122.1 - Clown Award: Orson Scott Card

Clown Award: Orson Scott Card

We start this week with the Clown Award, given for meritorious stupidity.

The big red nose this week goes to well-known sci-fi author Orson Scott Card.

Years ago, I used to read his columns of game reviews in computer magazines. Even if I wasn't interested in the game, which was the vast majority of the time, I still found him to make interesting points about computers and the computer industry. I can only assume that in the years since he has been the victim of some alien brain-eating parasite of a sort he might have featured in a story.

Just last year, Card declared that same-sex marriage is not about rights, it's about "giving the left the power to force anti-religious values on our children." He also insisted that there are no laws discriminating against homosexuals and that homosexuals can change to heterosexuals any time they want - perhaps though some of the "gay conversion therapy" of the type New Jersey, happily, just banned.

Well, now it turns out that Card is as much of a racist as he is a homophobe, as well as deeply, deeply, paranoid.

In a recent column on "The Ornery American," part of, it declares, "the OSC network," which is actually just five different sites Card oversees - grandiose much, Orson? - he describes his scenario of how Barack Obama, who he has already compared to Hitler and described as "the dumbest president in American history," still brilliantly deploys a multi-part, multi-year strategy to become dictator for life.

Apparently, it starts with Michelle Obama being his "designated successor" with any Democratic opponent being "destroyed" by the media, which is apparently in on the plot, which, he says, "is already in place."

Then it gets good. Quoting Card:

Obama will claim we need a national police force in order to fight terrorism and crime. The Boston bombing is a useful start, especially when combined with random shootings by crazy people.

Where will he get his "national police"? The NaPo will be recruited from "young out-of-work urban men" and it will be hailed as a cure for the economic malaise of the inner cities.

In other words, Obama will put a thin veneer of training and military structure on urban gangs, and send them out to channel their violence against Obama's enemies.

Instead of doing drive-by shootings in their own neighborhoods, these young thugs will do beatings and murders of people "trying to escape" - people who all seem to be leaders and members of groups that oppose Obama.

So armies of young black thugs are going to swarm through the streets of the nation, beating and killing in the name of The Great One! Which is Barack Obama - or maybe it's Michelle, his "designated successor." Which makes this whole thing not only racist and paranoid, but sexist, as it requires that Michelle simply be his puppet without a mind of her own.

Scattered through all of this are assertions that, among other things, Bush never abused the Patriot Act, never lied about WMDs in Iraq, that the Wisconsin teachers who opposed Gov. Scott Walkalloveryou's moves to destroy public unions "spewed venom and hatred" because they want to "brainwash America's children," and that Obamacare is actually part of the plot, intended to deny medical care to Obama's opponents.

Of course, at the end he takes the coward's way out: He insists that he doesn't really mean this, it's just "an experiment in fictional thinking" - right before adding "But it sure sounds plausible, doesn't it?" on the grounds that "it fits the facts." That is, he wants to have it both ways, suggesting it's real while denying any responsibility for having done so. Because he's not saying Obama has a plan to become a dictator that involves black gangs swarming the streets - he's like, you know, just askin'.

Is Orson Scott Card a homophobic, sexist, racist, bigoted wacko showing signs of presenile dementia? Hey, I'm just asking.

One thing we don't have to ask about: Orson Scott Card is a clown.

Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/04/orson-scott-card-gay-marriage-amendment-one_n_1478936.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/chris-christie-gay-conversion-therapy-new-jersey-95666.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/15/orson-scott-card-racist-obama_n_3762891.html
http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2013-05-09-1.html