Orson Scott Card's lessons to be learned from the Newsweek incident

[ghostsofgiants]

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2005-05-15-1.html

So Newsweek prints an uncorroborated allegation about American interrogators flushing Qurans down the toilet in order to get fanatical Muslim prisoners to talk, and there's rioting and death all over the Muslim world.

There are several lessons to be learned from this incident, some trivial, some quite important.

1. The courts have given the news media carte blanche, in the name of the First Amendment -- but the media are no better than government at exercising unchecked power. When it's known that no one can punish you, a certain kind of person stops caring whether he hurts anybody. And such people tend to rise within any organization that doesn't work hard to have a conscience.

Personally, I think there should be legal consequences for editors and publishers and reporters so abysmally selfish and stupid that they would run with a story that they knew would provoke outrage in Muslim lands, without first making sure it was true.

(more...)

Just thought you folks might have some interesting input. (I didn't notice anything on it here, sorry if it's a dupe.)

[Ladyhawk]

1. Um, wasn't it proven that the story was true.

I liked Orson Scott Card's Ender series, but upon further review, I realize that the whole series shows us an author who thinks an awfully lot about manipulating others. For someone who is supposed to be an expert on war and strategy, he is abysmally inept at recognizing the manipulations of the Bush Admin.

[saltpoint]

2. I'm with ya, Ladyhawk.

Loved the ENDER series but the thing that needs flushing down the toilet is Card's right-wing bootlicking for the Bush administration.

[murielm99]

5. Not only his bootlicking, but also his raging homophobia

needs to be flushed.

I am sorry I ever read, let alone bought, his books.

[saltpoint]

8. Yeah, the homophobia is an absurd bias of his, too.

What could turn so talented a mind into such a fearful, unfair mind?

[Ready4Change]

6. My understanding of Card...

Is that he is a major Mormon. Verging on fanatic. Once I realized this, I also realized how strongly it influences his writing, particularly everything he's written since "Ender." In effect, they are all the same book.

So he's easily convinced that, since Bush is claimed to be a religious person, all he does must be ok, and anyone who opposes him is a blasphemer.

It constantly amazes me how an otherwise intelligent person can be totally blinded by a religious facade.

[MuseRider]

3. Well, I could not get

through this. Maybe it is because my eyes hurt or maybe not. To think I used to enjoy his books. Tsk Tsk I hate to think how this ended, I can't imagine it ended well.

I guess I am just being like the folks in "Smartland" because I am definitly talking now without reading the entire thing but then sometimes things are just so bad you can't take them anymore. Shame.

[Extend a Hand]

4. soooo disappointed in Orson Scott Card...

<snip>
So as we watch the Democratic Party flush away democratic processes in order to get correct outcomes, it's worth remembering that we're not so different from "those wacky Muslims."
<snip>

I think he is quite confused about who is flushing away the democratic process...I really can't figure out how he managed to come to this conclusion. :(

[TexasLawyer]

7. General Myers, General Eichenberry and Hamid Karzai

all said that the Newsweek article was NOT connected to the rioting in Afghanistan. In fact, the rioting did not even relate to the Koran-- it was all about reunification issues!!!!

WHY won't the press correct this? It's unbelievable. I wrote LTTEs to 3 major newspapers, but NOTHING on this important information-- from the people in the best position to know what the riots were all about-- ever got aired.

My question is rhetorical, by the way. I know why the truth is not coming out. All these publications are either in bed with the RNC or are gutless wonders that do not want to rock the boat.

[Diogenes2]

9. One of the most ignorant

misinformed, jingoistic pieces of trash I ever tried to read. As a high school essay I might give it a D. As an "essay" by a supposedly "literate" writer of science(?)-fiction, this is pathetic & childish beyond words.

[carpetbagger]

10. He roots for the Sith, as you can see in this link...

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/167/story_16700_2.html