Young adult authors for Obama
Lauren McLaughlin sez, "Young Adult author Maureen Johnson launches new Obama social networking website. Many YA authors will be blogging there, including Judy Blume, Scott Westerfeld, Meg Cabot, Holly Black and many more. From the mission statement:"
YA for Obama is a community of YA writers and readers and friends who have joined together because of our commitment to Future United States President Barack Obama...This is a social networking site, which means that when you join (it’s free! easy! takes about a minute!) you can do LOADS of stuff around here. You can make your own page, contribute to the forum, upload your own photos and videos, and make friends who love Obama as much as you do.I wouldn't say I loved Obama (his vote to allow the continued illegal wiretapping of the entire nation destroyed any chance of that), but I do support him. If I got a vote (I'm Canadian), that's who I'd vote for. YA for Obama (Thanks, Lauren!)
the latest
latest episodes
'm fr McCn.
Apropos of not a lot except that this is also about science fiction and the campaign, Leonard Nimoy revealed today on NPR's "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" that one of the current presidential candidates shot him a Vulcan "live long and prosper" salute at a political event a while back (listen here; it's at about 2:40). "And it was not John McCain."
The whole segment is a nerdgasm, though frankly, I was hoping there'd be something about "The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins."
O sometimes wish we could leave politics out of a directory of wonderful things =\ Not that I don't agree with BoingBoing's general stance on most things, but it always seems to get me all hot and bothered rather than all cool and happy.
I... I sometimes wish..
MM1584@3,4: I sometimes wish that people would stop trying to tell the editors what to post here in the comment threads. They obviously feel it is worthwhile if they put it up, and continue to do so despite those who beat the tired horse that they should not, so your disparaging remarks only "get me all hot and bothered rather than all cool and happy." By allowing comments, they solicit discussion about the topic of the post, but not the right to post it altogether (as proven by the closing of the Little Brother threads.) Please get over it and move on. Thanks.
RRSAFETY@1: That's a great endorsement for Obama you've got going there. Keep it up.
I would expect most young adult authors to be pretty suspicious of Sarah Palin - particularly Judy Blume, given that she's a favorite target of book banners and has edited an anthology about censorship. Supporting a ticket with Palin on it would be like a mongoose endorsing a cobra.
@ZippySpincycle:
that was a cool clip, thanks for the link.
@ZippySpincycle
what kromekoran said
Phikus@5: MM offered a personal opinion, an 'I' statement. The opinion was personal and did not 'ridicule, discredit, mock, demean, denounce, derogate.' Furthermore, it is disquieting to ridicule a comment that did not, itself, contain ridicule.
Religion and politics are two topics so classicly touchy that it is no small wonder that many avoid broaching those topics in polite mixed company. That acknowledges that there are ever so many other topics on which diverse people may find common ground; literature or technology, science or entertainment, indeed all manner of 'wonderful things.' Religion and politics are polarizing topics that tend to emphasize our differences rather than the things we might have in common.
I admit I understand the uneasiness MIGHTYMOUSE1584 expressed, and am troubled at how quickly MM was shouted down for sharing a polite expression of that personal uneasiness. I would like to think that if BB does post the occasional political post, that those who comment in these threads will at least agree to disagree with some civility. I like to think that we will not fall into the trap of dehumanizing people of varying beliefs or perception. That is not wonderful at all.
Phikus, maybe your reaction to mightymouse1584 was a little harsh? I mean we all have our moments of weariness about the political battles. I think he/she was just venting a little. I don't get that he was trying to tell the editors what to do. Just saying.
BTW - what's up with the strikeout marks through some of the recent comments over there to the right?
Antinous, It wasn't like I was demanding immediate action or anything. :)
I just thought it was some new "feature".
Jake,
I've e-mailed tech about the strikeout, but it is Saturday night, so...
And if I haven't complained about the political topics, I call shenanigans on anyone else complaining. I read every single comment and check all those strange little links. I have to read it all.
@4
I thought you were about to break into song.
O, I sometimes wish
we'd leave politics
outta this directory of things!
(OH!)
Outta this directory of things!
(OH!)
A directory of wonderful things!
(YO HO!)
Ah well. Maybe next time.
Cory,
Have you got a candidate you're supporting (or voting for) in the upcoming Canadian federal election?
The NDP seem like they're the best on civil liberties (apart from the Libertarian Party, natch), but I just can't abide their big-government socialism.
Am I the only one getting a little queasy with all the social networking popping up? Perhaps I'll develop a "Swiffer Users for (plug in Libertarian Candidate's name here)!! We're out to clean up D.C." How much more networked can we be?
