The "Whites Only" fountain once dispensed the same water as the "Coloreds" one did; but the implications of having to walk the alternate line to obtain the H20 spoke volumes.
Via Blue Jersey, here’s an example of how the consequences of separate but equal play out in the lives of gay people…
Consider Paula Long and Rosalind Heggs of Camden who have been together over 15 years. They were registered as domestic partners and also had a civil union from Vermont. Under New Jersey law, they have hospital visitation rights and the right to make decisions on behalf of each other when the other is sick. That’s what’s on paper, but when Rosalind had a heart attack and needed a blood transfusion, the hospital refused to allow Paula to give consent. Paula even had a highlighted copy of the relevant law with her, but that didn’t matter to the hospital. They demanded to see their marriage certificate. (see video of their story)
This story happens over and over again from one end of this country to the other, in red states and blue alike, and it’s indicative of a mindset. Here’s that mindset in a nutshell:
However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be, what they are doing is not marriage. Nor does society benefit in any way from treating it as if it were.
However emotionally bonded a pair of homosexual lovers may feel themselves to be… Bigots such as Orson Scott Card cannot, will never, acknowledge there is a bond between same sex couples, but only, and grudgingly, that they may feel themselves to have one. Card later wrote another column, in which he reduced the struggle of gay and lesbian Americans for simple justice, to a childish demand for "fairness"…
The single most effective argument being used to gain support for the redefinition of marriage to mean anything, therefore nothing, is this:
"It’s not fair that homosexuals can’t get married just like heterosexuals."
This argument is only effective because nobody is bothering to define "fairness" or to figure out whether the result will be in any way more fair than the hitherto universal definition of marriage.
When our kids were little, we made it a very clear rule in our family that fairness didn’t mean that everybody got exactly what anybody else got.
"Suppose we buy a dress for your sister," I said to my son. "Would you want us to get a dress for you too?"
Never mind for a moment, the brain dead sexism in that example (picture Card telling his daughter, "suppose we buy blue jeans for your brother. Would you want us to get blue jeans for you too?" "Well…yeah dad…why not?" But maybe females aren’t allowed to wear pants in Card’s family…) Just look at it for a moment. Card is saying there, that to ask hospital staff to let you be with your other half as they lay sick, and maybe even dying, is like a child throwing a tantrum because daddy didn’t bring him a present too. Read that entire column, and if you aren’t a bigot like he is, one sickening thing just leaps out at you like a ghoul at a fun house, and laughs in your face: nowhere in that column is there even the slightest hint that Card can see there may be a deep and profound bond of love between a same sex couple. It just doesn’t even cross his mind.
Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Homosexual sex. Because they’re disfunctional….
But it is grossly unfair to demand, in the name of "fairness," that the normal pattern of marriage and family be deprived of its privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about dysfunctions that even they insist are nobody’s fault.
This is the mindset that same sex couples have to face every time they try to assert their rights as a couple. The hospital staff that kept Paula Long out of the room where her other half was suffering from a heart attack, treated their union like it was some kind of pathetic imitation of their own, because that’s exactly what they thought of it. Equal marriage rights won’t change their minds about that. But what it can do is warn them upfront, that if they let their cheap conceits and bar stool prejudices devastate the lives of innocent people, there will be consequences. Separate but equal on the other hand, merely validates their prejudices and conceits. As long as they believe they can put the knife in our hearts and get away with it, they’ll keep doing it. Because it is unfair to demand that normal families loose their privileged position in our society, just so a few people can feel better about their dysfunctions .
When Bill Flanigan admitted his partner Robert Daniel to the hospital because of AIDS-related complications his loss was tremendous.
Kept from Daniel during his last hours alive, Flanigan was denied the chance to say goodbye to his partner of more than five years. He filed a lawsuit against the University of Maryland Medical System in Baltimore City Circuit Court on February 27.
