Posts by Emma Hart
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Hard News: The fake news problem, in reply to Farmer Green,
Not having read a book for a long time , I observed that I was not the only one of whom it could be said pejoratively “does not read books”.
Did you notice, at any point, that this was an address to writers? Of, y'know, books? The whole thing is about what writers can do. If these people don't read books, then how can we, as writers of books, get through to them?
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Up Front: Giving It the Bish, in reply to oga,
Before you consider donating to Rainbow Youth under Tamaki’s name and email address, please note that they will get a partial refund on your donation under the tax-exemption laws.
I have heard many, many conflicting things about this. Someone I generally trust to Know Their Shit (but who is not a tax expert) said that if they do try to claim refunds for donations they didn't make, they will be committing tax fraud.
To be on the safe side, I would suggest using "Destiny Church" as the name rather than Tamaki's, as the church can't claim refunds because hey, it doesn't pay any fucking tax.
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Hard News: The fake news problem, in reply to Rich Lock,
To paraphrase a quote generally attributed to Winston Churchill, “a lie gets liked and shared half a million times before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
I keep thinking about the key-note address Chris Cleave gave at the National Writers’ Forum. It was basically all about this. (Long quote, which I wouldn’t normally do, but it’s worth it, I think.)
This kind of evil does not listen to reason, does not acknowledge science, does not defer to expertise or experience, does not doubt its own convictions, does not read books. And this is the world we writers are working in now. We who grew up to cherish empathy and compassion and beauty and precision. We who learned, over thousands of meticulous hours, to encode those things not just into our plots and our pages and our paragraphs, but into every careful sentence.
We learned to respect the reader, didn’t we? To give them a little space to think and to dream. We learned to acknowledge that people might come to our pages with a bigger life than our own. We learned to be humble and to use tiny little things, like commas, to give readers a great big thing, like, a pause, for breath.
But we write in a breathless world now. Furious reaction follows outrageous event without a moment for reflection. By the time any of us can write a thousand considered words about a thing, the agenda has long moved on. In this climate reason is redundant, beauty skin deep, memory obsolete. And so hate becomes the dominant voice simply because hate takes far less time to express.
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And so hate hates Mexicans, then women, then Moslems, then the European Union, then Obama, then gun control, then me, then you. But you could give hate the exact things it was screaming for – and you could annihilate all those things that hate hates – and hate would just hate you for doing it.
That’s why hate is dangerous – because it can never stop. It’s a shark and it drowns if it ever stops swimming. Britain isn’t in trouble because of Brexit. Britain is in trouble because its leaders released hate in order to get Brexit, and now hate is in the tank with us, and swimming.
He goes on to make five suggestions, the first one of which is, stand for something, rather than against everything.
This speech was given after Brexit, but before Trump’s election. I really needed to re-read it.
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Up Front: Giving It the Bish, in reply to TracyMac,
And yes, place a church’s charitable status on a par with any other business. They can still offset their CHARITABLE activities; everything else, hello tax auditor.
Yeah, this is exactly how I feel. To get religious-based tax-exempt status you MUST proselytise, and I cannot see any justification for that. Do actual charity work, like Presbyterian Support Services or the Anglican City Mission, go for it. If you don't, fuck right off.
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Up Front: Wonder Bi, in reply to Miche Campbell,
Blimey, that would be ridiculously expensive.
And think of the maintenance. You'd spend all your time washing it.
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Up Front: Wonder Bi, in reply to BenWilson,
But am I imagining it that there is a consistent theme nowadays that “all bis must die”?
Why no, you are not. It's a manifestation of Bury Your Gays. Basically, LGBT characters are not allowed happy endings.
I’ve been seeing a fair few openly bi women in TV series recently. Just finished season one of Orange is the New Black (should I continue? It’s already bumming me out) and season 4 of Wentworth.
Yeah, the rules are definitely different for cable/Netflicks etc. Just like they are for arthouse movies vs block-busters.
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This last weekend, I was at the National Writers' Forum in Auckland. Chris Cleave gave a surprisingly political keynote which I've been sharing everywhere:
And so hate hates Mexicans, then women, then Moslems, then the European Union, then Obama, then gun control, then me, then you. But you could give hate the exact things it was screaming for – and you could annihilate all those things that hate hates – and hate would just hate you for doing it.
That’s why hate is dangerous – because it can never stop. It’s a shark and it drowns if it ever stops swimming. Britain isn’t in trouble because of Brexit. Britain is in trouble because its leaders released hate in order to get Brexit, and now hate is in the tank with us, and swimming.
The world isn’t in trouble because of Donald Trump personally. Donald Trump isn’t actually bright enough to be that kind of evil mastermind. Hate is just wearing that man like a glove. Because he’s an easy man for hate to wear in these times. He’s a man who is never going to have a train of thought that can’t be expressed in 140 characters, and so hate is taking Donald Trump for a swim. And hate will cheerfully eat all of us, and it won’t even spare Donald Trump. Hate ate him first of all, truth be told, and hate is just wearing his face. He’s as much of a victim in this as we all are, which I’m sure he’d hate me for saying.
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Up Front: Our House, in reply to Paul Campbell,
Maybe this will do instead:
Since posting this, I've had four people tell me there is a house like this in their past. In once case, it had been bulldozed and built over. I'd love to watch this one burn down.
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Up Front: Our House, in reply to Paul Campbell,
I started reading with Talking Heads bouncing along in my head
I was aiming for Madness. Ah well.
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Up Front: Our House, in reply to Raymond A Francis,
Just to be clear, not tell you was the right thing to have done or?
Yes, on consideration I think it was the right thing to do. I was fifteen when he died, and he was living in Brisbane. I hadn't seen him for about three years. I don't think I would have coped at all well knowing, at that age, and I wasn't going to find out any other way if my mother didn't tell me.