I personally can't find any enthusiasm for this election. I'll call myself mildly amused by the drama in the same way I can find myself mildly amused by Project Runway or to Top Chef. Great theater... but that is about it.
Neither candidate has anything interesting to say on policy issues. Neither of them awes me with they or their advisers grasp on foreign affairs issues. I am almost equally pessimistic about the prospects of either one winning. A fully Democratic Party government sounds like an invitation to excess spending with all the financial discipline of, well, a fully Republican Party government. As much as I dislike McCain and loath Palin, I could almost see a split government (i.e. McCain + Democratic legislative branch) holding some small appeal in that hopefully they might deadlock and thus get nothing done... and so at least not making anything worse. Of course, this offset by my strong aversion to more wars and fear of more conservative supreme court judges.
Eh, I am ever so mildly hoping for an Obama win. I fully expect the democrats to do about as awesome of a job as the Republicans did when they had one party rule, but eh, at least we will look good globally spending ourselves into flames. If we are going to burn, we might as well burn with some good will left.
I'll probably just hand in a blank ballot with NO as my write in for el presidente. My vote doesn't count anyways (I live in Mass... pretty sure Obama is going to win the state with or without my help). The least I can do is be one of those annoying people that helps insure that neither candidate gets 50% of the vote, and thus voice my displeasure.
Hmm... maybe I should start a "Vote NO on President of the United States of America" campaign.
I don't understand people complaining about BoingBoing's endorsement.
BoingBoing is one of the most left wing blogs on the internet. Or do you think free speech, personal freedom, gun control, financial responsibility are Republican platforms nowadays?
I strongly think that if you enjoy this blog (as we all do so much!) I bet you are a Democrat and didn't know. Welcome to the club! :-)
Cory - has the beautiful Corpus clock made it onto your radar, yet?
Link(s):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/20/MNPR131H98.DTL (news article)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHO1JTNPPOU (video)
JOHNR@10 & JAKE@11: I thought I was being polite, but direct. Every single ever-so-slightly political post recently has had at least one person complaining that it's not a "wonderful thing" -like we can all agree what that is, instead of simply hitting the spacebar. To me that seems a little like people who want their TV censored for everyone instead of simply changing the channel for themselves.
To those who have not noticed, this is an election year. Conservatives have been running the country into ruin for 8 years; they are pulling every dirty trick in the book to "swiftboat" candidates instead of meeting them head to head on the issues; and they own all the mainstream media outlets. Since there is no true 4th estate to check and balance against the excesses of a government gone wild, the true nuggets of the info wars are seeping through the cracks of the blogs. I, for one, and very glad and thankful that BB has the courage to help bring things to light that are getting swept under the rug of the mainstream press in the US and UK. What bad can come of honestly examining and discussing the issues? This, to me, seems the only way out of the culture wars we find ourselves in; to have civil discourse.
In my previous post here I did not ridicule. I did not shout. I expressed my opinion with the same right you are defending, and with much of the same wording, to prove a point. I'm sorry it was lost on you. I truly hope I did not offend, but it just seems off topic to me for people to protest against the topic's right to exist here. If you don't like it, please move along, like I do for all of the posts on... say... needlepoint. Yes, you have every right to express your opinion here within the stated moderation guidelines, but I "sometimes wish" you wouldn't.
You think the Democrats stand for even a fraction of the above? Bah. Didn't the Democrats JUST get done passing a telecom immunity and continued warrentless wire taping? Don't kid yourself. The Democrats will stand firm on the meager principles they claim to have these days about as well as the Republicans did. You might recall Bush entered office on a platform of no more nation building (laugh), fiscal responsibility (har har), a slowing in the growth of government (if by slow, you mean rapidly accelerate), and a whole pile of other laughable absurdities.
Hell, lets just go through the list.
Free Speech: Sure, until some kid who once played a video game shoots someone. Hillary loves to pound her chest on the evil of video games, and last time I checked, she was a democrat. "For the children!" scares me almost as badly as "'cause Jesus told me to!", and democrats LOVE "FOR THE CHILDREN!111!!" to justify pretty much every evil program of censorship they run across.
Personal Freedom: I seem to recall it was Clinton who passed the bigoted "defense of marriage act" that makes the rather enlightened positions on gay marriage of California and Massachusetts almost meaningless. I don't hear Obama calling for its repeal. The telecom immunity and warrantless wiretapping acts were also passed through the democratic majority congress to get a big ol' G.W.B. signature. It is great to find something they agree on, eh? How does that old Chinese saying go? If the Democrats are for it, it is stupid. Of the Republicans are for it, it is evil. If they ever agree on something, it is both stupid and evil.