Not only was Flanigan refused the right to be with Daniel, he was also not permitted to share Daniel’s treatment wishes with his physicians, according to a statement issued by Lambda Legal. All because the staff from the Maryland Medical System Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore said Flanigan was not family.
…
It was only after Daniel’s sister and mother arrived from out of town that the Shock Trauma Center released information on Daniel’s status that had been repeatedly denied to Flanigan, and allowed the entire family — including Flanigan — to see Daniel. But it was too late — Daniel was no longer conscious and his eyes were taped shut, and his wishes not to have life prolonging measures performed had been denied. There were tubes in his throat.
That was particularly hard for Flanigan to take.
At one point Daniel briefly regained consciousness, according to a nurse, and he tried to pull out the breathing tube. In response hospital staff tied down Daniel’s arms.
For Those Of You Who Share My Thing For Film Music…
I’ve been an avid collector of film music since I was a kid. I love any music that is evocative and beautiful, particularly when it makes use of a full symphonic orchestra. But it’s not a very well respected genre. Way back when, I seldom saw recordings from films whose music I liked (Just try finding a copy of David Whitaker’s gorgeous music to Run Wild, Run Free), and when I did it was often not the original soundtrack, but some aftermarket re-recording that seldom did the original music justice (which was, alas, what I got when I finally was able to get my hands on an LP of Run Wild, Run Free). Most people here in America who’ve seen Legend probably think of the music Toto recorded for the American release, unless they’ve had a chance to see a copy of the European version with it’s lush Jerry Goldsmith music. And nowadays, the entertainment companies would rather release something with a lot of band tunes on it, whether any of those tunes were actually played during the runtime of the movie or not. Witness the two competing CDs of music "from" the film Pleasantville, only one of which actually has the beautiful Randy Newman music on it, the other having about a dozen or so hit tunes, only one of which was played during the movie, and that while the closing credits were running.
I stumbled across this place last week, and thought I’d found a secret treasure trove. They have CDs from dozens of films whose music I’d never seen released anywhere before, including Lalo Schifrin’s music for The Liquidator, which you should listen to if only for Shirley Bassey belting out the title song like she is going to make everyone forget about Goldfinger.
I got two CDs from them in the mail last night, two Michael Legrand scores I’d been dying to find on CD: Summer of 42, and Ice Station Zebra. What’s wonderful about Ice Station Zebra is that it was pulled from the original masters, unlike the previous CD release which sounds like it was taped off an old LP copy, the cues are in order now, and it contains cues that were missing from the original release. When I listen to film music, I seldom even think of the film I first heard it played to. I enjoy it simply as pure music. It’s so hard to find new music anymore, that is evocative and beautiful for its own sake. But it often helps to have the music presented on the recording, as it was played to the film, as the story it was following in the film was the structure the composer was writing to. When the cues are out of order the music just looses its impact somehow. It’s like listening to a symphony with the movements all jumbled up randomly.
I have a list. Could the powers that be please release in CD or some other digital form, the original soundtrack music to, Run Wild, Run Free, Maya, The Dark Crystal, Robert Russell Bennett’s amazing full length score to The Twisted Cross, Morton Gould’s music for the TV series World War 1, Vyacheslav Ovchinnokov’s War And Peace, and the music for The Apartment, Nicolas and Alexandra, Born Free, and The Bible? Please. Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated…
Last month, a conference of US Catholic bishops approved and released a letter entitled "Ministry to Persons With a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care". Calling homosexuality "objectively disordered" the document complains that western culture recognizes "no acts as intrinsically evil". It asserts that "any tendency toward sexual pleasure that is not subordinated to the greater goods of love and marriage is disordered, in that it inclines a person towards a use of sexuality that does not accord with the divine plan for creation". Then later, without any apparent irony, the document states that "many in our culture have difficulty understanding Catholic moral teaching because they do not understand that morality has an objective basis."
The document ultimately demands that homosexuals abstain from any and all forms of sexual intimacy congruent with their nature, and says that "chaste living is an affirmation of all that is human, and is the will of God. It is we who suffer when we violate the dictates of our own human nature."
