. So has Patrick. You know the nursery rhyme about sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? Not true. It does real damage. Has a PTSD feel to it. Joy is the engine of our spirits, and it takes it all away. You get depressed, and hurt all over. Your own words fail you. The damage can last for years.
That’s the intended effect. It’s meant to hurt—to be so nauseating and dispiriting that the person who’s the target shuts down and stops communicating. It’s not just a matter of triumphing (albeit by grossly unfair means) in the argument of the moment. The underlying message is: We don’t care about what’s right, or fair, or accurate. We care about winning. If you stand against us, you will lose, and we will hurt you as much as we can for having fought us. We will wreck your career, and hurt the people around you and the things you care for. If you cry out, we will hurt you for that, too.
To quote the invaluable Digby:
Now they’ve got Bill “anal sex” Donohue working the NY Times like it’s a cheap whore, braying in faux outrage that he’s “offended” by something that Marcotte wrote in the past about Catholicism. Please. This game has gone on long enough.If lying to us has become an industrial process, so has verbal bullying and abuse. That’s the field in which Dafydd is now writing. There’s no question that Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwen took a bad hit from Donohue and his fake-Christian minions. They said so when they quit the Edwards campaign. Big Lizards/Dafydd ab Hugh is going after them because they said they got hurt:Republicans write books calling Democrats traitors and calling for the internment of all American Muslims. They have hate radio shows with listeners in the millions, in which they call liberals cockroaches and compare them to terrorists and child molesters. These same radio show hosts are invited to the white house for strategy sessions and are feted by the conservative press as if they are heroes.
The idea, dim as it is, is to contrast the bile the Left spews out with the even more wretched and revolting vile supposedly spewed out by their enemies on the Right,I’m about as bilious right now as anything Dafydd runs into, and I’m being nicer to him than he was to Marcotte and McEwen. His column is, in fact, wretched, revolting, and vile.
I didn’t use to think he was this bad. I was willing to believe he was such an inept thinker and debater that his wholesale slaughter of formerly interesting conversations was unintentional, and his angry splutterings the habitual ill-judged reaction of a man who was in over his head. I don’t recall Dafydd being this deliberately malign. I think it’s a learned thing he’s picked up from the context in which he now operates. I don’t think he understands that over the long run it’s going to cost him his soul. He really is kind of hapless.
Never heard of him.
His wikipedia article must be out of date,
it leaves one with the idea of "mostly harmless".
Of course, the Guide says that about Earth, too.
Back-when, he was only dangerous to ongoing conversations. It's distressing to see him making such a splash in such bad company.
My experience of Daffydd is that he's moderately intelligent. And I'm sad to see him going this direction. It's below him.
He's the reason I stopped vising the sff.net newsgroups. Single handedly turned a great group of intelligent posters into a never-ending, tedious series of flamewars, and never once contributed anything useful. He's a troll's troll. It's entirely fitting that he's finally found a place where he belongs.
Really, I never thought about it before, but Ann Coulter is truly an Internet Troll operating in a different medium.
Tom, I've been told his IQ's above room temperature, but I'm mostly familiar with him from online arguments, where it's not evident.
I have a specific recollection of Dafydd's immediate response to the Oklahoma City bombing: he was sure that it was a plot by radical Muslims.
Water, among other things, finds its own level.
he was only dangerous to ongoing conversations.
Hm. Folks say that about me sometimes, so I can't ding him for that. (plus I've never directly experienced it.) That picture of him in the link though, shows him wearing a pro-Reagan tshirt (-10), standing in front of some war porn books he wrote(-1). That's -11 on my tally so far.
(Patrick, peering over my shoulder, reminds me that Dafydd is still remembered by the veterans of several online SF discussion venues for having repeatedly trashed the discourse. When Dafydd gets into an argument, which he almost always does, his sheer personal obnoxiousness can be so prodigious that, years later, people still talk about it with awe.)
Yeah, I'll back you up on that.
I mean, he wasn't in the same league with J______, G________, or S_______, but, in his own way, he had a good, honest, naive approach to being a boor that was, at a minimum, heartfelt; and could on occasion sweep one away with the purity of its audacious cluelessness.
I think the thing that kept Dafydd from getting this bad back in the GEnie days was the presence of those thoughtful and rhetorically-gifted liberals and moderates (and conservatives) who kept calling him on his bullshit. Without the (reality-based) reality-check available in arguing in a forum where you can at least get some solid opposing feedback, your arguments are going to get more sloppy and stupid.
Uh, Teresa, just to be certain: are you certain he's gone? (I mean no just further around the bend; fully into RWPtry and out of skiffy.)
Ah, Dafydd. To think that we knew him when.
And we weren't all that impressed by him back in those days, either.
