Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Orson Scott Card: “Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.” So, maybe this column didn’t go down so well with him. 5:06:14 PM    comment []

The Daily Kos says the Edwards campaign should hire me to work on its Web efforts. Thanks for the reference, Kos, but I'm not available. I wonder how easy it is for Edwards to hire people now, at least people who aren't fulltime campaign types in need of a job. It would have been easier a few months ago, I bet. People are attracted to momentum. 4:45:10 PM    comment []

“Pop quiz: How often is God mentioned in the Constitution of the United States?” My newspaper column this week is about our “bracingly secular” Constitution, and the implications of that secularism for questions of church and state, in Alabama with the Ten Commandments and a somewhat similar case in North Carolina. 8:15:11 AM    comment []

Orson Scott Card responded to my letter about his column in the Rhinoceros Times with a letter of his own. It’s not pretty. I was afraid Card would embarrass himself further, and now he has. I sent my response to his response to the Rhino, which hyped Card’s letter on its front page last week. Here is my latest letter, complete with the epithet the Rhino edits out: Orson Scott Card wrote a column about a Utah theater group that was not allowed to edit a vulgar word from a Neil Simon play. I wrote a letter in response saying that when Card blamed New York intellectuals for wrecking popular culture, as he did in his article, it seemed that the awful New Yorkers in question were Jews.   In his reply to my letter, Card says, “Never in my writings have I blamed ‘New York intellectuals’ for wrecking anything.” Never? Let’s take a look at Card’s original article, which was headlined “Intellectual Update.” In it, he mentions “New York” and “New Yorkers” fifteen times, with an additional “Manhattan” thrown in for variety. He refers to the “touchy sensibilities of New York intellectuals.” He says “New York culture has become so degraded,” and celebrates places with “audiences that haven't reached the same level of crudeness as New Yorkers.” Card assigns these New Yorkers an active role in assaulting the values of the rest of the country. He ascribes to Neil Simon, his designated representative of New York culture and “hero” of intellectuals, the belief that “what works in New York is what is going to work everywhere, or else,” and adds, “Simon is so provincial that he thinks that however things are done in his home town [New York] is the right way to do them everywhere else.” And it is in New York that Card imagines a playwright using an epithet for Jews, which would supposedly offend “intellectuals…who are incapable of questioning the biases and shibboleths of their own narrow-minded community.” For a guy who has “never blamed ‘New York intellectuals’,” Card sure spends a lot of time blaming New York intellectuals. At no point in my letter did I “presume to detect anti-Semitism throughout (Card’s) entire oeuvre,” as he claims. I noted his support for Israel, and said that I don’t suppose he is an anti-Semite in his own mind. It was just that whole say-Kike-in-New-York-and-we’ll-see-who-squeals thing that led me to the conclusion that the New Yorkers he so despises are Jews. Read the whole letter... 8:11:56 AM    comment []