Which is true enough, as any gay person who has tried to deny their nature will tell you. In 1975, one of Love In Action’s first clients, Jack McIntyre, committed suicide rather then, by his own reckoning, make one more promise to God he knew he could not keep. The effect of the Guidelines for Pastoral Care will without a doubt be to drive other gay men and women into self annihilating behaviors, if not outright suicide. "Chastity", say the Bishops, "means the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being." But it is precisely that inner unity they intend to doggedly destroy within gay and lesbian people, in the name of god, in the name of Jesus, and in the name of love. How easy it is, to take that body and soul wholeness away from someone else, when you don’t have to live with the pain and the emptiness. It is we who suffer, when we violate the dictates of our own human nature, not the ones who teach us to fear and loath our human nature, the nature that our creator bestowed upon us.
Green mush isn’t high on my list of appealing things to eat. But if you’re going to sell green mush to people, you should at least give them the sort of green mush they think they’re buying…
Peanut butter is made from peanuts, tomato paste is made from tomatoes, and guacamole is made from avocados, right?
Wrong. The guacamole sold by Kraft Foods Inc., one of the bestselling avocado dips in the nation, includes modified food starch, hefty amounts of coconut and soybean oils, and a dose of food coloring. The dip contains precious little avocado, but many customers mistake it for wholly guacamole.
On Wednesday, a Los Angeles woman sued the Northfield, Ill.-based food company, alleging that it committed fraud by calling its dip "guacamole." Her lawyer says suits against other purveyors of "fake guacamole" could be filed soon.
I’ve been carefully parsing the lables on food ever since the early 70s when I took my first bite of something I thought was a slice of cheese, but upon more careful inspection turned out to be merely something called "cheese food". By the time they came out with Country Time Lemonade Drink I wasn’t being fooled anymore. Lemonade Drink, is it? I know what lemonade is, and I know what a drink is, but a "lemonade drink" is probably lemonade like "cheese food" is cheese.
But the Kraft product, near as I can tell, was simply labeled "Guacamole Dip". So I guess the argument here is how much guacamole does a guacamole dip have to have in it before you need to start calling it something else. Like…guacamole food flavored dip by-product, or something…
Learning to carefully parse the syntax on product packaging when I was still a kid may be one reason I eventually became a software engineer. It’s sure as hell why I subscribe to Consumer Reports…
Even some of my very favorite bloggers can piss me off from time to time. Such is life…
Nickelback
I don’t know always know what the kids are listening to these days, but I just switched on VH1 and was immediately possessed by the spirit of Butthead:
What the hell is this crap?
If you really need to know what I’m talking about, here it is.
You know Duncan…I feel the same way about two-thirds of the music you speak adoringly of on your blog. I’d rather listen to cats fighting then most of it. I’d rather listen to a jackhammer symphony then most of it. I’d rather listen to a fifty car pile-up on the JFX then most of it. But I don’t usually feel compelled to say anything about it. If it makes you happy, or any of your readers happy…fine. There’s little enough of that in this poor world.
I don’t know if Nickelback ever made anything else worth listening to, and I don’t care. I like that song. It speaks to me. If it doesn’t speak to you, then turn the fucking dial.
Larry Corrigan, a well-known activist in local Republican politics as a backer of U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert and King County Prosecuting Attorney Norm Maleng, was arrested Wednesday in an Internet sting for allegedly trying to arrange sex with a 13-year-old girl.
Reichert is pro-life and opposes the use of federal money for sex education. Reichert is against gay marriage and has promised to support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning gay marriage.
Homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. And a sexually ignorant thirteen year old girl, is a good thirteen year old girl…
But the president’s performance this week — his refusal to impose any deadlines on Mr. Maliki to start reconciliation talks and break with the militias, and his refusal to give the Pentagon a deadline to stand up an effective Iraqi Army — tells us once again that Mr. Bush does not listen.