By the way, I think you summed it up with this:
"They think he knows what he’s talking about. He subs for Michelle Malkin."
I suspect he is as sharp and journalistically competent as Ms. M.
(As a final note, I went to a dinner with Dafydd, Tom Dupree, and several others a ways back [when Tom was still editing sf at Bantam]. After the dinner, Tom commented, more of less, than Dafydd "doesn't listen." This appears to be a skill that will serve him well.)
He's criticizing Patterico for being too darn reasonable...
My god, they're doing "Good Gop-Bad Gop!"
OK, he's got a graphic on the right sidebar of his site titled "US War Dead Comparison" with a bar graph showing WW2 at half a million and Iraq at three thousand. I assume the implication is we can't complain about Iraq until there are half a million american dead. Playing number games with real human lives: -10,000.
Hmm. Time to get out the brain-scrubber:
The one story of his I definitely recall reading involves, ahem, boy-dog love.
Not only that, but Big Lizards has the ugliest blog design I've seen all week.
I think Ken Houghton nailed it. He's as sharp and journalistically competent as he ever was. Just what they're looking for in the flying-monkey world.
*sigh*
He is also, in case anyone was wondering, not Welsh.
The one story of his I definitely recall reading involves, ahem, boy-dog love.
Ya know, I wasn't going to say anything, but when I read:
Lefties and liberals make almost a religious fetish out of claiming to have received death threats.
I wondered if the guy might be a little... off.
I certainly don’t recall him—or anyone else, ever—arguing the principle that if someone says they’ve received mail, but they don’t immediately provide convincing externally certified proof that said mail was received, you’re entitled to call them a liar and launch into general smears of their judgement and character.
You forgot the "women are all liars until proven otherwise and even then not" caveat.
It hadn't previously occurred to me that Bill Donohue might be only pretending offense. But know that you bring it up, yeah, if he was really as easily offended as he claims to be, he'd settle down into medium dudgeon only while he slept. His blood pressure would be enough to drive the SS Great Eastern, and at some point much earlier in his career would have sufficed to blow his head off his shoulders and up through several levels of ceiling.
I think it's awfully sweet that a troll of such magnitude has finally found his people. It does have a certain "reached the promised land" ring to it.
Debbie #10: I remember a particular Kit Kerr smackdown to that effect, way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, the Internet was transmitted by beating varied rhythms on hollowed-out logs, and the GEnie SFRT was in its prime.
I swear, this country is looking more and more like a mirror-image (right swapped with left) of Atlas Shrugged every day. Maybe someone should market cigarettes with the hammer and sickle imprinted on them.
Ah yes. Remembering the old GEnie SFRT days....
On the "They think he's brilliant" line, um... well, just saw a video of Limbaugh and Coulter attempting comedy. It has scarred itself into my psyche.
Brilliance, as with all things, is relative.
Once I got over my initial hilarity and did some digging of my own, I'm starting to wonder: Is Dafyd a real-io, true-lio Right Wing Pundit? Is Dafyd's filling in at Malkin's blog actually a paying gig?
Although I think I know which way to bet, I still hope it is, and if so I hope that the Wingnut Welfare system does as much due diligence ever after in choosing whom to support.
You know, that's Usenet for you: I thought, "I miss it so much, because stupid clueless idiots got taken down point by point."
But the fact was, being clueless and idiots they didn't realize that. They just kept at it, and kept at it, until the whole discussion was an endless repetition of, "well, are you going to agree that the grass is green?" arguments. One by one, people got fed up and left.
And they got to rule the roost.
(As for the damage and hurt of these attacks, I know: I was expelled by Italian fandom through one. It still hurts, and it undermined my capacity for emotional self-reliance permanently.)
When the going gets obnoxious, the obnoxious turn pro?
He once gave a character a memorable line--more or less: "I held the world in my hands and I put it down. Can you say the same?" I still remember it after decades. I didn't know him as a net troll, and I'm sorry to hear about it; I'm sad he has come to this.
Wow. There's a name from the old SFRT days that my brain had repressed. *goes to find mental floss*
Alan Bostick@25: Is Dafyd's filling in at Malkin's blog actually a paying gig?
If so, might he spend less time writing letters to the SFWA Forum? I ask, you understand, in the attempt to find any shred of silver lining in this event.
Teresa@OP: That’s the intended effect. It’s meant to hurt—to be so nauseating and dispiriting that the person who’s the target shuts down and stops communicating. [...] If you cry out, we will hurt you for that, too.
Oh, yes. If you dare point out what's being done, you'll be beaten up for that, too, because it's about destroying your will as well as ability to defend yourself. It is exactly analogous to police screaming, "Stand up and stop resisting!" at someone they've repeatedly Tasered.
