Can you guess who said these things?

Mouthwash

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The following are all quotes on various political and social topics by a certain American public figure. Can you guess who it is without looking at the answer (or Googling the quotes)? I think posters here will find this person's identity... surprising.

Spoiler On labor unions :
Much of what we're proud of in America today -- yes, even conservatives -- was accomplished by the courage, vision, and determination of Progressives from the late 1800s and early 1900s.

That was a very different time. Children routinely labored long days for pathetic pay, women couldn't vote and were limited in many other ways, the Jim Crow laws in the South, not to mention lynchings, were undoing every speck of progress that the Civil War and Reconstruction had brought to the former slaves.

Workers endured terrible conditions and starvation wages -- and if they tried to strike, the government used police and National Guard forces to protect the even hungrier men and women who crossed the picket lines to take their jobs and their wages.

Meanwhile, with no income tax, the most prosperous members of the ownership class had no limits on their acquisition and display of wealth. This is when the "summer cottages" of Newport, Rhode Island, were built -- summer homes that were filled with the expensive relics of Europe, all so the rich could have a lovely place beside Narragansett Bay to hobnob with the same people they saw all the time in New York City the rest of the year.

The "business cycle" had not yet been tamed, so that every decade (or less) there was another financial "panic" that led to business failures, layoffs, and drastic wage cuts that the working class could not survive.

But these very conditions led to powerful movements that later were lumped together under the name "progressive," though they rarely cooperated. The Knights of Labor set the tone for the whole era. The first federation of labor, the Knights admitted workers of every race and national origin; they admitted women workers; and they were determined to stand together to gain the right to unionize and force the factory owners to pay them enough to live.

Between the government and the owners, the Knights were eventually broken up, but new labor unions formed to take their place and continue part of the fight, at least. Now blacks, foreigners, and women were excluded, but in the long run, the union movement brought benefits to all. As they grew in political power, they began to achieve vital rights, like the right to organize and exist as unions -- and the minimum wage.

It's almost laughable to hear the arguments -- often made by very smart people -- against the minimum wage. "It eliminates entry-level jobs," we're told. But in that era, the minimum wage made it so that employer could no longer cut wages below the subsistence level in order to sell their goods at a lower rate. It meant that if a man had a job at all, he could earn enough money that his wife and children wouldn't starve.

The minimum wage made it possible for families to survive without putting their children out to work -- or breaking up the family because they couldn't feed them all. Nobody was worried then about whether teenagers wouldn't be able to find food service jobs -- the minimum wage and the right to strike brought workers out of desperate poverty that periodically dipped into famine, and started them on the road to entering the middle class.

And it can be argued that the melding of the working class with the middle class, owed to the unions and the minimum wage, is the foundation of American prosperity. Since car companies could no longer compete by cutting salaries, for instance, Henry Ford competed by raising wages while increasing worker productivity, his goal being to make cars that his own workers could afford to buy.

In other words, the laboring class was given a handhold on the American dream of freedom and prosperity.

Spoiler On African-American linguistics and culture :
John McWhorter's new book Talking Back, Talking Black: Truths About America's Lingua Franca returns McWhorter to his roots as a public figure. A serious linguist working in creoles and pidgins, he first came to prominence when he refuted some of the extravagant claims about Ebonics in Oakland, California, in the 1990s. Now he tackles the whole issue of how American Blacks talk.

Is Black speech just bad or broken standard American English? No. It's a genuine dialect, with complex grammatical devices that standard American English doesn't have -- as well as simplifications, which are already the hallmark of English.

......

Blacks need to read it so they recognize that when they "talk Black" among themselves, they aren't speaking bad English, they're using the valid dialect that marks them as insiders in their own community.

Yes, for purposes of career advancement in many fields, it's useful to also learn how to use standard American English, just as immigrants benefit from learning it. But American Blacks should no more abandon, suppress, or demean Black English or the accompanying Blaccent than immigrants from other lands need to forget or hide from the native language of their forebears.

