Banished From The Breakfast Table (again)

Years?ago, while still living at home, I was asked by my Mother to stay away from the breakfast table.? Her complaint was that all I did was piss and moan over the newspaper while drinking my coffee.? It was obviously her belief that no one else wanted or needed to hear?such first thing in the morning. After all, some of ‘us’ (and here she was referring to the rest of the family) were looking forward to their new day. I was getting things off to a bad start by mentioning everything bad?and negative going on in the world, so if I insisted on being such a downer, I was welcome to drink my coffee elsewhere.

I still have this “problem”, at least in the sense that I’m not 100% on my game until well after the first cup of coffee.? The consequence of that is I may not be fully thinking through every single possible ramification of something I write.

I was surprised by my Mother’s request. First – Who the hell looks forward to their new day?? Being frogmarched out of dreamland is more than enough excuse for anger and bitterness and resentment.? THEN the newspapers go and remind you of why dreamland is preferable to reality.? I think my reaction to the start of a new day was perfectly reasonable, while my Mother’s was psychotic. Looking forward to a day filled with more rapes, murders, wars, injustice, stupidity and politics?

I was equally surprised by the distortions that some over at the SFAwards watch blog injected into my thoughts on?HUGO Awards voting.? In commenting on what I said, they wrote this: “Firstly, it is very worrying that there are people on the SMOFs list who are seriously discussing the idea of defining who is allowed to vote in the Hugos and who isn?t”

Ok.? My mistake.? Instead of stating that my thoughts originated with discussions on the SMOFs email list I probably should have said ‘a discussion’ or ‘talking with other fans’.? Apparently invoking the SMOFs has gotten some people’s panties in a twist.? Now they’re going to go and distort the whole thing, try to make people run scared from the word ’secret’ and make it seem like there’s some cabal running around exerting undue influence over your fannish lives.

I mentioned the commentary’s origination out of a sense of fairness and full diisclosure.? There is nothing to hide.? Unfortunately, I’m now in the position of being unable to really defend myself, since anything I say by way of explanation can be easily distorted by someone who desires to do so.

Why they want to do so is beyond me.

Here is what is being distorted: “There are really only two solutions available to solve that potential problem.? First is to restrict voting with a set of complicated qualifying rules designed to prevent such from happening.? Possible and draconian – and still subject to manipulation.”

To which one of the commentors on SFAwards Watch said “It is worrying because we spend a lot of time defending the Hugos against silly charges of conspiracy. To have someone suggest on a blog that people who supposedly have a lot of influence are seriously considering, on a private email list, preventing certain classes of people from voting, gives entirely the wrong impression.” (Cheryl)

Which is entirely inaccurate.? Maybe I wasn’t clear in my Info Dump piece, so here’s some clarity: I summarized the mailing list discussion and then said “Here’s my take”.? This was intended to indicate that what followed were my thoughts and NOT a part of the mailing list discussion.?

Second, the restricting part is being taken WAY out of context.? I mentioned it as one strategy for controlling MANIPULATION OF THE VOTE.? And then I clearly dismissed it as being unworkable and ineffective.? I could just as easily have said “one way of preventing vote manipulation by special interests would be to kill every fan that isn’t a member of WSFS”.? Which would be equally unworkable, even if it would be effective.?

I attempted to clarify things in a comment on the Awards site, to which Cheryl again responded: “Besides, ?The class of people being discussed are a class of people already outside the voting process – non-members of WSFS? makes my point very clearly. Everyone is entitled to vote in the Hugos, provided that they buy a membership. I find the idea that people are discussing ways in which to prevent people who do not currently join WSFS from joining at all utterly abhorrent. I?m hoping this is just another misunderstanding.”

Chery, why are you deliberately misunderstanding this?? Again:? NO ONE ON THE MAILING LIST was discussing this – I was discussing it in my blog.? And No one said anything about preventing people from joining WSFS.? I didn’t say it.? What I said was that IF special interest groups engage in vote manipulation, THEN something will have to be done to deal with it.? Now follow the logic here, please.? IF special interests are capable of manipulating the vote, its because they CAN vote, which means, ipso facto, they ARE already members of WSFS.?

Finally, what Mike said in the first comment: “Why is it ?very worrying? that fans on the Smofs list are discussing Hugo voter eligibility, a subject you regularly bring up on this website, and have run polls about? Let everyone talk about it all they want, the more the merrier.”

I wish I could go back to dreamland.

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