I watched this be done in a forum I used to love, by people I used to respect. And the soul-killing aspect is that you know that if you speak up and object, you're the next target--and the length of time you hesitate because of that makes you hate yourself. And that's part of the whole dynamic.
Can't say I'm familiar with his oeuvre, but every time I see the name "Dafydd" I think of this character from Little Britain.
The thing about being a "pundit" is that all the qualifications you need are a url, some blogging software, and links from other pundits (and given the fact that Glenn Reynolds has an utterly loyal following and an otherwise-admirable blindspot for genre writers, it's not suprising the latter exists).
My only experience with DaH was watching him a panel at Dragoncon in '94 or '95, and he seemed mostly harmless, but also was speaking on a "publishing your first horror novel" panel or somesuch, and not talking about politics.
I don’t think he understands that over the long run it’s going to cost him his soul.
From the bits of his "writing" you quote, it's already spent...and not for Helen of Troy either.
Skink 33: We don't discuss Orson Scott Card here.
Dafydd on GEnie was most notable to me for his absolute refusal to accept any scientific proposition under dispute if it did not come in the form of a reference to an article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Any journalistic source, no matter how many respected scientists it reliably quoted, were as nothing to him. If he'd chosen to dispute the roundness of the Earth, he would have insisted on a peer-reviewed scientific journal article testifying to it: and where, exactly, would you find one on precisely that subject?
Once I made the mistake of biting, and found him a genuine scientific citation. Of course he denied its validity. The subject was, IIRC, public health statistics, and the journal was the New England Journal of Medicine. This being a medical journal and not a statistics journal, he declared its research on statistics to be scientifically worthless, never mind that public health, a field that relies heavily on statistical research, is covered by medical journals all the time.
Ever since then I've learned to drop immediately any argument with someone who insists on scientific citations to back up basic propositions.
I did learn inadvertently, however, the one way to get this particular troll's goat, and that was to call him "Dafydd Uck" - rude, I know, but it did make him shut up and go away, so it turned out to be invaluable.
The thing I remember best about Daffy Ap Fool was his highly convenient and very creative memory.
#15 and #18 -- I see I'm not the only one who remembers that story (which was, god knows why, inflicted on me in an otherwise very satisfying summer course on sf short fiction when I was twelve).
I know I shouldn't judge a person by one short story, but when I started reading this post, my hindbrain was not remotely surprised.
I'm not surprised. In retrospect, I can see that he was moving in that direction.
At times, when he was in his sane, calm mode (yes, he did have one!), he could be witty and engaging. I always hoped he would slip into that mode one day and not leave it.
On the other hand, in response to a page on my Web site lampooning Dubya, Dafydd referred to me as "behaving like a cement-headed traitor." I think that was the phrase.
Once Gregory Feeley posted, without context:
Jesus Christ, Dafydd.
I followed up:
Gregory Feeley wrote:>Jesus Christ, Dafydd.
Name two people you should never argue with.
I wonder if anyone can find the archives of the old SFRT, to bring up the virulently anti-Catholic ravings Dafydd used to spew back then?
Steve (8), that description makes my hindbrain think he's Dragaeran.
Ken (10), I don't know that he's gone. He's still got an agent.
Debra (11): she shoots, she scores.
Ken again (12): We have a clean-minded bunch here. Everyone read "He subs for Michelle Malkin" correctly.
Amanda (19): "You forgot the 'women are all liars until proven otherwise and even then not' caveat."
Has he taken to doing that? He never did it back on the SFRT. Of course, doing that on the SFRT that would have been a good way to get handed your head.
Anna (26), I'm sorry to hear that. Did you get your prose style back? I've known writers whose voices permanently changed after going through one of those ordeals.
Aconite (30), I hate that pattern. It's one of the reasons I'm such a heavy-handed moderator. One of the nastiest things about it is that it takes the top end off the community of discourse. The more sensitive, intelligent, and engaged the participant, the more likely they are to take damage in a situation like that.
Skink (33), sorry about that. Not your fault.
Xopher (34), thanks. Does anyone ever sell their soul for something worthwhile? Faust mostly uses his powers for cheap tricks. Then there's Thomas More's line to Richard Rich in A Man for All Seasons: Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world ... but for Wales?
Jim (36), I remember you having lengthy and vivid opinions on that subject.
David (38), he called you a traitor for making fun of Dubya? I'm shocked. Does the man know nothing? Making fun of high officials is one of our most durable political traditions.
Steven (39): Thank you! I had forgotten that one.
Jim (40), and there's another thing I'd forgotten. It's age, I tell you. Soon I'll be a poor toothless geezer, and remember nothing except Martha Soukup's clerihew about Greg Feeley.
It does come back to me. Dafydd will lie to win an argument, to people who are too smart for that and catch him in it; and he'll think that it means he wins anyway.
