Platner is the Maine senatorial candidate notorious for the Nazi tattoo, and for the debate whether, even though he’s not a Nazi (from what I’ve read), thinking a Nazi tattoo is cool makes him unacceptable. Is he too Nazi adjacent or is this that old bugaboo, a “purity test” that will lock us out of the seat? I’ve heard different assessments on the left but as I’m not a Maineman and won’t be voting I don’t have to figure out who’s right. I’d definitely a prefer a candidate without Nazi tattoos but I don’t find him as horrific as I did Aaron Coleman.
That said, it’s worth nothing that some people are rushing to support Platner in the wake of an NYT story about his personal history — drinking, womanizing, adultery (according to his wife they’re working through it) and often something of a dick. Though not, according to his lovers, a monster or a rapist. The creepy thing is that some pundits on the left think this is awesome because Platner is a Real Man. He represents “a rejection of Dem HR lady politics” according to Matt Stoller. The Argument lists multiple other examples of pundits explaining that if you want a flesh-and-blood human being to run for office, expect them to have messy lives: “Cheating isn’t a moral failing we can forgive; it’s a mark of rugged authenticity, and any qualms about infidelity are the prissy reflexes of an out-of-touch elite.”
Well, no, it isn’t. As the post says, it reflects that in most elections we have limited choices; someone who might turn down an adulterous candidate may not have a better option. It doesn’t mean people who support Platner are drawn by his cheating machismo. And it’s telling that like Stoller, one Ken Klippenstein sneers that the alternative to Platner is “the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council and have lived every waking moment accordingly. I call them smoothgroins: real-life barbie dolls with smooth plastic where a sexual organ should be.” It must astonish Klippenstein that not everyone who stays faithful to their spouse is devoid of a sex drive.
As Liberal Currents puts it after posting more of Klippenstein’s sneering, Klippenstein’s declaration fidelity is for wimps and asexuals “is a puerile and chauvinistic sentiment. It’s the sort of high school cafeteria misogyny you’d get from an 80s sex comedy. It’s derogatory to women, to the people offended by Platner’s long list of misconduct, and to politicians Klippenstein simply sees as weak and unmanly.” And then Klippenestein posted photos of the women in the race — wow, these ugly old broads obviously have no sex scandals (that’s an interpretation, not Klippenstein’s statement).
This comes off as another version of the toxic masculinity stereotypes Dr. Nerdlove complains about: obviously you can’t expect a genuine authentic man to behave decently. We can’t expect them to be perfect, whether they’re in politics or not. However there’s a world of difference between “not perfect” and “isn’t a decent person.” Nor is a person who tries to live a moral life and fails the same as a serial philandering hypocrite (that’s a general observation, not targeted at Planter).
Like I said, Platner’s fate is up to Maine voters, not me. But these excuses for his conduct come off worse than anything I’ve heard Platner say in his own defense.
One aspect of my Southern Discomfort research I didn’t include in the online bibliography — parapsychology and related pseudoscience. Not that my magic is based on psi powers or the like, but the occultish beliefs of the early 1970s form a constant element of the background. The reason it’s not in the bibliography is that I was around in the 1970s and I was fascinated by that stuff. I didn’t need much reference reading.
As Thomas Hine puts it in The Great Funk, the dysfunctional aspects of the 1970s fueled an enthusiasm for trying all kinds of new things. New fashions. Radical experiments in TV, such as All in the Family. Jim Starlin’s mind-blowing Warlock run. Cults. And an explosion of interest in what would later be called New Age stuff, though a lot of it started in the late 1960s.
Erich Von Daniken told us aliens arrived on Earth in the Chariots of the Gods. The Bermuda Triangle became the subject of multiple movies. John Keel proposed UFOs, bigfoot and the Mothman were other-dimensional Strange Creatures From Time and Space. Serious physicists looked at whether quantum entanglement and other strange effects could explain psi-powers — if two particles could interact at a distance when they have absolutely no contact or connection, is telepathy or TK out of the question? As it turned out, this approach didn’t work better than any other effort to prove psi-powers are a thing.
Did you know plants can understand what we say and react when we talk about trimming them? At least according to Cleve Backster, an interrogator who tried hooking plants up to polygraphs — a notoriously unreliable device — and concluded they were conscious, intelligent, and reacted to our words.