Gun control: Who cares. My chance of dying a gun death is absurdly low and ranks somewhere on my list of ways I fear dying right beside terrorism, bee stings (not allergic), and drowning in a pool (I swim great).
Financial Responsibility: I do expect democrats to raise taxes. You might argue that this is financial responsibility, and I would almost agree, if it wasn't that I also expect them to raise spending even faster than they raise taxes. Every time I hear Obama (or McCain for that matter) speak, they are talking about how they are going to toss a few billion dollars at one problem or another and conveniently forget the part about paying for it. If Republicans, the party of "fiscal responsibility", can't seem to make the left and right side of the balance sheet add up, I really have little hope for the Democrats when they get their shot at one party rule.
Talk of cutting "pork" is cute and all, but the vast majority of spending in the US is defense and non-discretionary spending programs. No one is talking about cutting down defense spending or touching Medicare and Medicaid. They do all have a lot of neat multi-billion dollar programs they can't wait to spend on though.
My advice? Vote for whom ever gets your rocks off, but I personally think I will just write in "NO" for president. The only thing good that is going to come out of this election is some good theater and hopefully a president who, while perhaps incompetent, can at least string three words together without sounding like an idiot.
Rindan, Obama has indeed said he would repeal DOMA (as well as DADT) — Google will be happy to tell you exactly what he said. Your other assumptions are kinda built on sand as well. If you really don't see much difference between Obama and McCain, I have to say you haven't done your homework. Here in 2008, you have unprecedented access to information — use it.
While it is great that Obama has taken a stand (of course, standing is a lot easier than acting, but lets let it slide) on DOMA, it really doesn't mean much to my larger point. My larger point has little to do with Obama, and I certainly make no claim that Obama and McCain are the same. My criticism is far broader. I am critical of the entire Democratic party. They are impotent, spineless, and represent liberty in the "BoingBoing way" almost as miserably as the Republicans do. They won't ban your sex ed books, but they will ban a violent video game. They will tap your phone lines just as quickly, bungle every technology issue just as horribly, violently react to public fear of terrorism with almost as much zeal, and fall into fits of uncontrollable laughter at the mention of reforming copyright law. They have already confirmed my suspicions of spinelessness to me with the passing of the new FISA act. I don't expect it to get any better once they are fully in power.
If your argument is "better Democrats that Republicans". I can probably swallow that argument. I just don't look forward to it with any enthusiasm. I expect the same level of incompetence that we have seen for pretty much every single instance of single party rule in the US (Democrat and Republican alike) in the past half century. The Democrats have little enthusiasm for my values, and where they do declare some level of allegiance with my values, I fully expect them to violently turn on them as rapidly as the Republicans did.
Hey, maybe I am wrong, and maybe Obama is teh 1 that will whip the Democrats into shape. Maybe his voting for warrantless wire tapping and telco immunity was his one and only moment of pissing away worthwhile principles. I won't hold my breath though, and I think history is on my side. The grand revolution isn't coming. It is just another politician who will continue the backslide. The best we can hope for is that he does it slower than the last guy. Doesn't that just get you all excited? Yeah.
The situation reminds me of an awesome T-shirt I saw, "Vote Cthulhu 2008. Why settle for the lesser of two evils?"
It really can't get much worse than it has for the past 8 years of Republican domination and still hold together as a country, unless, of course, we have four more of the same. That is what it essentially boils down to.
And that is not to say it will hold together for much longer if we have more of the same.
@ #5 You're right. Its not my place to tell people how to run their blog. that being said, i dont think i really tried to. It just seems to me that politics become so emotional and so personal that unless everyone holds the same opinion (which never ever in the history of forever seems to happen) that the community ends up alienating people who would otherwise love to read a blog featuring figeater beetles and mobile bars. I don't really like seeing that happen. Thats really all I was trying to say. Sorry for the confusion.
pps. Obama rulez (except for granting immunity to the telcos. Talk about a faux pas) and I love Cory's posts =)
MM@26: I appreciate your viewpoint as expressed and I apologize if you feel I came down too hard on you. Thank you for your considerate reply.
MM@26: Yeah, ditto.
I'd like to see some teens and other YA afficiandos sign up with Obama's neighbor to neighbor campaign. Talk about a social networking site. In fact it really represents the cutting edge in this whole web 2.0 thing. In about a minute I got set up with 25 names and numbers of people in a battleground state (New Mexico, it turns out.) It is so meticulously organized. Check out the video and article at TechnologyReview.Com. They interview the founders on the Howard Dean campaign veteran programmers extrordinaire, Blue State Digital.