Does anyone ever sell their soul for something worthwhile?
Robert Johnson seemed to get a pretty good deal.
Dafydd ab Hugh, not his birth name. I hadn't thought about him in years. I once had dinner with him in L.A., in the glory years of the GEnie SFRT. I found him gregarious and self-promoting, somewhat full of himself but no more so than any other grasping young SF author of the time (I can name many others). I'm sorry to hear he's embraced the darkside.
Teresa: That's when I started writing in English, so you could say that my style changed...
Anna #26. Yeah. Usenet has become one of the best examples of What Is Wrong With Anarchy I am aware of. Damn.
I don't know -- he sounds rather like an appropriate person to sub for Michelle Malkin, Our Lady Of The Internment Camps.
So he froths VX mixed with excrement -- that makes him rather typical of someone that would defend Donahue's vile behavior.
Maybe, Scorpio -- but look at comment #40 again.
Teresa (41), "I've known writers whose voices permanently changed after going through one of those ordeals."
Two of them were Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, both during the Spanish Civil War; Hemingway arranged Dos Passos's abuse, but participating, and becoming a defender of Stalinism damaged him, too. Afterwards, Dos Passos had his famous conversion to conservative; Hemingway was never as strong a writer. And Orwell's voice may have been the voice of permanent injury in childhood, but he was there, too. I suppose you could say he gained from it, but it marked him. I think the heartbreak took years from his life.
Hunh. I suppose this is one way the political becomes personal. Somewhere there must be an expletive to describe it.
#49, Teresa --
It's the Kool-Aid. Makes you go along with whatever stirs the pot most chaotically.
Teresa (41), that's a good point, and I should have made it at the time. I think that's when I angrily stopped reading anything he posted, though. I should have stopped much earlier.
Scorpio (51): Huh. I believe you're right. Still hard to forgive, though.
So, back in my college days, I was a member of a science fiction club. We (the club) were invited one year, to volunteer at the SFWA awards being held on the Queen Mary nearby.
A friend and I went. It was generally pretty fun. We sat at a table and handed out badges to attendees. This is a pretty simple process where somebody identifies themself and we hand them a piece of plastic with that very same name on it. Sometimes, we'd shake a hand when we were excited.
One guy walks up to the table and asks for his badge, we ask for his name. He says something like (it's been too many years for the word-for-word, which me and my friend were rather fond of quoting for a while), "Don't you know who I am?"
"No sir, I'm just a volunteer, if you'd just tell me your name, I can give you your badge."
"I was the secretary of this organization last year!"
"Right, well, we aren't even members. We're volunteers, and if you'd just give us your name..."
If I remember correctly, this exchange went another full round before he lowered himself enough to admit that his face was not famous enough to get him correctly identified by the people at the table with the badges.
The faces he made and huffiness stuck with us long enough that we felt a strong desire to look him up and figure out if we should have known him. Obviously, you all know the answer, and when we discovered it, it made the whole situation entirely too comical.
Since authors are you know... not actual celebrities (no offense, right?) the truly famous ones (that went) still needed to tell us who they were. But that guy...
#54, Skink Sherry Tepper has a several books that rely on planetary consciousness ... I can think of at least three offhand.
My experiences with Daffy mostly considered of him running in complete disorder, throwing insults over he back, whenever he would make some stupid comments (and they were truly stupid) about intelligence matters, or human rights, or the military, or just like in general, and I would call him on it. I once called him a rank amateur in all senses of the word, and he went screaming off complaining how I didn't argue in a civilized manner.
But then Daffy's definition of civilized is everyone is supposed to gather around him in a circle, singing hosannas of praise about how lucky we are to have him shedding his light of enlightment, and that how he is absolutely perfect and is always right and has never made a mistake, while he sits upon his throne, having assumed the mantle of Papal Infallibility...
I remember Dafydd arguing, and arguing, and arguing, and arguing, and arguing, and arguing, and arguing...
[repeat for several screens worth]
...and arguing, and arguing, and arguing...
[several more screens worth]
...and arguing and arguing, online... and that was just ONE discussion thread!
He was never, ever, willing to lose an argument, or even declare a draw, or agree to disagree. He always won, even if "winning" meant everyone else in the discussion finally simply left in frustrated exhaustion.
If he'd devoted just one percent of the energy he put into online arguments into his fiction writing, he'd have been a much more productive fiction writer. (Not necessarily a good writer; I use his HEROING as a textbook example of a man trying to write a female character, and doing it very, very badly.)
But the story that really lowered my opinion of him was when he sucker-punched a guy at a convention and bragged about it online.