I was way into all of that as a tween. Eventually I accepted there was no real evidence for any of that; heck, even at the time I could see holes in von Daniken’s arguments. Still, when I was 14 it was all incredibly cool, like a scientific revolution happening in front of me. I wasn’t alone in that feeling and there’s lots of stuff I haven’t even mentioned — Carlos Castaneda’s mysticism, reprints of James Churchward’s books about the lost continent of Mu — that I didn’t get into but others did. Lots of characters in Southern Discomfort are into this stuff too.
It’s known that Pharisee County is unusual. Sherman’s army marched around and missed them. Stories of night riders entering Pharisee and never returning home. A major snowstorm in early 1973 didn’t touch the county. And kudzu has never gotten a foothold there. Stories of the Pharisee Mystery began building up in the 1960s and as more newcomers move into the area, they’ve gained strength. And even a new name, “the Pharisee Triangle.” The Bermuda Triangle name wasn’t as common in 1973 as it would become but it was in circulation.
High-schooler and science nerd Susan Moreno is convinced the elves Olwen and Aubric MacAlister are really aliens straight out of Von Daniken (she has theories for a lot of the other weirdness as it develops). Maria makes reference to plant consciousness in one scene where the plants in a public park are trying to trap her.
There’s talk of tesseracts, dimensional rifts, supposed psychic Uri Geller. None of it essential but it does capture some of the flavor of the era. And that’s part of the point of writing historical fantasy.
Covers by Samantha Collins (top) and Jim Starlin. All rights to images remain with current holders.
That was Jamelle Bouie’s argument, quoting Lincoln in a recent column: “‘Broken eggs cannot be mended,’ Lincoln observed in a reply to August Belmont, a leading Democratic Party organizer and financier in New York, who had forwarded, to the president, the comments of an angry Louisiana slaveholder who wanted restoration of the Union ‘as it was.’ Not much later, Lincoln repurposed the quip in different form. ‘Broken eggs can never be mended,’ he wrote in reference to the fate of slavery as the war carried on, ‘and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken.’ Fort Sumter broke the Union and with it, slavery. Whatever the nation was or would be in the aftermath of the war, neither the nation nor its Constitution would protect, support or sanction human bondage.”
Bouie’s point is that if Democrats secure power in 2026 and then 2028, they need to do more than undo the Toddler’s wreaked havoc. Republicans have been pushing the restoration of white male supremacy and a presidency that’s truly imperial, free of any constraints (unless the president is a Democrat). That gives them a vision of the future, even if it’s an ugly one that reduces America to a third-world banana-republic oligarchy.
The Democrats, Bouie says, are working on plans for 2029 and the ideas are good: “break up utility monopolies, support child-rearing, regulate social media and artificial intelligence, and curtail corporate abuse. But none of this reflects or represents a far-reaching or comprehensive idea of what the nation might be. There is no coherent worldview at work, nor does there seem to be any inkling or awareness of the obstacles — structural, political and institutional — that will confront, and likely stymie, all but the most threadbare and ineffectual Democratic agendas for governing.”
Bouie looks at the Republicans’ radical vision for Reconstruction as a template. Paul Campos says Reconstruction’s ultimate failure should be a warning: “It’s a platitude that the confederacy lost the war but won the peace. That platitude is also largely though not completely accurate. The attempt to roll back that latter victory that continues to be captured however vaguely by the phrase ‘the 1960s’ is a battle that needs to be fought again and again. America is now a white supremacist plutocracy; it has been and can be something else. That the latter sentence gives the entire Democratic consultant class a heart attack doesn’t make it less true.”
I don’t think that means concrete proposals like “curtail corporate abuse” are bad — specific plans for improving things, along with a grand vision, matter a lot. People who may not be into grand visions may still support programs that make their lives better. And definitely being against the Toddler, Republicans and the Heritage Foundation is good: show what they’re advocating and supporting, call them out and support the opposite. As Masha Gessen says of Orban’s defeat in Hungary, “previous opposition politicians had described Orban’s regime as “corrupt,” a relatively mild term suggesting some aberration from the government’s intended function. Peter Magyar made no such accommodation. Borrowing a term coined by Balint Magyar, he has called it a mafia state — a fundamentally criminal enterprise. Third lesson: Don’t mince words.”
I agree with Bouie, structural reform is a necessity: blocking the Supreme Court’s increasing support for white supremacy and its double-standard regarding Democratic and Republican policies, for instance (if you think the Toddler’s immunity from prosecution for “official acts” will apply to a Democrat — well, the Supreme Court will be amazingly flexible in defining “official”). The often proposed idea of adding Puerto Rico and DC as states would be good. There are other problems which will be tougher. As Campos points out, rural, sparsely populated Red states exert influence all out of proportion to their population because they still get two senators. I have no idea how we deal with that; I’ve not heard anyone who does.