Of all Americans, White Southerners should understand this. The various southern accents (from the Appalachian twang to the tidewater drawl) all sound stupid to outsiders, so that many or most southerners regard it as part of their education to learn to speak so that nobody even suspects they're from the South.

But, as I learned from a Southern girl I knew in college, "The minute I get home to where people talk right, I drop right back into my native speech." In American life, in order to get ahead and get along, it's valuable to be multilingual -- which includes learning how to use different accents and dialects accurately and fluently.

McWhorter shows how the diglossia of American Blacks is a complete answer to the frequent comment: "Well, you couldn't talk that way in a job interview." Blacks don't need to be told that, says McWhorter -- they already know.

American Blacks engage in code-switching all the time. Most Blacks with jobs work in places where there are few (if any) other Blacks. They immediately learn to put on their Standard American speech when they get to work and use it throughout the day.

......

Code-switching is a part of the lives of American Blacks, and they don't need White people to tell them about it. What they need is a chance to unwind every day among people who speak the same native language.

If White people wonder why Blacks segregate themselves residentially or, on high school and college campuses, at the cafeteria table, part of the reason may be the simple comfort and rest of being among speakers of their native language.

......

Anybody who thinks that Blacks speak "broken" English doesn't know what broken language sounds like. Blacks in America have more control over their grammars and accents as they switch from code to code than any but a handful of American Whites.

Hispanics, by the way, do similar things, especially second-generation Hispanic-Americans, but the fundamental difference is this: Nobody thinks Spanish is "broken English." It's another language with a history as old as our own.

The effort to elevate Ebonics to a level parallel with Spanish or other languages-of-origin is perfectly understandable, though it's also completely wrong. Black English is not based on African, particularly Bantu, grammars or vocabulary. It is based on English as it was bent to accommodate their ancestors' inability to produce some of the sounds of English.

Far from being a broken language, what Blacks speak now is a powerful dialect of American English. You can't learn it from the criminal street dialect of Blacks in crime shows, largely because most of that is criminal argot rather than Black speech, and it's mostly based on other crime shows rather than actual Black Dialect.

Nor are we hearing authentic full-on Black English when we listen to comedy performances by most Black comics. They emphasize the accent, but only rarely drop into the actual dialect.

So even as more and more Whites learn to imitate some intonations and vocabulary of television and comedian Black dialect, it would be wise for us to remember that as White people, we will never hear full-on Black Dialect often and deeply enough for us to learn it.

This is not because Blacks are trying to exclude us; quite the opposite, they are trying to include us by modifying their speech quite deliberately so as not to say things in ways that they know we could not possibly understand. They're being polite to the person who doesn't speak the language.

Spoiler On media portrayal of LGBT people :
I had a wonderful time watching [Mamma Mia!].

Except for the appalling moment when Colin Firth's character suddenly reveals himself to be gay. No, it's not because I'm anti-gay. It's because they trivialize and ridicule him and homosexuality. His developing relationship with a gay Greek man is never shown or hinted at -- it is revealed only as a punch line. As a joke. It's a slap in the face to all gay people.

Everybody else's yearnings, everybody else's personal agonies, everybody else's love story is worth at least a few moments of screen time. But homosexuality exists in this movie only to be laughed at. It's as if they're saying that the feelings of gay people are amusing, whereas the feelings of heterosexuals are important and deep and meaningful.

Their treatment of their one gay character is as appallingly hypocritical as J.K. Rowling's announcement that Dumbledore is gay. Instead of making us know and understand the character as a gay man, we are slapped with it at the end, as if being gay were just an afterthought.

......

Don't these writers actually know any gay people? I mean know them, as friends, as family members, as colleagues? I can't believe they do. Because if they did, they could never treat their gay characters with such contempt.