That does not bode well for James Baker and the Iraq Study Group, which, according to reports, is likely to call for some pullback of American combat troops along with more aggressive regional diplomacy. Yesterday, Mr. Bush seemed eager to preempt that advice, brushing off suggestions that he talk directly to Iran and insisting that there would be no “graceful exit” from Iraq.
Mr. Bush’s lack of curiosity was well known even before he became president, but as time has gone on and bad news has mounted, that disinterested quality has turned into a stubborn refusal to hear bad news. The country simply cannot afford it any longer. Three years of having Mr. Bush trust only his gut has plunged Iraq into bloody chaos and done untold damage to America. There needs to be an urgent change in policy.
Fat chance.
This administration has been orchestrating a foreign policy disaster of epic proportions, and history will remember both that the president failed to hear the warning bells and that many others failed to ring them loudly enough.
Chocolate Roulade (Christmas Log): Soft Ganache Frosting with a Chocolate Sponge, Meringue Mushrooms, Magnolia Leaves in White Chocolate, Raspberries.
Mini Tartlettes.
Pecan Pie, Lemon Meringue Pie, Orange Chiffon and Chocolate Boston Cream Pie.
Chocolate Truffles.
Homemade, Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache.
Long Stem Strawberries with Dark Chocolate Dipping Sauce.
Warm Macintosh Apple Cobbler With Oatmeal Crumble.
Pumpkin Trifle.
Spiced Pumpkin Mousse with Whipped Cream and Shaved Dark Chocolate.
Look…I don’t begrudge the rich and fabulous their high life. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours and that’s fine with me. But given the unmitigated failures of this man and his administration, never mind the relentless corruption, all this is just plain obscene. If Bush had only kept America more or less on the same course that Bill Clinton had left it in, with a budget surplus, a good economic outlook for the future, and a decent regard for human rights both here and abroad, I’d offer to wash his fucking dishes. But he’s been a complete disaster. He didn’t earn any of this.
This isn’t so much about Microsoft and Zune, as about the news media. But…look at this. In the morning I sit down at my computer and call up google news. It’s a really nice headline service. And what do I see? A bunch of headlines screaming at me that Microsoft’s Zune player has already taken second place in the compact digital music player race. Gosh.
And it’s only been out for a few days. So maybe Microsoft’s legendary (and occasionally illegal) marketing power, would succeed once more over it’s legendary technological incoherence.
During the time period in question…the iPod had about 68 percent of the market share, and Zune, at second place, had 9. In other words, Zune is the top dog in the category of "other". Which isn’t hard to fathom, given all the hype that preceded it.
Meanwhile…the other story about Zune that we’re not hearing more about…
Remember that deal Bill made with Universal Music? Yeah. Part of the game for Bill may simply have been to use the RIAA as a tool to cut into Steve’s iPod profits. But that isn’t likely the entire game. Zune doesn’t have to be a money maker for Microsoft in order to succeed. It doesn’t even have to have market share. All it has to do, is kill the ability of Microsoft’s competitors to set the course of this technology as it develops. Zune doesn’t have to be king of the player market, as long as every player in that market, eventually comes to depend on Microsoft technology in order to work…
Microsoft’s handling of the whole "Plays for Sure" initiative can only be described as a fiasco in the wake of the Zune music player launch. The Zune uses its own software to manage songs and has no integration with the "Plays for Sure" ecosystem of DRMed music, so customers who purchased songs from PfS online music stores (including the URGE online store integrated into Windows Media Player 11) are unable to use them with the new Zune.
However, according to Michael Gartenberg at JupiterResearch, songs purchased from the Zune online store will actually play on many Plays for Sure devices. It seems as if the Zune player will only play WMA-DRM songs specifically tagged by the Zune online store, but other PfS players only look to see if the song is in the WMA-DRM format and don’t bother checking to see if it is a "Zune" song or not.
