Mark W Tiedemann

Category: culture

Speech, Money, Personhood

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Senator Bernie Sanders is sponsoring a Constitutional Amendment to deny corporations the right to be considered persons. His speech is worth a listen.

What amazes me is that this needs to be explained at all. This is one of those no-brainers that anyone on the street ought to be able to understand without much thought. Obviously a corporation is not a person.

But in the esoteric realm of political philosophy, we entertain all manner of chimera for the purposes of achieving certain ends. What we have demonstrated in the Citizens United case and previous court pronouncements regarding money as speech is that when yo break something down far enough, you find you can reassemble it just about any way you want.…

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Destabilizing The Family

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

This is an unscientific response to a ridiculous claim.  Rick Santorum, who wishes to be the next Bishop In Charge of America (or whatever prelate his church might recognize) recently made the claim that Gay couples are going to destabilize the family in America in order to accommodate their lifestyle.

We’ve all been hearing this claim now for, oh, since gays stopped sitting by and letting cops beat them up on Saturday nights without fighting back.  Ever since Gay Pride.  Even on my own FaceBook page I had someone telling me I was blinded by the “Gay Agenda” and that the country was doomed—that because of the Gay Agenda little children were being taught how to use condoms in school and this—this—would bring us all to ruin.…

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Poll Positions

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Comes a point when it is obvious that one’s sympathies lie in a particular direction, whether we want to admit to them or not.  Politically, I tend to try to find something worthwhile across the Left-Right spectrum.  I am, in some ways, a conservative guy.  I’ve never had much issue with a sensible fiscal conservatism, but it has grown increasingly difficult to find anything supportable in the Republican Party.  The kind of conservatism I found sympathetic at one time is such a minor part of the public face of conservative politics these days as to be almost gone.  It is not enough to say to me “Well, it’s still there, once they get in office that will come to fore.” …

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Payment and Positions

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I have been assiduously working on the rewrite of the book I mentioned in the previous post and not much else has gotten done.  I’m 3/4 through and into the difficult part, where the plot actually veers, and I’ve been thinking about game changers as a result, which brings me in a painful arc to…

Newt Gingrich?  Are you serious?

I have no idea who the Republican nominee will be by the end of August 2012.  It’s too soon to make solid predictions.  One thing has been clear, once again, the sensible candidates will not have a prayer.  (I say that ironically.) …

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National Pathos

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

This will be a short post.  Just a comment or two on the recent national scandal concerning college athletics.  The Penn State incident, resulting in a firing, death threats, a riot, and another investigation has many people scampering about wondering “how could this happen?” and “what do we do now?”

Among the questions being asked, the most relevant is “Why did no one report this?”  There were witnesses, at least one has stated sorrow at not having “done more” and a famous and otherwise well-loved coach has been dismissed as a result of inaction.

Yet the riot that occurred was not about the rapes of minors,  but over the firing of that coach. …

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China Mieville and the Ideology of SF

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Now for something fascinating having to do with writing. I just saw this lecture by China Mieville, who I feel is one of the most interesting writers working today. He’s tackling a subject I’ve chewed over quite a lot—the distinction between SF and Fantasy and the theoretical arguments about SF exceptionalism. I have some quibbles, but I would love to sit down with this guy and hash this through, because, to my ear, he’s exactly where I’ve been in terms of what to look at when talking about this.

 

 

I don’t disagree with a single critical element he brings up—and, as he points out, none of what he brings up is particularly new.…

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Harassment

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Herman Cain is having a problem, and it won’t get any better by telling reporters that he won’t discuss it.

I don’t want to get into a big analytical thing about sexual politics here, but from the descriptions so far of what Cain did, he made an assumption that I think is all too common among men of a certain mindset.  Cain apparently made inappropriate comments to women in the context of a working situation.  I have no doubt he shrugged it off and forgot about it until it came back to bite him and probably wondered what the big deal was all through the negotiations of settlements. …

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A Few Thoughts Concerning Margaret Atwood

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

Actually, just one.  I’d like her to stop trying to be an authority on science fiction.  I haven’t read her new book of essays on the topic, but I’ve heard her in interviews and read some of her thoughts in the past, and based on that she’s pretty much a tourist.  Back when her publisher thought claiming her work was science fiction would hurt her sales, she misunderstood the genre magnificently (“Oh, sci-fi has rockets in it.  I don’t do that.”)  A lot of it reminded me of Susan Sontag’s egregiously off-base attempt to define it.

Of course, being in the same company as Sontag isn’t a bad thing, especially not if you want to remain within the fold of the folks who persistently fail to “get” any kind of genre work. …

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Diagnostic Condemnation

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

The pundits on the Right are agreed—the Occupy Wall Street protesters don’t know what they’re saying.

“They don’t have an alternative. They aren’t even sure what it is they’re protesting.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been hearing this kind of counteroffensive nonargument since I was old enough to understand politics.  What it boils down to is this:

“My car won’t start.”

“Do you know what the trouble is?”

“I turn the key and the motor just turns over and over but it won’t catch and run.”

“You don’t seem to have any understanding what the problem is. Come back when you know what’s wrong, otherwise I can’t fix it for you.”…

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An Age of Wonder and Annoyance

Posted on By Mark Tiedemann

I have two things to talk about that are related by the slenderest of threads. Bear with me.

First I’d like to say something about how marvelous is the age in which we live, at least from the perspective of someone who has now lived in a couple of “ages” since arriving on this planet in 1954.

A short while ago I had lunch. While having lunch I like to watch something, so I popped the DVD of The Right Stuff   into my player and settled back to my roast beef and movie.  While watching, it occurred to me how blase I’ve  become at this technology.…

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