Every so often I find myself offering up a little prayer of thanksgiving that someone had the good fortune to die before [X event] that would have both destroyed them (physically, financially, or morally) and forever tainted their memory in the eyes of those who knew them. This is one of those occasions, because I can just see the late and not-always-lamented StM falling into the same trap.
I have not yet read any of the thread.
Fuckin' Scouter (want to annoy "Daffyd", call him Scouter). I recall him from my youth at the LASFS. He was annoying then, and he'd yet to rise to the present level of his incompetence.
When I saw, some month's ago, his name surface, I was gob-smacked, because unlike the Goldbergs, the Hitchens, the Podhertz of the world, I know Scouter, and that they would think him smart just croggles me.
Why this should be, when the Malkins, the Limbaughs, the Coulters and the Yamashita's are praised, I don't know.
I've gotten hate mail, and the odd death threat, and yes, the PTSD nature of it is a valid comment. There's a reader of my Lj, whom I just gave up on, because his, intentional, misrepresentations of my words (and the worse when he does it at a remove, taking my APA writings, and then mistating my positions on his blog; to readers who have not the original to check against) pained me to the point that seeing his name in my inbox knots my stomach.
Hapless is a good word, but in all truth, the malignity was always there.
Aside to Teresa @41: Nothing to do with the subject at hand, but the line about Wales is absolutely one of my favourite lines from that play/movie.
Oh, him. I read one or two of his Star Trek tie-ins back when I was reading Star Trek tie-ins. I didn't like them enough to go looking for his original fiction.
Terry #60: I also knew him in the days when he called himself Scouter. In those days when we wanted to annoy him we called him Scooter.
Aren't they wonderful ambassadors for science fiction, these "Daffyds" and "Vox Days"?
Wouldn't you want to read a genre that brings forth such interesting political commentators?
But Martin, SF has also brought forth me, Patrick, Ken MacLeod, Avedon Carol, Cory Doctorow, Steve Brust, Jim Macdonald, Jo Walton, Charlie Stross, Lizzy Lynn, and Stephen Colbert -- to name but a few.
Many of the most vicious right-wing commentators have no science fiction in them. Coincidence? You tell me.
Umm. Stephen Colbert? Do tell.
Well, yeah, Scooter would get him going, but one step at a time.
Gods, how small the world is, and how petty those who get notoriety often are.
Teresa(41) Martha Soukup's clerihew? Tell more.
#66, #67: he's a fan, rather than a pro; from Stephen Colbert's Wikipedia entry -
"Colbert would later describe himself during [his early teenage life] as detached, lacking a sense of the importance of the things other children around him concerned themselves with. He developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels, especially the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, of which he remains an avid fan. During his adolescence, he also developed an intense interest in fantasy role-playing games, especially Dungeons & Dragons, a pastime which he would later characterize as an early experience in acting and improvisation."
65: Paul Krugman has saids he went into economics becuase it was the closest thing to Asimov's psychohistory.
And Richard Dawkins, of course, was a great friend of Douglas Adams and is married to a Doctor Who companion.
These days I just publish most threatening letters (sometimes with full long headers). Anyone capable of sending you one is capable of accusing you of lying, of claiming false victimhood, etc.
My favorite (?) recent instance (which I didn't have to publish, since the prodigy posted it on Wikipedia) was a muddled blackmail attempt based on the contents of my stolen video camera. (The "evidence" in the camera does not support my correspondent's conspiracy theory but the camera was reported stolen in July.)
The runner-up for my recent fav was the blogger (who has been making nearly daily posts mentioning my name) who called me stupid in the same post as declaring herself to the right of Adolf Hitler.
Even the most patently ridiculous of these hurt; they sap time and energy when one has better things to do and think about.
People do this because they want you to be upset and they want to be the focus of your attention. Some of them do it because they want you to turn tail and get off what they think of as their internet.
I have mixed feelings about singling out DAB for discussion, since there are so many out there like this. Yes, it is disturbing that someone we actually KNOW would get involved with the Dark Side of the Force. I stayed off of GEnie and haven't participated in the discussion lists cited. I remember liking a story of his I wrote about in the intro of a Nebula volume (was it 12 years ago?).
There is a systemic problem out there underlying this general kind of internet behavior, which is that some of the big ISPs will not enforce their harassment policies even in extreme situations. If their customer is a spammer or posts unauthorized imaged off Mickey Mouse, BAM the site is down. But Godaddy requires you to get a note from your local FBI agent to get their Clause 7 enforced, even when the target is a minor and the agressor is in jail. (My favorite line from that conversation was "But he's not in jail for that.)
A week from today, at the New York Comic Con, Stephen Colbert will be appearing to promote his forthcoming comic book miniseries, Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen.
Colbert's nerdosity is the subject of this very funny interview by Conan O'Brian which was a Sidelight a while back. Top clip, and start at about 5:50.