You shake hands with Microsoft and you need to count your fingers afterwords. But look at this. Now Bill has a nascent eco-system of playback devices out there, and a few online music stores, that all depend on his technology. And he’s the only one so far offering the kind of deal the big music companies want. The more of that Bill gets out there, the harder it is for Apple, or anyone else, to stand on their own. Remember two things about Microsoft: They’re not a hardware company, and Bill’s primary skill set isn’t his grasp of technology. It’s that he’s a thousand percent more devious and cutthroat then anyone else in America since Rockefeller made his oil empire.
If they get away with it, then in the future there will be both an RIAA tax and a Microsoft tax on every music player sold in America. Including the iPod if the big music companies decide that Plays For Sure, or some Microsoft technology, is the only way they’ll allow their music to be sold. Even the iPod may someday have a little bit of Zune inside of it. And Zune itself could be long gone. People will laugh at how foolish Microsoft was, to produce that piece of junk.
I needed to give you something. An offering. So I brought out a few things from my private treasure box. This and that I found along the way, that reached me where no one ever has, and I kept for myself. My own private gold and silver. It had to be something from there. Something for you. Something worthy.
Stars bigger then the orbit of Saturn. Clouds of ice and dust so big light from when I was born hasn’t seen the other side yet. Secret places tucked in the folds of dust between Orion and Betelgeuse, where new born stars emerge, perhaps one day to beckon new life into the universe. Galaxies, wheeling, colliding, dancing. Spirals. Barred. Ellipticals. And those small faintly glowing red ones, like beacons shimmering on a distant horizon, their light shining into my eyes from near the beginning of time.
They lifted me. They struck the silence into me. So did you once. So I gave them to you. An offering.
Mainstream-media political journalism is in danger of becoming increasingly irrelevant, but not because of the Internet, or even Comedy Central. The threat comes from inside. It comes from journalists being afraid to do what journalists were put on this green earth to do.
What is it about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert that makes them so refreshing and attractive to a wide variety of viewers (including those so-important younger ones)? I would argue that, more than anything else, it is that they enthusiastically call bullshit.
That’s part of it. But more then that, there’s the issue of trust. You really have to regard someone who can passively record whatever in-your-face bullshit a given white house operative wants to dispense at them, and not raise a single squeak of doubt as to the truth or falseness of it, as a fellow participant in the Bush assault on our democracy. If you keep your mouth shut in the face of bullshit, then you’re not a neutral observer. The stenography of lies only makes you a liar too. But it’s even worse then that…you’re helping them bullshit the public. And democracy can’t work if the voters don’t know what the fuck is really going on! A truly neutral observer calls the facts as they find them. They don’t help bullshitters hide the facts, by keeping their mouths shut when they can plainly see a lie for what it is.
I’m not sure why calling bullshit has gone out of vogue in so many newsrooms — why, in fact, it’s so often consciously avoided. There are lots of possible reasons. There’s the increased corporate stultification of our industry, to the point where rocking the boat is seen as threatening rather than invigorating. There’s the intense pressure to maintain access to insider sources, even as those sources become ridiculously unrevealing and oversensitive. There’s the fear of being labeled partisan if one’s bullshit-calling isn’t meted out in precisely equal increments along the political spectrum.
There’s the fantastic salaries of the top network news talking heads, and other celebrity "journalists" and pundits. But you can’t live the cushy life if your business is disturbing power. You have to understand that, going into it. I think most of them just want the fame, and the glory, and most of all, the money…
As it turns out, “regular Joe” Thomas Friedman, who so frequently advocates economic policies with little regard to their impact on working Americans, is among the wealthiest human beings on the planet.
As the July edition of the Washingtonian Magazine notes, Friedman lives in “a palatial 11,400-square-foot house, now valued at $9.3 million, on a 7½-acre parcel just blocks from I-495 and Bethesda Country Club.” He “married into one of the 100 richest families in the country” – the Bucksbaums, whose real-estate Empire is valued at $2.7 billion.
