WSJ on SJW
A lamebrain and lazy Wall Street Journal article: http://www.wsj.com/articles/th
For any reader without the patience (or the nose-clothespin) to wade through this, the summary is: “We asked two white guys with lots of awards and they said the system was fine and the Sad Puppies are pulp-writing carpetbagging racists.”
First, the issue is not about literary fiction versus pulp adventure fiction. The Social Justice Warriors do not write literary fiction, they write boring lectures and finger-wagging trash. They are members of a clique who have controlled the awards for about a decade.
They excuse the poor craftsmanship of their meandering tales by claiming them to be written to erudite and aethereal literary standards beyond the grasp of the hoi polloi. (Or they would say, if they were literary enough to use phrases like the hoi polloi (a Greek remark!), or drop Gilbert and Sullivan allusions casually into their sentences.)
For the record, I write literary fiction, and Larry Correia writes pulp, and he and I are on the same team.
Second, the notion that the Sad Puppies are intruders or newcomers is risible. I am an established Tor author was over a dozen novels to my name. Jim Butcher is far bigger and better than I. Anyone whose looks at the titanic figure towering atop an asimovian number of books, namely, Kevin J Anderson, and calls him a newcome needs to have his head examined. And yet the lazy column writer passes along this ort of Morlock propaganda without bothering to check it. Perhaps he meant only that we are outsiders to the clique — but, if so, he should have said so.
Third, the notion that the Sad Puppies are racists or wifebeaters or flying purple people eaters is a routine and almost ritual accusation the sad old white men of the clique throw against anyone and everyone, Anglo, Portuguese, Red Indian, male or female, whatever, who troubles or challenges them.
It is a thought-avoidance reflex, as automatic as startled squid squirting out ink. It is as routine and unconvincing as the accusation of an official royal Witchfinder.
And the column ends with a smarmy quote chuckling over the fact that any Puppy winning a Hugo will get it from David Gerrold or an unknown named Tananarive Due—a gay man and a black woman.
As if any sane and normal person cared about where Mr Gerrold chooses to park his dick, or about the melanin content of a midlist Mystery writer.
We read stories, not skin colors, you cheap and lazy hack, and thank you for ending on a gratuitous yet childish sneer showing you just uncritically bought into the lamebrain and lazy libels our lamebrain enemies lazily tossed against us. Thank you for not doing your job in such a negligent fashion.
If I seem more irate than is my wont, please recall that I used to be a journalist. Dear heavens, am I happy to be out of that shameful field.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
