So apparently, the whole \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Demonization of Orson Scott Card\u00e2\u20ac\u009d thing is bugging me more that I realized. It came up on a friend’s feed on Facebook, and I went over and wrote something horribly, amazingly disjoint on the subject. (No link, because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s embarrassing.) I figured I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d take another shot at explaining myself, in case it came up again.<\/p>\n
Firstly, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth mentioning that Card is imperfect, and deserves to be criticized for some of his views. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually important, because if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not willing to enforce a principle defending people you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like, then you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually have principles \u00e2\u20ac\u201d you have sophistry that you trot out in defense of principals.<\/p>\n
(Full disclosure: I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read any Card in about twenty years. At the time, he only seemed able to write the same three stories, over and over again. I have no real clue what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s written since then, except Ender\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Shadow, which supports my critique.)<\/p>\n
Secondly, what got me going was the idea that, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if the wrong people believe something, then what they believe must be wrong.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I can go into the example of what Card believed in detail, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not very important to the discussion. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that Slate presented this belief as obviously wrong because Card believes it. In this manner, they actually treat Card as worse that Hitler, as nobody seriously argues that vegetarianism, animal rights, and conservation are wrong because Hitler supported them.<\/p>\n
(In fact, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more a sign of how messed up Hitler and the Nazis were \u00e2\u20ac\u201d they would do things to Jews that they outlawed doing to animals.)<\/p>\n
And so, extending that thought, this means that an author (Card, in this case) is perfectly capable of doing something right, separate from his beliefs. Just because you disagree with an artist on one point, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean you should discount his work out of hand. This would mean I, as a libertarian, would dismiss Firefly out of hand because Josh Wheedon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s politics run entirely counter to what is presented in that work. And, in this case, a leftist would miss out on Ender\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Game if they judged an author simply by his private beliefs.<\/p>\n
All that said, Firefly and Ender\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Game play fair with the audience. The plots of both go where they need to go, and don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get sidetracked by the authors\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 politics. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not telling you that you should read an author who gets preachy \u00e2\u20ac\u201d those that write \u00e2\u20ac\u0153message\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153advocacy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d fiction generally don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do a very good job, no matter their politics. Avoiding them because they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t write is perfectly fine in my book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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