Let’s be clear – I’m a capitalist, so I have no problem with people doing well or living well, even Tom Friedman. That said, this does potentially explain an ENORMOUS amount about Friedman’s perspective. Far from the objective, regular-guy interpreter of globalization that the D.C. media portrays him to be, Friedman is a member of the elite of the economic elite on the planet Earth. In fact, he’s married into such a giant fortune, it’s probably more relevant to refer to him as Billionaire Scion Tom Friedman than columnist Tom Friedman, both because that’s more descriptive of what he represents, and more important for readers of his work to know so that they know a bit about where he’s coming from.
Mind you, I don’t think everyone needs to publish their net worth. But Friedman’s not everyone. He’s not just “doing pretty well” and is not just any old columnist. He’s not just a millionaire or a multimillionaire – he’s member of one of the wealthiest families in the world, and is one of the most influential media voices on the planet, who writes specifically about economic/class issues. If politicians are forced to disclose every last asset they own, you’d think at the very least, the New York Times – in the interest of basic disclosure – should have a tagline under Friedman’s economic columns that says “Tom Friedman is an heir to a multi-billion-dollar business empire.”
Again, there’s positively nothing wrong with people being rich in general, or Tom Friedman being a billionaire scion in specific. The problem is that so few of his readers know this, even as he aggressively uses his platform to justify policies that almost exclusively benefit his super-wealthy brethren – all under the guise of supposed objectivity.
Then again, the fact that we know so little about who is actually making opinion in this country isn’t surprising. Even looking at this kind of information as it relates to the most important opinionmaker in the world is looked down upon by Washington insiders/elites/politicians. To paraphrase Jack Nicholson from “A Few Good Men,” deep down in places they don’t talk about at parties, they want billionaires like Friedman dictating the debate because they need someone creating public rationales for policies that enrich Big Money interests, sell out America and guarantee the next fat campaign contribution.
It isn’t merely that the mainstream news media has been bought out by corporate interests. It’s that the most widely read and listened to journalists these days are vastly more wealthy then even an average upper middle class American, let alone a two-job a week just to meet the bills working stiff. People that rich, might as well be living on another planet. You need to realize this, when you’re reading their opinions about things like, oh, the minimum wage, or college tuition, or the cost of living, or unions, or public education, or the rights of minorities…let alone their opinions about taking America to war. You can damn well figure none of their kids will have to pick up a gun in a fire fight in some distant land, let alone themselves.
The big names in the mainstream news media are so damn wealthy, their interests and the interests of the big corporations that give them a pulpit are just about one and the same anyway…no need to pressure them to take a particular stance on an issue.
When Romney ran…for the Senate in 1994, he wrote a letter to the Mass Log Cabin Club in which he pledged: “[A]s we seek to establish full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent.” During the same campaign, when he was accused of having once described gay people as “perverse” during a religious meeting of Mormons, Romney’s campaign issued a forceful statement decrying the accusation as false and reiterating that Romney respected “all people regardless of their race, creed, or sexual orientation.”
SALT LAKE CITY — Speaking before an adoring audience of Utah Republicans last night, Governor Mitt Romney drew a link between America’s prestige around the world and the legalization of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts.
”America cannot continue to lead the family of nations around the world if we suffer the collapse of the family here at home," Romney said, calling the Supreme Judicial Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts ”a blow to the family."
Milt – while running for governor of Massachusetts in 2001…
During his 2001 run for governor, his campaign distributed bright pink flyers at the June Pride parade declaring “Mitt and Kerry wish you a great Pride weekend!” During his inaugural speech, he said it was important to defend civil rights “regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or race.” He appointed eight openly gay and lesbian people to high profile positions in his administration. And before he decided to run for president — that is to say, before he needed to establish some strong anti-gay bonafides — Romney doubled the budget line item for the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.