Martha Soukup's clerihew:
Gregory Feeley
shouldn't, really;
we can only trust
if he didn't, he'd bust.
Can't remember who wrote it, but I've always liked:
It was with Francis T Laney a
species of mania;
that the life of the fan bachelor
should be naturaler.
Incidentally, to anyone reading this who might have emailled me recently, I've been unable to access my account for several days now.
Glen #45: Dafydd ab Hugh, not his birth name.
I've always wondered if he picked up that name from being in the SCA at some point.
I'm so glad to hear he's not Welsh.
Skink@54, maybe Chalker's Four Lords of the Diamond books for interplanetary Gaiaology?
Last night, my sweety looked over my shoulder and saw "the only bigot in the village"s name on my screen and looked on for a moment, before recoiling in horror.
"Sorry," she said "I thought you were on a local freecycle group or something"
You see, since we moved to Wales last year, anything vaguely welsh looking gets her attention.
Since we've been recently succesful in stopping a fraud passing herself off as a doctor, can we stop DaH passing himself off as welsh? It's causing confusion, frustration and despair.
*wipes off screen*
The Czechoslovakian judge gives the Big Lizards piece a 1.8.
Of course, the nice thing about his blog is that the seriously big lizards are outdated and have been extinct for eons . .
Skink @54: John Varley's Gaea trilogy (Titan, Wizard, Demon) immediately comes to mind.
Jo Walton @78: quite.
But Martin, SF has also brought forth me, Patrick, Ken MacLeod, Avedon Carol, Cory Doctorow, Steve Brust, Jim Macdonald, Jo Walton, Charlie Stross, Lizzy Lynn, and Stephen Colbert -- to name but a few.
And Salman Rushdie, which is still a net plus. Excellent political commentary.
Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear.
I confess, I was actually slightly sad when Dafydd left the Dueling Modems boards, because it meant the place was dying. Even while being greatly relieved. Yeesh.
Jim: Marty Grabien has (or had) archives from the GEnie SFRT.
---L.
We don't discuss Orson Scott Card here.
If this is breaking the ban then I will retract the question and apologize. But I'm curious as to why. Is there some sort of history behind this? I mean, I know he's an SF writer with right-wing views, but so is Dafydd ab Hugh, apparently. So I presume there's something more to it than that.
(Again, if the ban on disussing OSC extends to discussing why we don't discuss OSC, then I will retract the question. I don't mean to be rude. I'm just curious.)
Stephen...email me and I'll explain.
I get a 403: Forbidden from biglizards.net. Are they rejecting any referrers from MakingLight?
Xopher, you will have had mail from me too.
And I withdraw the question. Sorry if I put my foot in it.
Stephen 88: received and replied.
Caroline 89: haven't gotten it yet.
and from me, Xopher, if you don't mind. (And if you do, please disregard!)
Caroline, got it and replied.
Annie G 92: not at all. Long as I don't miss my train to Bos[t|k]on[e]!
And you have mail from me as well, Xopher.
You could eat well on this at Boskone, you know: some delicacy of choice in return for the OSC/ML story.
Drat! I answered your email before realizing I could get a bribe!
Please, folks, don't declare your intention to email me about it here...kind of defeats the purpose. Just email me.
Xopher, received with thanks. Hope you didn't miss your train!
Wow. Just wow.
I remember when I still had a lot of the textbooks from my Asian history studies, and Dafydd would hold forth with something just plain stupid and wrong within my field of study. I'd write up a refutation, and keep at it, and my reward would be his going silent about it. Then he'd bring it up again a few weeks or months later as if the last exchange never happened. I ended up with half a dozen or so text files I could just paste in to save myself some effort.
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem features a planetary consciousness.
#78: I'm not at all familiar with the guy, but going by what people are saying, I'm glad he isn't as well.
About his name: is he pretending to be some kind of hard-core Welsh Nationalist, or was he born with it?
I see, from comments above, that some people have reported problems getting at DaH's blog.
I went through the rather limited Wikipedia entry, no problem. Frothing a bit, isdn't he.
I also wonder how long it would be before he noticed anyone editing Wikipedia...
Iorwerth @ 99:
He wasn't born with it (I don't remember what it was originally, though). Wiki says that his mother is Welsh.
I'm surprised that no one pulled up the Sadly,No! piece on the faux Welshman:
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/002635.html
Whenever I hear his name I think of that picture.
It's mean, I know. But it matches his rhetoric.
What's up with this category on his WIkipedia entry: "Alternative media (U.S. political right)"
So we're bloggers and the wingnuts are alternative media? What's up with that?