The neighbor to neighbor thing on the my.Barack.Obama site also gives you the age and gender of the person you are calling. So after perusing my list, I chose a woman my same age in Albuquerque New Mexico and had a very interesting conversation. Unfortunately, the dingbat is voting for Nader. I might be calling her back. Anyway, you should check out the amazing Obama social networking site of the century and get to participate in a interesting experiment.
Since we're talking about YA literature and the issues in the presidential election related to YA literature, and literature in general, let's ask this question:
Which candidate is more likely to appoint supreme court justices who might stand up to the current erosion of the Bill of Rights?
Another issue that might be important to the readership of YA literature (being young, and adult, and all...) is choice and reproductive rights.
Would you abdicate what little voice you have left by NOT voting? Obama may not be your ideal candidate, but at this time he is pretty much the only thing standing between the current situation and a renewed, possibly successful assault on Roe v. Wade.
Are you sure you want to throw your vote away?
A Democratic running the Executive Branch, with a democratically controlled congress just might give our Constitution a fighting chance to survive. If the past 8 years are any indication, a Republican administration may do irreparable damage to that fragile document.
Are you sure you want to throw your vote away? Is that your final answer?
/rant
"Are you sure you want to throw your vote away?"
None of the candidates (and yes, I'm looking at YOU, Bob Barr!) are worth consideration. They're all losers. Maybe I'll write in Cthulhu. But if I choose to vote by not voting, it's my right. Call that "throwing your vote away" if you like, but I've had enough and I'm not playing their little game any more.
And out of curiosity, what did the first post say? I assume it said, "I'm for McCain". That's enough for a disemvowling? Dissenting from the "We love Obama" conga line? For shame.
I'm with RJ: Let's keep politics out of this directory of WONDERFUL things. Politics is vile, slimy and disgusting. It's anything but wonderful.
sirspocksalot,
BB comment threads are not an opportunity to shout slogans. I disemvowelled that comment because it doesn't say anything of any value to anyone. If you want to be a cheerleader, fake your age and enroll in your daughter's high school.
Ugh!
...why are we voting for nitrous oxide?
Well, seeing as how I live in Massachusetts, I can say with absolute certainty that my vote truly and honestly doesn't matter. If Obama manages to lose in Massachusetts, I would say it is a pretty safe bet that he lost in at least 49 other states and one District of Columbia.
If I accept that I stand a completely zero chance of influencing the race with my vote, the best I can hope to do is, in some small way, express my displeasure with the current candidates. Every time the votes for the two major parties don't add up to a nice round 100%, it is a sure sign that at least some fraction of the population is pissed. If you are displeased, vote your displeasure, especially if you live in a state where your vote truly and thoroughly does not matter (which is most states by the way).
Unless you live in a state where your vote actually counts, my advice is to vote how you truly feel. If feel like you are picking the lesser of two evils, pick something else. Vote Libertarian, vote Green, or simply vote No. Be heard as a discontent rather than blandly consenting to vote for a guy who the best you hope for is that he paves over your civil liberties slightly slower than the other guy.
Not that it is going to happen, but Obama winning Massachusetts 35% to 30% would make your vote sound a hell of a lot louder than a 65% to 30% win.
Rindan,
You make a crucial point. There are battleground states and then there are non-battleground states. You know who you are. Texas is a red state, so it won't really make a difference if I vote Nader or Kinky Friedman or whoever. Massachusettes is a blue state, same difference. Vote how you feel all the way and maybe the message will get through to the powers that be.
But if you are in Colorodo or NM or somewhere like that, you have a great deal of power and you should use it wisely.
@Antinous: Ah. I wasn't clear on that. Makes sense to me. :)
All we ask is that comments make some well-argued point, or at least be funny.
I'm for a candidate who is a patron of the Arts, who keeps campaign speeches memorable but short.
Lincoln, 08! ;)
For any undecideds out there who are kinda,sorta,maybe thinking about voting FOR Obama, I have 2 words for you: Sarah Palin.
This woman is dangerous. If she got into the Veep's office, we would be yearning for the good old Cheney days.
#41 - I call hyperbole. As near as I can tell, our favorite Tina Fey look-alike hasn't yet shot a man IN THE FACE and then persuaded that shootee to apologize for the incident.
Authors and Illustrators for Children is an educaitonal advocay group founded by children's writers. They have created a website and an ad, featuring the names of hundreds of authors and illustrators supporting Obama.
Please take a look.
http://www.aiforc.org/obama/index.html