Milt – Last May…while campaigning for the 2008 GOP nomination for President of the United State…
This would be the same commission, mind you, that Romney tried to disband in highly public fashion last May.
At a recent White House reception for freshman members of Congress, Virginia’s newest senator tried to avoid President Bush. Democrat James Webb declined to stand in a presidential receiving line or to have his picture taken with the man he had often criticized on the stump this fall. But it wasn’t long before Bush found him.
"How’s your boy?" Bush asked, referring to Webb’s son, a Marine serving in Iraq.
"I’d like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," Webb responded, echoing a campaign theme.
"That’s not what I asked you," Bush said. "How’s your boy?"
"That’s between me and my boy, Mr. President," Webb said coldly, ending the conversation on the State Floor of the East Wing of the White House…
That crap used to get you a slap on the back and a drink at the frat house didn’t it Junior? Well…those days are over now…
When the president and vice-president are killed by domestic terrorists (of unknown political identity), a radical leftist army calling itself the Progressive Restoration takes over New York City and declares itself the rightful government of the United States. Other blue states officially recognize the legitimacy of the group, thus starting a second civil war. Card’s heroic red-state protagonists, Maj. Reuben "Rube" Malek and Capt. Bartholomew "Cole" Coleman, draw on their Special Ops training to take down the extremist leftists and restore peace to the nation. The action is overshadowed by the novel’s polemical message, which Card tops off with an afterword decrying his own politically-motivated exclusion from various conventions and campuses, the "national media elite" and the divisive excesses of both the right and the left.
It is chilling to note that this man, who detests homosexuals down to the bedrock of his being, wrote the Hugo Award winning novel Ender’s Game, which as it happens, attempts to elicit sympathy for someone who commits genocide (he didn’t really mean to, you see…) against an alien race that just happens to be called throughout the novel "the buggers". Gosh…I guess I shouldn’t read anything into that. And here he is now, thumping a novel that begins with the premise that liberals and progressives intend to start a civil war. You can read the first few chapters online Here. Have a sample, via Alicublog:
"You look pissed off," said Malich.
"Yeah," said Cole. "The terrorists are crazy and scary, but what really pisses me off is knowing that this will make a whole bunch of European intellectuals very happy."
"They won’t be so happy when they see where it leads. They’ve already forgotten Sarajevo and the killing fields of Flanders."
"I bet they’re already ‘advising’ Americans that this is where our military ‘aggression’ inevitably leads, so we should take this as a sign that we need to change our policies and retreat from the world."
"And maybe we will," said Malich. "A lot of Americans would love to slam the doors shut and let the rest of the world go hang."
"And if we did," said Cole, "who would save Europe then? How long before they find out that negotiations only work if the other guy is scared of the consequences of not negotiating? Everybody hates America till they need us to liberate them."
"You’re forgetting that nobody cares what Europeans think except a handful of American intellectuals who are every bit as anti-American as the French," said Malich.
What the good guys are fighting for is to get the war stopped before it’s fully started. To enable the country to bind its wounds and end this horrible division, so one of the key decisions I made was having Maj. Reuben "Rube" Malek be a true-blue, red-state soldier, but he’s married to a committed blue-stater who is politically active and involved in Congress but is able to speak the language of both sides. She’s a conciliator. In the novel, her sensibility becomes vital to establishing the nature of the resolution, so that we have a happy ending no matter which camp you’re in.
It’s the same way in the game. When you’re fighting, you’re definitely fighting one side against the other. There are situations that you’re only fighting that way because they’re shooting at you. And all along, you want this sucker to end. It’s a war between brothers, it’s a civil war, but our people never forget that they’re brothers with the people on the other side.
If America becomes a place where the laws of the nation declare that marriage no longer exists – which is what the Massachusetts decision actually does – then our allegiance to America will become zero. We will transfer our allegiance to a society that does protect marriage
So much for binding wounds and brotherhood. But it’s not civil war, or genocide for that matter if you thought it was just a game.
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