Glad to see the Sadly, No! link posted above. (Do Brad. Seb, and Gavin have to take some of the r/e/s/p/o/n/s/i/b/i/l/i/t/y/ blame for elevating his profile? Have mercy on their souls.)
My most recent memory of Dafydd (still difficult not to type Daffyd, which would insult a Warner property) is that he was pontificating on the U.S. military. I believe it ended with Jerry Pournelle "conceding" something to the effect of "Well, glad to be informed you know more about our military and its technology than I do."
Ah, thanks to Marc's link: he used to be 'David Friedman'.
Fortunately I don't remember much about him from Many Thursday Evenings. A motion to table for 17000 years might be in order, though.
This all reads oddly like a eulogy.
dave #87: I have no problem bringing up Big Lizards, neither by googling for it and clicking on Google's link nor by clicking on the link above. Even Dafydd isn't that much of a WATB.
Teresa #41: Ken again (12): We have a clean-minded bunch here. Everyone read "He subs for Michelle Malkin" correctly.
And then there's the story of the time Bubbles Broxon encountered Roger Ellwood at the Westercon in Oakland in, what, 1975?
If you're going over to Big Lizards, it's best to do it from my link -- it's got a 'rel="nofollow"' in it.
Re Aconite @ #30, who wrote
Oh, yes. If you dare point out what's being done, you'll be beaten up for that, too, because it's about destroying your will as well as ability to defend yourself. It is exactly analogous to police screaming, "Stand up and stop resisting!" at someone they've repeatedly Tasered.
I watched this be done in a forum I used to love, by people I used to respect. And the soul-killing aspect is that you know that if you speak up and object, you're the next target--and the length of time you hesitate because of that makes you hate yourself. And that's part of the whole dynamic.
That's how bullies, wife abusers, and child abusers work, and that's what these people are. They're abusers, plain and simple. Point that out, and anyone who isn't totally cowed by them or drinking their kool-aid will realize it. That's what we have to do to break their power and get some of our freedom back.
"This all reads oddly like a eulogy."
He is with Quetzocoatl now, fighting the Monkey, the Jaguar, and the eeeeeevil Jesus.
Ah, thanks to Marc's link: he used to be 'David Friedman'.
ah, cripes. it always gets me when raving right-wing types have such jewish names.
you welsh people are off the hook, & us christ-killers are back on it.
/sarcasm
Miriam! Matrilineal religious identification!
Dafydd not a Christ-killer, after all, because his mother isn't. Always remember that.
He prefers to think of himself as his mother's son rather than his father's son, or something like that, which is why he chose to identify with her Welsh ancestry.
Of course, none of that means anything. He's just an American.
david,
yes, that is a comfort. but as far as shanda fur de goyim goes, a jewish name is probably enough.
i mean, jews are allegedly behind capitalism and marxism. & these days we are behind godless-liberal-hollywood as well, of course... i wonder if there are people who claim neoconservatism is an evil jewish plot. probably.
of course it doesn't mean anything. but some people get great mileage out of meaningless things.
Bruce, #97: I'd write up a refutation, and keep at it, and my reward would be his going silent about it. Then he'd bring it up again a few weeks or months later as if the last exchange never happened.
Ah, that would explain a lot about where he's ended up. Hasn't that been one of the favored neocon tactics for the past 20 years or so? No matter how many times an assertion gets refuted, just keep bringing it up again as if it were unquestioned fact.
#114: "i mean, jews are allegedly behind capitalism and marxism"
Also, evolution, the big bang theory, and heliocentrism.
Darn Pharisees!
Lee@115: it does seem like old times in alt.callahans, doesn't it? It's a bigger world, but the stories seem to be the same. Or almost; nowadays one can get paid for being a net.monster. Being a propagandist means never having to say "I was wrong." I suppose we will also see more suicides from mass flaming; Vince Foster, I guess, was only the first. Chalk up another time when I wish I'd been wrong.
To the broader issue, I don't think it's only the radical right that has put ideas into public consciousness by endless repetition; so far as I can tell this is one way that beliefs become part of the mass consciousness. And I can see there's a lot more thinking to do about that.
Teresa@p0 - Do you mind if I quote your summation of how the Big Business of Industrial-Scale Bullying works? It surely does match my experiences . . .
Anna@26 - I'm sad to hear your story. Hope your confidence is reintegrating itself. I was a target of opportunity for several months, back when the National Writers Union was worth a damn. The endless factional assault had an effect, and it takes real work on my part, every day, to undo it. Some days I succeed, some days not. Ma domani, domani e un otra giorno.
Thanks to you all. These insights about trolls and bullies and mobs are quite useful to me.
My 'burnt child fears the fire' reaction to some nasty experiences after raising my head above the parapet many years back, getting involved in local community affairs, is one reason for my keeping an online pseudonym.