Spoiler On immigration :
We Americans, what exactly did we do to earn our prosperity, our freedom? Well, for most of us, what we did was: be born.

Yeah, we work for our living and pay our taxes and all that, but you know what? I haven't seen many native-born American citizens who work as hard as the Mexican-born people I see working in minimum-wage jobs in laundries and yard services and intermittent subcontracting projects and other semi-skilled and unskilled positions.

I have no idea which (if any) of the people I see doing this work are legals and which are illegals -- but that's my point. Latin American immigrants, as a group, are hard-working, family-centered, God-fearing people who contribute mightily to our economy.

......

"But they come here and commit crimes and live off of our welfare system!"

Wait a minute. Who is "they"? All of the illegal immigrants?

Only a certain percentage of them. But when we round up illegal immigrants, do we make the slightest effort to distinguish between those who commit crimes here, those who scam the system to get welfare, and those who are working hard and living by all the rules?

No. We send them all home. There is, under present law, no special treatment for illegal immigrants who, during their time in the U.S., work hard and don't take anything from anybody without paying for it. No special consideration for those who live in shockingly desperate poverty here in the United States so they can send most of their pitifully low earnings home to their families in Mexico.

And yet most of the illegal immigrants commit no crimes, but instead live frugally and work hard. In fact, I dare say that many illegal immigrants work harder and obey our social rules more faithfully than a good many citizens whose right to live within our borders is unquestioned.

And if all you can say to that is, "It doesn't matter, send them all home, give them no hope of citizenship because we don't want to reward people for breaking the law to enter our country," then here's my answer to you:

Let's apply that standard across the board. No mercy. No extenuating circumstances. No sense of punishment that is proportionate to the crime. Let's handle traffic court that way.

The penalty for breaking any traffic law, from now on, is: revocation of your license and confiscation of your car. Period. DWI? Well, we already do that (though usually for something like the nineteenth offense). But now let's punish speeders the same way. Driving 50 in a school zone -- lose your license and your car! Driving 70 in a 65 zone on the freeway? No license, no car. Not coming to a full stop at an intersection? No license, no car.

No mercy, no exceptions, no consideration for the differences between traffic offenders.

Oh, you don't want to live under those rules? Well, you can't deny that people would take the driving laws much more seriously, right?

"But it wouldn't be fair!" you reply.

That's right. It wouldn't be fair. Yet that's exactly the same level of fairness that I hear an awful lot of Americans demanding in order to curtail the problem of illegal immigration.

......

The voice of bigotry speaks: "But they're dirty, they don't speak the language, they live in such awful conditions."

Hey, buddy! They're dirty because they're poor and exhausted and they work with their hands and they sweat from their labor! They don't speak the language because they weren't born here and in case you've never tried it yourself, learning another language is hard. And they live in awful conditions because they're doing lousy, low-paying jobs and sending the money home.

How clean, fluent, and well-housed would you be if you moved to Turkey, took the lowest paying jobs in Turkish society, were struggling to learn Turkish during the few moments you were awake and not laboring, and had to support your family back in the home country on whatever you didn't spend to stay alive in Istanbul?

Of course, these complaints are often disguised ways of saying, "We don't want them here because they're brown and most of them look like Indians." Only we know better than to admit that's our motive, even to ourselves. So we find other words to cover the same territory.

Just remember this. Each new wave of immigrants from a particular country looked different from those who had come before. But after two or three generations, with or without intermarriage, we got used to seeing them among us. Their skin and bone structure and hair type and color became just another way of looking American.

Of course, Mexicans and Indians have been here all along. If they look strange to you, it's just because you haven't lived in a part of the country where it is common to see people whose ancestors lived here long before those of European ancestry showed up.

And a lot of those who get mad at seeing "all these illegal immigrants" may not even have seen any. Because a lot of people in our country who look Mexican or Indian are actually sixth- and seventh-generation Americans whose ancestors were citizens long before yours were.

