Tobias Buckell brought the whole sordid racist rejection letter episode to my attention a couple of days ago. This has apparently decided to become the "Violet Blue" episode for this week, and today, Toby dredges through the sewers of the Asimov's forums to find a few real gems of sexist and racist filth. I hadn't previously been aware that Asimov's hosted forums, and I can't say that this has inspired me to sign up.
Toby does make one important comment, though:
I know this stuff feels tiring, but there are a lot of cool people out there in the blogosphere who are just as annoyed by this. There is value in saying 'yeah, that's uncool to me too.' Let them call you PC Nazis, or call it a witch hunt, but we've been firm and polite, but unyielding in saying 'sheet head' is uncool. That's it.
He's right. Hence this post.
Special note to "Uncle Al": Don't bother. Just move along, and save me the keystrokes that will be required to disemvowel your comment.
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What does it say about me that the first thing I thought when I saw "We don't want to offend the sheet-heads" was the KKK, and that they didn't want to offend the religious right? I guess those would be "pillow-case heads"? Is there an entire bedding set of offensive slurs out there? Are there comforter-heads?
There's a short sharp post on Daniel Holzman's Livejournal about this issue. Look under A quick refresher for the clue-challenged....
Pillow-sham heads of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your dainty-ness!
So I'm not the only one who thought that "sheet head" meant the Klan... I read that and my first thought was "sheet heads? The Klan? Who -cares- if you offend the Klan?"
How dumb do you have to be that you can't even get the slur right? The "sheet heads" in my part of the country use the term "towel heads" - as does Carlos Mencia (who brings Don Rickels' equal opportunity insults into the current century) - because they can't spell islamofascist.
I wouldn't equate this with the Violet Blue thing. This is a blow-up over an ugly ethnic slur. That was a blow-up over prominent blogger egos and commenters who confuse freedom of speech with freedom to say whatever you want wherever you want to.
Excuse me, my bias is showing...
I wouldn't equate this with the Violet Blue thing.
I mean that only in the sense of "the big Internet fracas du jour that is consuming the attention of a bunch of blogs I read."
Over the weekend, it switched to "crackergate," about which the less said the better.