I doubt there’s any reform that can neutralize the anti-democratic forces for good but if it takes them, say, 30 years to regain their current clout, that’s 30 years we can be thinking up further moves. As Bouie says, however, the opposition to radical positive change is huge. I don’t see having a vision will change that.
As far as a grand vision, here’s one: full equality for all: women, LGBTQ people, POC, non-binary, the disabled. immigrants and anyone else I’ve forgotten to list. Which will require an active commitment to change society and make it more equal; the Roberts Court’s position that they oppose any action to fight racism because anti-racism is racist is bullshit. Before the children of slaveowners and the children of slaves sit down together, we have to work to level the playing field they’re sitting on.
Another suggestion: end rape. As long as men can and do rape women with impunity there is no true equality. And I still think the words from Micah “everyone shall sit out under his vine and his fig tree and none shall make them afraid” could be a good road map (regardless of gender, obviously). I’m not as sure as Bouie that a big vision is necessary but it can have positive results. Framing these things as the end game shapes how we proceed forward and generates new ideas. Working towards them can produce good results; even cutting the number of rapes in half would be a blessing.
However…. having typed all that I find I’m also slightly annoyed. It feels like the same thing that happens time and again when a Democrat replaces a Republican administration. Republicans run up the red ink, deregulate disastrously and make things worse. Then the Democrats have to clean up the mess while simultaneously finding ways to improve on the status quo. And do it while bringing the budget back into balance because both Republicans and the media will suddenly discover reckless spending is a major problem. Biden did a lot of good work and got little credit for it. Given the constraints on him (Republican Supreme Court, hostile media) I’m not sure how much of a new Reconstruction he could have accomplished or whether there was much voter support for reconstructing — though the DOJ going after the Toddler for J6 and any other crimes would have been a good step.
I do think there might be more interest in radical change now. As one piece from The Bulwark suggests, swing voters are vacillating between “change” and “burn it all down” (I have not read the whole article yet so I cannot comment on its ideas beyond that). Of course the flip side to that is that, I don’t believe for a minute that everyone is enthused about radical change; lots of people would probably prefer specific concrete improvements to some grand reshaping, even if it’s necessary. Whatever reforms, sweeping or careful, that the Dems come up with, it won’t satisfy everyone — as witness Bouie’s dissatisfaction with those proposals he mentioned.
We’re a lot less united on the future we want than Republican fascists are. Repubs are united in their desire to annihilate us; as Bouie’s argument shows, we’re not united the same way. I think most of us agree stopping Republicans is essential but we don’t agree on whether “Republicans are evil” is the primary message or “We’re going to fix things” or “we’ll burn it all down and start fresh and better.” And, of course, calls for radical change guarantee the media will freak. Despite their supposed radical elitist leftism, they’d have freaked if the Toddler had been indicted for J6; they’ll probably do the same if it happens after 2028 (“Democrats criminalize policy differences! Are Republicans right about weaponized justice?”).
Take my talk of full equality. A lot of the media (and people in general) suffer from the delusion equality is not a midpoint (between white supremacy and black supremacy, between patriarchal tyranny and matriarchal tyranny) but the most extreme option possible, which makes its supporters radicals extremists. Why not compromise? Find a midpoint between the extremes of white male supremacy and equality? The right agrees not to lynch anyone, black Americans settle on “not second class citizens but for now we’ll be a little less than first class”? Then we’ll have peace and unity!
There will also be endless arguments in our big tent that even if the policies are good, we’re doing liberalism wrong. Not extreme enough. Not centrist enough. Not appealing to Republican voters. Focusing on the wrong issues. I read an argument on FB recently that lecturing a struggling POC trying to support a family about how they need to respect trans pronouns is a losing strategy. The “change or burn it down” article similarly says responding to anti-trans bullshit makes Dems look like their priorities are those of out-of-touch upper-class liberals not caring about anything but niche issues.
Neither argument advocated throwing trans people under the bus but they both leave me uncomfortable. The idea that Dems should let Republicans rant and vent trans hate because they’re shooting themselves in the foot (at least outside red states) — sorry, that’s wrong. Uncontested it normalizes that anti-trans discrimination is an unremarkable, acceptable position. Even if opposing that is not the center of the campaign, we need to stand up for equality. As for the FB argument — is anyone actually doing what the OP complained about? There is a large difference between a candidate supporting trans rights and using people’s preferred pronouns and lecturing the poor and downtrodden that this should be their number one issue; as the post doesn’t offer any examples of the latter, I suspect the people saying this only exist in the poster’s imagination. As someone put it in a recent Lawyers, Guns and Money comment, Democrats aren’t just fighting Republicans they’re fighting the imaginary Dems in people’s heads.