Spoiler On the Donald Trump tapes :
I have been stunned by good friends, who I thought had a strong moral compass, who actually think that it's a complete answer to Trump's appalling remarks (and confessions) about his attitude and actions toward women to say, "He only said what Bill Clinton actually did."

Really? You're now saying that Bill Clinton's behavior was so acceptable that it provides a complete cover for Trump?

Even worse are the men who say, "That's just locker room talk. All men talk like that."

No. Not all men talk like that. In fact, no man that I know personally ever talks that way, because I associate with men who respect and love their wives, their mothers, their sisters, their daughters; they would be ashamed to have those thoughts, let alone speak them aloud to another person.

You can go through your whole life as a male and never think of women as possessions, as objects, as things to be owned and used and abused as you see fit. In fact, civilized men do go through their whole life without ever speaking of, let alone treating, women in such negative ways. Men who do think and speak of women that way are barbarians.

I take that back. Barbarians deserve a better reputation than that.


The answer:

Spoiler :
That's right, science fiction's very own Orson Scott Card!



Vice: Orson Scott Card Is Officially the Most Racist Sci-Fi Author

Salon: Orson Scott Card’s long history of homophobia

Huffpost: Orson Scott Card Outdoes Himself With Insane, Racist Rant

Cracked:
4 Big Reasons Orson Scott Card Is a Goddamn Lunatic

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...

Before you respond, the purpose of this thread is not to show that Card is *really* a progressive paragon despite his reputation, or that he is *really* a bigoted reactionary despite the progressive sounding quotes I posted. It is to show how outrage culture can make intelligent, nuanced people into a byword for hate if they don't have the correct opinions. We should not be taking these sites at their word.

Here are the sources for the quotes I gave:
1) http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2015-10-29.shtml
2) http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2017-05-18.shtml
3) http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2008-07-20.shtml
4) http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-06-25-1.html
5) http://www.hatrack.com/osc/reviews/everything/2016-10-13.shtml
 
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Never heard of the guy but all the quotes sound at least reasonable.

But honestly, nuance and popularity do not work well together. It neither makes you popular nor keeps you there. And how on earth is mass culture going to be nuanced? It is almost a physical impossibility. Nobody got the time for that. Only peaces can be nuanced, never discussions. That is why intellectual authorities are so vital (I use this chance to suggest myself as the authority of OT - kneel filthy mind peasants).

But why now the bad rep? Do I have to look at all the links? I already read the dame quotes. Come on, man.
 
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I too can cherry pick positive quotes from people I want to whitewash on the internet.

It's kind of frustrating that you went to a lot of trouble to put these quotes together without any explanation or context as to why he has a bad reputation. I'm not going to read multiple walls-of-text that don't come with any sort of discussion of the person in question. I legitimately do not know why Card has a bad reputation and if I have to click through a bunch of links to get there then well....I'm not going to. I don't come here for links, I'd prefer to read your take on the situation as the OP.

Edit: He's not famous or notorious enough to be talked about without some sort of explanation.
 
Never heard of the guy but all the quotes sound at least reasonable.

But honestly, nuance and popularity do not work well together. It neither makes you popular nor keeps you there. And how on earth is mass culture going to be nuanced? It is almost a physical impossibility. Nobody got the time for that. Only peaces can be nuanced, never discussions. That is why intellectual authorities are so vital (I use this chance to suggest myself as the authority of OT - kneel filthy mind peasants).

But why now the bad rep? Do I have to look at all the links? I already read the dame quotes. Come on, man.
I too can cherry pick positive quotes from people I want to whitewash on the internet.

It's kind of frustrating that you went to a lot of trouble to put these quotes together without any explanation or context as to why he has a bad reputation. I'm not going to read multiple walls-of-text that don't come with any sort of discussion of the person in question. I legitimately do not know why Card has a bad reputation and if I have to click through a bunch of links to get there then well....I'm not going to. I don't come here for links, I'd prefer to read your take on the situation as the OP.

