Category: Admin Stuff

Let me try this one more time.

Admin Stuff

Over the past couple of days, there has been a firestorm of comments about my one-liner beneath this cover. The short version: The cover features a robot fencing with a very poorly drawn human — so poorly drawn that he seems physically handicapped. I put “sports fencing” together with “handicapped human,” and came up with the caption, “Robot fencing hits the Special Olympics.”

There was a very reasonable and polite comment made that I might want to reconsider that caption, as it might seem to some that I was making fun of handicapped people.

Were I doing so, I would certainly have reconsidered and rewritten the caption. However, I was not doing such a thing; I was instead pointing out that the ARTIST was unable to draw what was, presumably, supposed to be a fit and hearty human being.  I have in the past pointed out people on covers who look like they’re missing limbs or bear other disfiguring deformities; in none of those cases was I poking fun at handicapped or disfigured people, but instead at artists who couldn’t render what they were trying to render.

It seems to me that the majority of the comments, including that first one, are not speaking from any sense of personal offense, but from a feeling that a third party — in this case, a Special Olympian — might conceivably be offended because of their (incorrect) inference that I was poking fun at the handicapped.  And therein lies the problem: I could conceivably offend someone somewhere with just about ANY criticism or witticism I make about any covers (including, as documented elsewhere, the designers of some of those covers).  While I do not go out of my way to give needless offense, my conception of a fair and civil society includes the following: If I did not intend anything offensive, and if I did not misspeak myself and use words incompetently to state something I did not mean to state, then I should not be held responsible if someone reads my words, infers an intent or meaning that is not the one intended, and takes it upon him/herself to be offended.

I very much appreciate the polite and almost apologetic tone in which the original commenter gave her suggestion (some of the later ones, not so much), and while I originally replied with an off-the-cuff quip about President Obama using a Special Olympics punchline too, I believe that I followed up with a fairly clear explanation of why I feel it unwise to start self-censoring because someone could re-interpret my words to mean something that wasn’t intended and become offended.

And I had really hoped that would be the end of it.

But since it wasn’t — and since some later commenters went far beyond that original commenter, who continued to press her case in thoughtful and agreeable language (a refreshing occurrence on the internet), and instead went back to assuming that any reference to the Special Olympics was an unquestionable slight of the Special Olympics — I feel the need to change tack a bit with the following:

The internet is full of people. People are different. They have different priorities and different sensibilities. I read comics, humor columns, etc. which, while talented, occasionally cross my own personal lines in terms of what makes me uncomfortable. And do you know what I do?

I don’t enjoy that strip, or that column, or that image macro.

And then I go on to the next one.

And that’s it.

Do I ever suggest a retraction? Very very rarely, and only when I feel that there is a factual matter in error.  Do I get indignant that my personal comfort lines have been crossed by someone whose lines are placed differently? I don’t recall ever having done so.  Have I ever complained that something presented might possibly be a source of offense to a third party? Never.  Obviously, if someone’s output is NOTHING but stuff that crosses my lines, I stop reading them — there’s certainly enough internet out there that nothing is essential reading — but if there’s merely an occasional instance in which I think something serious has been treated too lightly, I accept that that’s what happens when people interact with other people.  (Trust me. I’m a Mormon. We’ve gotten really good at this kind of thing in the past couple of years.)

So, to sum up: I did not intend any slight to Special Olympians, or physically handicapped or disfigured or differently abled people of any stripe, nor do I think that my one-liner should be interpreted as being such. Those who choose to be offended by it are, as far as I can tell, re-signifying my words to mean something which I did not mean. And I am not about to surrender the intent of my words. It’s kind of a principle thing.

Now, let’s just get back to making fun of things.

More of the same, sorta.

Admin Stuff

I’m extremely gratified at the exposure that Lousy Book Covers has gotten; in the past two-ish weeks, the number of Tumblr followers has exploded to roughly 30+ times what it was, the site has been filled with comments, and dozens of people have submitted the bad book covers that they have encountered in their own browsing.

I’ve noticed that many of the comments take the form of witty captions, punchlines, etc. to the covers shown, so I thought that those commenters would like PulpoftheDay.com, another site I’ve been running for a dozen years or more. Every day I post the cover of an old pulp magazine or paperback (as the cover would imply), and witty captions are encouraged. In fact, I award a monthly prize — usually an ebook — for the caption which made me chuckle the most. That’s right, YOU CAN WIN FREE STUFF FOR BEING SNARKY.

Thanks, God bless.