Fixing this country will take a shit-ton of work, whatever the right path is. If we want to live out our lives in a decent nation, and enable other Americans to do the same, it has to be done.
Last month the Genre Book Club’s topic was cozies, which got me to read THE INNOCENCE OF FATHER BROWN by G.K. Chesterton. As I thought, reading this shows how much the style of cozies has changed over the years. Modern cozies like From Beer to Eternity have big supporting casts and play up community and setting. This short-story collection has two recurring characters — Father Brown and the thief turned detective Flambeau — and no fixed setting. The 1970s Father Brown TV series did likewise; the more recent TV show has a much larger supporting cast.
Chesterton is a frustrating man, capable of great insight, great turns of phrase (“Where do you hide a dead leaf? In a dead forest.”) and great bigotry. His anti-Semitism doesn’t figure into these stories but there’s a discussion in “The Wrong Shape” of how all Eastern art is unnatural, wrong and inherently creepy.
At the same time, Chesterton’s storytelling and sense of humor are otherwise delightful. In the opening story, “The Blue Cross,” Flambeau — still a thief — assumes this middle-aged, benign, obviously harmless priest will be easy prey. He’s genuinely shocked to discover that by listening to criminals make confession Father Brown is fully informed about the ways of the underworld (“You — you know about the spiked bracelet?”). Chesterton has a keen understanding of human nature (part of what makes “The Invisible Man” so good) when he’s not blinded by his own biases. Obviously this won’t work for everyone but it still has enough charm I’m glad I reread it.
BLACK MAX Volume III by Frank Pepper, Ken Mennell and Alfonso Font wraps up the saga of WW I ace Maximilian von Klorr who in V1 created a squadron of giant bats, obedient to his every command — now nothing will stop “Black Max” from driving the Allies out of Germany! Alas, British pilot Tim Wilson did indeed stop him, becoming Max’s hated nemesis, a clash that continued on into Volume 2.
V2 worked some changes on the formula and this volume goes even further afield (as I mentioned writing about Von Hoffman’s War, that sort of soft reboot is common enough in British comics). First Black Max strikes an alliance with Gratz, a German scientist with superweapons and an agenda of his own. After Max eventually falls into British hands, he strikes a new alliance with a subterranean race of bat people. It’s a bit too off-brand to be peak Black Max but it still works, though the continued lack of any female characters is not a plus. While the ending leaves the series open for further adventures (if you don’t see the body, they’re not dead) I’m not sorry it ended here,
In WHO COOKED ADAM SMITH’S DINNER? A Story of Women and Economics, Katrine Marçal takes issue with Smith’s explanation for how self-interest moves the world. According to Smith, the grocer and the butcher put dinner on his table because he pays them. This ignores that his widowed mother, who lived with him, cooked Smith’s dinner and otherwise cared for him his entire life.
This leads into a general discussion of how women’s economic contributions — caregiving, cooking, cleaning — are undervalued, if not invisible. This in turn makes it easy to undervalue women and delegate anything too soft and nurturing for ruthless capitalism as women’s work. It’s an interesting book, though some reviews say modern economics is better on these issues than Marçal claims.
Black Max art by Font; all rights to images remain with current holders
MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG (2025) is a film of the recent revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “cult flop,” currently streaming on Netflix. It stars Jonathan Groff as Franklin (lead character) with Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez as Charlie and Mary, the Second and Third of Franklin’s Three Musketeers (Iit’s not the production below but I like the image better).
When the film starts in 1976, Franklin is a successful Hollywood producer. Mary’s still his friend, a once successful writer drowning her writer’s block in booze. Charlie no longer talks to Franklin. Neither does Franklin’s ex-wife. Or his mentor. Or his son (it appears he doesn’t do much to fix any of this). How did he wind up alone in a room full of shallow Hollywood types, cheating on his wife with his latest star. To find out we bounce back in time, then further, then further still to see how Franklin — once an idealist and a gifted writer — kept succumbing to temptation (sex, money, fame) and selling out both his principles and the people in his orbit. It’s based on a George Kaufman/Moss Hart play which from synopses I’ve read sounds even darker. This production is well done; Radcliffe isn’t a great singer but he’s a good enough actor to make up for it. “I think Charlie and I will handle success very well — look how well we’ve handled failure!”
THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES was a local production performing Oscar-winning songs from movie musicals, plus several from the 1230s before Best Song was a hit. Shows my taste that the only one I haven’t heard was “Toot Toot Tootsie!” about a young romeo bidding his girlfriend(s) goodbye, though I’ve heard the opening lines often enough. A lot of fun with the cast putting their heart and soul into the numbers.
I wouldn’t have gone to THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 (2026) except LeAnn was a big fan of the original (we were both startled to realize it’s now 20 years old) — as it turned out, despite “meh” critical reviews, we both enjoyed it.
In the opening scene, Andy (Anne Hathaway) is now a superstar journalist; no sooner does she win a prestigious award than her company downsizes her and her coworkers as part of a cost-cutting move. By a happy coincidence, Runway, the magazine she briefly worked at under tyrannical Miranda Priestley (Meryl Streep) is in deep shit due to running an article on a fashion brand that turns out to be made with child labor. Will putting a respected journalist in as editor turn things around? Will it help Andy’s career revive? Are the trends in legacy media — everything digital, serious news in decline — too deep to overcome? Or is it possible office backstabbing is the real threats?
This has a good feel for the plight of modern journalism and it’s also fun — in some ways more than the first one, as Andy’s better equipped to hold her own with Miranda. Solidly cast with Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh and Lucy Liu in supporting roles. No regrets about seeing this in the theater. “Stockholm called and they want their syndrome back.”
For several months now I’ve been enjoying a respite from my chronic insomnia. As I know from experience, sooner or later my body resets and the start of summer is often when it happens. Sure enough I began waking up stupid early this week. Not disastrous, as I can write in the middle of the night as well as in the daylight, then catch up with a nap. Or two. I’d prefer solid sleep but I can deal with working while the city sleeps.
The stiffness is harder to explain, hitting my shoulders/back of the neck and my hips but nothing in between. I suspect it’s a mix of lifting the portable air conditioners we used last week when the HVAC went down with sitting in some bad positions while working and not getting up to stretch enough. When the work is going well, that’s an easy mistake to make (“Just fifteen more minutes, I’ll have this draft done …”). However I’m back on my regular stretching routines after feeling two hot to do them last week so that should help over time. I can already feel a difference in my posture and sense of balance.
The stupid mistake? This morning when I was giving Trixie her post-walk treat I meant to give Plush Dudley a lower fat one; he’s older and his pancreatitis is much more reactive to fat than hers. Oops — I handed it to him without thinking. Hopefully after several weeks of low fat food it won’t have a significant effect. Then again, I may be up early shoving beshitted sheets in the washing machine. Send positive thoughts, please!
Most of my work involved writing about local hurricane preparedness for The Local Reporter. It’s a good article, though not up on the website yet. I also worked on an update about the Chapel Hill Library budget (ditto). That took up a couple of days. I also redrafted Honey on the Grave based on the feedback I got from the writing group. I started the next draft of Die and Let Live but it didn’t get far. I did some work on Savage Adventures and more work on prepping Southern Discomfort for release. I got a proof copy from Amazon’s print-on-demand service but haven’t had a chance to judge how the cover looks yet.
And that’s it. Not spectacular, but a vast improvement after the previous couple of sweltering weeks.
All rights to poster image remain with current holders.
As Paul Krugman explained recently, our healthcare system is a mess. Many countries have functioning government-run healthcare in various forms so there’s no risk of becoming paupers when coping with a medical crisis. Multiple efforts to improve things over the years have run aground on the medical world’s opposition, Republicans distaste for helping the poor and a racist distaste for doing anything that helps POC. Currently Republicans are doing their best to make it worse by whittling away at Obamacare.
And then there’s RFK Jr., the anti-vax crackpot currently running federal health policy. Some examples:
“The CDC was told to take down a webpage that explained how people who have multiple sexual partners can reduce their risk of contracting mpox. Asked why, an HHS spokesperson said it “was not medically accurate” and didn’t “align with Administration priorities.” Given Kennedy’s history of bullshit, I don’t believe that for a minute.
“Key officials responsible for leading US research on infectious disease threats have been barred from speaking directly with the World Health Organization — effectively shutting some of them out of the global discussions on virus outbreaks, according to documents and multiple sources who spoke to CNN.”