Edit: He's not famous or notorious enough to be talked about without some sort of explanation.

Really? I was under the impression he was very well known among educated liberals, especially those who read sci-fi/fantasy. Which is a pretty good description of the average CFCer.

(These days you can't even discuss his work online without someone calling him a bigot.)
 
I mean I know who he is and read one of his books. In any case you should talk about him regardless of how well known you think he is because again, that's kind of the job of the OP. I'm not picking on you, I'd love to discuss him; but I'm not going to read a bunch of links to get up to speed.

What has he done that merits apparently-universal disgust?
 
I mean I know who he is and read one of his books. In any case you should talk about him regardless of how well known you think he is because again, that's kind of the job of the OP. I'm not picking on you, I'd love to discuss him; but I'm not going to read a bunch of links to get up to speed.

What has he done that merits apparently-universal disgust?

Was against gay marriage until a few years ago, called Obama a dictator, used terms that liberals (and few other groups) interpret as race-baiting. That's about it, unless something's slipped my mind.
 
Was against gay marriage until a few years ago, called Obama a dictator, used terms that liberals (and few other groups) interpret as race-baiting. That's about it, unless something's slipped my mind.
Oh he changed his mind on gay marriage? Actually that's quite impressive to be honest.
 
Oh he changed his mind on gay marriage? Actually that's quite impressive to be honest.

It was really just an admission that it was inevitable and that there wasn't anything to gain by opposing it.
 
He's obviously anti-gay, the salon article covers his history with that pretty well.
Racist? Is there anything more than his hypothetical situation with Obama (Obama turns into dictator and uses an army of gang members to pacify the country)? That can be racist, but I'd like more examples before labeling him a racist.
 
Obama is a dictator or being anti-gay do sound a bit damning to me. Because it is really hard to imagine a non-bogus rational behind them, and it is very likely to be true when the opposite is assumed. More, the opposite already got a world of nonsense-thought associated with it. Tough odds for being taken nuanced.
Ask me. I am the guy who made a thread defending national socialism, was worthy of a red diamond content-wise and the thread was just quietly erased out of existence before I got a chance to dig deeper. Where is my nuance? :o
 
What has he done that merits apparently-universal disgust?
He's your basic pro-life, anti-gay, Mormon Democrat.

Put another way, he's a Democrat from the heart of right wing heaven. Sort of like a conservative from San Fransisco. Some of the local culture shows in his views.

J
 
He's your basic pro-life, anti-gay, Mormon Democrat.

Put another way, he's a Democrat from the heart of right wing heaven. Sort of like a conservative from San Fransisco. Some of the local culture shows in his views.

J

He isn't a Democrat anymore. :cooool:
 
Was against gay marriage until a few years ago, called Obama a dictator, used terms that liberals (and few other groups) interpret as race-baiting. That's about it, unless something's slipped my mind.

Well, there is that "we the west must protect ourselves against the evils of Islam, by genocide if necessary" stance that he publicly took after 9/11 and has never backed away from.
 
I enjoyed his books. I don't really care if he is a bigot or not in his personal life.
 
Progressives be progressin.
 
Well, there is that "we the west must protect ourselves against the evils of Islam, by genocide if necessary" stance that he publicly took after 9/11 and has never backed away from.

I'd like a source for this.
 
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I'd like a source for this.

He had a forum on his website where he defended this "necessary response to 9/11" quite vehemently. I'm sure you can find it unless he abandoned the site or removed the forum. I gave up on it several years ago. There is also the ... forward? afterward?... from his book, Empire, where he explains his transition from Sci-Fi and historical fantasy to modern setting thriller fiction. Empire by the way, is a blueprint for transitioning a highly polarized two party US democracy into a willing fascist totalitarianism presented as fiction, in which the transition is portrayed as a "difficult but necessary" step for the preservation of "western culture."
 
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