Broken record is broken
The latest distortion of my objection to "The Green Reich" appears to be that I'm supposedly arguing against publishing any offensive material of any kind in Star*Line. Heck no. But I do think that if you're going to publish a poem that's hateful toward minorities, it better be jaw-droppingly brilliant art, and this poem most definitely ain't.
So, one more time I'll try to explain it here. The crux of it centers on these lines:
a young black hispanic disabled tri-sexual
manFEM/cybiotic jewslamic skinhead.
I note. There are no whites listed, no Christians, no one who is not a member of a minority in the U.S. I suppose skinheads, aka neo-Nazis, also count as a minority, but imagine how someone who is black, hispanic, gay, Jewish, etc. might feel about being flippantly linked to a skinhead, the very people who want most to do them harm? If it's a mere joke, it's an awfully disrespectful one. (And no, I do not think including white Christians would make this joke okay.)
And then according to the poem, these people amount to he/she/it, your whateverness. Try to put yourself in the shoes of someone described by one of the words in that list, and imagine how that looks to them.
To again address another distortion: I don't object to the poem's political slant in any way beyond what I've described above.
As evidence that this is not political for me, I proffer my defense (with reservations) of Eric James Stone's heavily criticized Nebula winner "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made."
So far the best defense anyone seems to be offer for "The Green Reich" is "It's forgettable pap! You should have ignored it!" I suppose I could have, but given the above, I don't think I should have.
Now ... I'm sure this isn't the end to the debate, but I'm not a SFPA member any more, so it's time for me to let others do the talking. I wish SFPA and all the people in it all the best, and don't really want to spend the next month trading thwacks with people online who for the most part are folks I like and admire, regardless of their opinions of my opinions, heh. So, I'm going to lock all the recent SFPA-related entries so that no further comments can be made. I mean no offense by doing so, and I won't delete anything, pro or con.
(Anita has assured me emphatically that it's time to concentrate on other things, and if I don't my ass is grass, so...)
So, one more time I'll try to explain it here. The crux of it centers on these lines:
a young black hispanic disabled tri-sexual
manFEM/cybiotic jewslamic skinhead.
I note. There are no whites listed, no Christians, no one who is not a member of a minority in the U.S. I suppose skinheads, aka neo-Nazis, also count as a minority, but imagine how someone who is black, hispanic, gay, Jewish, etc. might feel about being flippantly linked to a skinhead, the very people who want most to do them harm? If it's a mere joke, it's an awfully disrespectful one. (And no, I do not think including white Christians would make this joke okay.)
And then according to the poem, these people amount to he/she/it, your whateverness. Try to put yourself in the shoes of someone described by one of the words in that list, and imagine how that looks to them.
To again address another distortion: I don't object to the poem's political slant in any way beyond what I've described above.
As evidence that this is not political for me, I proffer my defense (with reservations) of Eric James Stone's heavily criticized Nebula winner "That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made."
So far the best defense anyone seems to be offer for "The Green Reich" is "It's forgettable pap! You should have ignored it!" I suppose I could have, but given the above, I don't think I should have.
Now ... I'm sure this isn't the end to the debate, but I'm not a SFPA member any more, so it's time for me to let others do the talking. I wish SFPA and all the people in it all the best, and don't really want to spend the next month trading thwacks with people online who for the most part are folks I like and admire, regardless of their opinions of my opinions, heh. So, I'm going to lock all the recent SFPA-related entries so that no further comments can be made. I mean no offense by doing so, and I won't delete anything, pro or con.
(Anita has assured me emphatically that it's time to concentrate on other things, and if I don't my ass is grass, so...)