And, one more thought here. What Donohue is doing is really some new sort of crime--call it trolling for psychotics. The danger is not only hate mail, but bullets. Somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of people in the audience for this virtual "hit", there's someone who might be crazy enough to target Marcotte and McEwen for real-life violence. And Donohue is pointing out a target.
And another Gaia book: David Brin's EARTH.
Why is William Donohue getting paid more than $300,000 a year to have his 501C3 harass Amana and Melissa? (I was trying to explain to Michael Swanwick and Marianne Porter over dinner why the first thing that occurred to me was to check the Catholic League for Religious Freedom's tax returns.)
Clearly, he's getting paid more than the Pope. What for?
Other sf novels with Gaia characters (sort of):
Enigma from Tantalus, by John Brunner
Bios, by Robert Charles Wilson
Randolph @120: What Donohue is doing is really some new sort of crime--call it trolling for psychotics.
New only insofar as it takes place on the internet. Don't know about the US, but print media has done its variants of "will no one rid me of that troublesome priest" before.
Randolph at #120, this is only my pet peeve, but I'm gonna still take the opportunity to ask everyone to be precise in using words like "psychotic." Contrary to popular usage, it is not a synonym for "violent." Since this is a thread about avoiding damaging others with words, I think this is a valid if parenthetical complaint. Now, carry on.
Jah-eeeze, what's with all the whispering out back? With a topic so verboten that even explaining why it's verboten is verboten, seems like there ought to be a FAQ or something. If apparently asking the question and answering it is considered a form of stepping in the brown stinky stuff, what hope is there for ignorant innocents to keep their shoes clean? Kind of a land mine of embarrassment for anyone who happens to all unknowingly mention The Name That Must Not Be Spake, ain't it?
Ah well. Another slip of paper in the suggestion box.
Upthread, someone asked after the fabled DAH archives. Was anyone successful in digging these up?
rm@125: all right, then, trolling for violent psychotics.
That picture really says it all, doesn't it? Not just an obnoxious t-shirt, a Reaganist t-shirt. Not just tie-in novels, VIDEO GAME tie-in novels, and not just video game tie-in novels, but DOOM tie-ins.
And when someone brings it up, I have to mention this: at one point, I and some others were going through a veritable pile of (mostly Star Trek) media tie-ins, trying to find ones worth keeping by virtue of either historical interest (here's a pre-1978 novel about how they all died!) or otherwise-important authorage (these were frequently also in the first category). His author's blurb was largely "I double the letters in my pseudonym without rhyme or reason, and I am not Peter David." I was under the impression, and remain so, that the ONLY reason to have such an "About the Author" is to convince readers that this is, in fact, a thinly veiled pseudonym for Peter David.
At the time, we thought it might well be, and put it in the "hang on to" column. What would one think of a YA fantasy author named "K. Rowl Johnson", whose blurb was, in full, "Spelling it K. Rowl Joanson is fine too, and I AM ABSOLUTELY NOT J. K. ROWLING."?
Waitaminute: Daffyd "the only wingnut in the village" is David Friedman, aka the only soulmate J^r^dan B^ss^^r found?
Or are there two? (checks wikipedia) Ah, there are.
Friedman is not a lucky name is it?
Teresa(65): They can do the "fiction" part just fine; where they're lacking is in the "science" part—you just can't write science fiction when you don't believe in science.
And, come to think of it, is it fiction when you believe your own lies? Maybe they're not doing so well with the "fiction" part either....
And, one more thought here. What Donohue is doing is really some new sort of crime--call it trolling for psychotics.
I've written about rightwing bloggers and I've written about guys with guns who have reputations for killing people for sport. Guess whose followers leave the death threats?
Donohue is using a technique pioneered by the Freepers and by Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs. The current instance is structureally similar to the LGF assult on the Kerry campaign for advertising on Daily Kos (which was then followed by an orgy of Internet assults on other bloggers as Johnson's "lizaroid minions" gloried in their own self importance). This sort of behavior should be covered by the RICO statutes, but law enforcement isn't up to speed and is too bewildered to know what to do about it.
The way it tends to work is that a fuss is stirred up and then the actual threats tend to be made by a very small group of individuals associated with the instigators. Those making the threats hide in the mob and because they used proxies and dynamic IP numbers, and so they are confident of their anonymity.
Secure in their virtual hoods, they threaten things they are too cowardly to actually do.
I agree with all that has been said about Daffyd. In discussions on GEnie, I recall prefacing a remark to him thusly: I’m typing this slowly, so even you can understand it.
My fondest memory of Daffyd was shooting his ass in a paintball game or two. (I’m a good shot. He was leaner in those days.)
Best thing about him is that his writing screams for itself…. which is why his career–like his ability to reason–is in remission.
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