Kennedy has extended legal protection for research on hantavirus vaccines but “only for use in passengers possibly exposed to the Andes virus on the cruise ship M/V Hondius and in people who have had close contact with those who were on board.” Brian Christine, one of the leading administration officials dealing with the outbreak “was an Alabama-based urologist who specialized in penile implants. He has limited experience in public health and is known for his far-right views and conspiracy theories. He stated that the Covid pandemic led to a broader government conspiracy over control of people, compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany, and downplayed the significance of vaccines in stopping the pandemic.”
“Mr. Kennedy is spearheading an intense push, across health agencies under his purview, for government scientists and federal data contractors to examine his long-held theory that vaccines are helping to fuel an epidemic of chronic disease“
“It’s now apparently received dogma in MAGAland, in the face of literally all scientific evidence, that the Covid vaccine “didn’t work,” and also killed lots of healthy young people. Again both these beliefs are utterly irrational, and in addition they treat basically the only positive accomplishment of the first Trump administration as a total disaster.”
Let’s not forget the Toddler in Chief; “Every person around is gonna have autism. That’s what’s happening. What is this thing that’s happening?” he went on. “It’s spiked so much. Anything having to do with medical, I always bring in autism.” Yeah, it’s gibberish but I’m sure it adds fuel to the fire for his worshippers. As will his claim babies get a big glass of 88 vaccines.
“The Trump administration has announced a plan to kill Biden-era drinking water limits on four Pfas “forever chemicals”, and to delay the implementation of standards for two other compounds.” That Kennedy is all-in on this is revealing — while I think of him as a health crackpot true believer, he has no problem not pushing for an end to environmental poisons (one of his supposed beliefs) when it’s politically inconvenient.
The United Kingdom has imposed a phased tobacco ban: if you’re too young to buy tobacco products now, you can never legally buy them. In the US, by contrast, a vaping lobbyist met with the Toddler and now the FDA is greenlighting fruit-flavored vapes, which are seen as more appealing to underage smokers. I’m sure they’ll hack away at more anti-smoking regulations if they get the chance as long as the bribery money keeps flowing. Kennedy’s chief spokesperson resigned over the issue: “he warned that authorizing flavored e-cigarettes would draw more children into vaping and increase their risk for a number of health issues, from addiction to cancer.”
They’re making America sicker — and ironically it’s right-wing Republican voters who suffer the most.
It’s Pride Month. While the Republicans remain committed to treating LGBTQ Americans as the spawn of Satan, particularly trans people, there’s plenty of people still ready to celebrate.
Wisconsin stands by its ban on ex-gay torture, though the hate group seeking to overturn the ban is suing. Given the recent Supreme Court decision, I’m not optimistic though ban supporters say they’re on solid legal ground. Even if they’re not, forcing the other side to fight for their hate is a good thing.
Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles celebrated Pride Month by declaring homosexuality is unAmerican. This drew enough criticism he retracted it, and blamed it on one of his staff (I am unconvinced). He’s now getting flak from his own side for not being homophobic enough.
None of this makes the threat to LGBTQ rights go away. The Republican Party is committed to destroying their rights. But it’s worth remembering the homophobes are a pissed-off minority and growing smaller, though no less vicious, every year.
In The Hollywood History of the World, historical novelist George Macdonald Fraser (no relation) looks at historical movies and at one point discusses critics who have no idea of history. One review of the movie Shalako scoffed at Sean Connery’s accent — seriously were we supposed to believe there were Scots running around the Old West? Yes, actually, there were.
This is a problem writers deal with a lot, particularly if they’re writing historical fiction: readers “know” the history and get thrown when their confronted with the real one. Case in point, some years back I was reading Southern Discomfort to a couple of beta readers. In one of the early chapters, FBI Agent Rachel Cohen is interviewing local resident Liz Mitchell about events in Pharisee. Among the books on Liz’s shelves is The Andromeda Strain. My beta readers reaction: wrong! Your book is set in 1973 and Michael Crichton wasn’t writing that long ago, was he?
He was, of course. But I imagine if they don’t think so, some of my readers may likewise think it’s a mistake. However I will take that chance (it’s not an essential detail to the story but I like it).
Another reader objected when I had a character reading “some comic book about the Black Panthers” — meaning the beginning the “Panther’s Rage” arc in Jungle Action. My reader pointed out the cover date is September of 1973 and my story’s back in May. I explained that cover dates back then were invariably several months after the publication date, to keep retailers yanking them off the spinner racks at the end of the month. Apparently this is not as well known as when I was a kid. Since I really like that detail, I won’t be changing it either. Hopefully readers will still be engaged, even if they think I’m wrong and I’m not there to explain.
