Entry tags:

books/authors, omg mock people mock, person: neil gaiman, political wank, twitter, wanking inside the house

Tax deductables! Pencil necks! Thieves! HIGH SPEED CAR CHASES!
Well, all right, maybe not high speed car chases. So, the background: last year, Neil Gaiman, author of such lovely things as Neverwhere and the Sandman series etc., was contacted to speak at a library in Minnesota for a hefty speaking fee, which was paid for by a fund which (a) stated any leftover money would be lost if not used, and (b) was also not available for books, salaries, or other useful things. Neil Gaiman did so, and subsequently donated the speaking fee to charities.

All's well that ends well, right? Well, except that Matt Dean, the House Majority Leader, decided it was time to let his long-simmering grudge be aired to the world: 'Dean said that Gaiman, "who I hate," was a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota."'

Neil is... well, he's not well pleased. Nor is his Twitter.

"Sad & funny. Minnesota Republicans have a "hate" list. Like Nixon did. I'm on it. They also don't like capitalism. http://t.co/FObmLGo"

"It's strange watching a grownup high school bully in power. But the bully vocabulary remains the same. http://t.co/FObmLGo"

"And for those curious how and why I made it onto the hate list, what I wrote at the time on my blog. http://bit.ly/lMxsWQ"

"Any nice, sane Minnesota Republicans reading this, please vote for someone who isn't a bully with a hate list next time."

"You can listen to the Stillwater speech that all the Pencil-neck fuss is about at http://bit.ly/k3lA1B (You need to go down to point 2.)"

He also happened to link to Dean's blog, which proceeded to crash. Whoops.

So you'd think that Dean would realize his mistake and apologize, right? Well... sort of. Why?

His mommy made him do it.

The universe collectively facepalms.

(Bonus funny from the comments, courtesy from someone called Lucas: "Do weasel thieves steal just weasels? Or do they also steal ferrets, otters, and wolverines? In the case of the latter, how do they arrange for transportation?")

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	visp 2011-05-06 06:44 am UTC (link)
	I'm not saying he handled the situation very well, but as someone who's lived in a lot of other countries I have a huge pet peeve about Americans automatically assuming that everyone else should know all of America's cultural and historical background. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

sandglass
2011-05-06 07:03 am UTC (link)

Which I totally didn't do. The original statement was crass and inappropriate--making jokes about dead people in interviews is not a good policy, regardless of if you know the history--and his follow up to it was only worse.

Plus, his response implied that he understood enough of the history to know why he wouldn't want to set his story there. He didn't say, "It's set in Britain because I'm not familiar enough with American history", his answer implied knowledge of the history, which he described as, "A few dead Indians." Like other people have said, he's even written books set in America before he said that.

Also, he's British, and the American colonies are also a part of British history. Not that I know how it's taught in Britain, but it's not unreasonable to expect him to have some knowledge. I don't automatically assume everyone should know about Native Americans and American history, but I do think that GNeil deserves blame for making the mistake.

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	napalmnacey 2011-05-06 08:01 am UTC (link)
	Thank you for putting it more eruditely and clearly than I could. My rage got in the way. (Reply to this)(Parent)

sgaana
2011-05-06 09:55 pm UTC (link)

Strawman. This isn't about Americans automatically assuming that everyone else should know all of America's cultural and historical background. This is about assuming that one specific person, Neil Gaiman, should have had ENOUGH knowledge of that specific piece of America's cultural and historical background to not put his foot in his mouth as thoroughly as he did. In the particular case of Neil Gaiman, it is not an unreasonable assumption to make, and has to do in part with the way he presents himself as broadly educated and a researcher into the cultures that he -- yes -- appropriates.

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ruslan
2011-05-06 09:57 pm UTC (link)

I love Gaiman, but that was Not Okay. It would have been inappropriate even if the people he was talking about weren't oppressed. I understand that he didn't consciously mean it quite like that, but was extremely dismissive of a vast and diverse set of cultures and of the people who make up those cultures. It distilled the cultures and history and every NDN life into "a few dead Indians." It's dehumanizing.

If he had said, say, that he didn't want to set it in Germany because there's no one in German graveyards besides a few dead Germans it still would have ticked people off. Think about it.

Also I'm pretty sure he could have inferred the NDN genocide by being even remotely aware of what an American Native is and then not having met a hell of a lot of them around there. And if he is meeting a bunch of NDN folks then he certainly would be informed. I'm not giving him a pass here. It's not okay to make an entire ethnic group feel like shit just because you didn't grow up around them, and if that makes me a self-centered American imperialist, then fine, so be it.

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