The housemate nails it.

[lizvogel]

I've been wanting to say something about the Hugo-host kerfuffle, but haven't been able to come up with something that encapsulates it without frothing at the mouth. To my surprise, my housemate nailed it. I'd told her about the kerfuffle, and she was pretty upset by it, not least because an author she really liked and respected displayed extreme asshattery. So I sent her a quick link round-up, on the principle of primary sources. Her response:

"I found it helpful to see just how cruel some people can be & how nice others are. Big pluses to Paul Cornell & Neil Gaiman, big minuses to lots of others who didn't do their homework."

Which says all that needs to be said about that, really.

Comments

[legionseagle]

I don't quite see what "didn't do their homework" has to do with it. Ross has been for the last decade a leading chat show host on first one, then another of the four principal TV channels in the UK. It's very easy for someone in the UK to form an intensely negative view of his style and approach without having to do any homework.

I mean, I don't think that's the only possible view to take of him, but it's an opinion a lot of people could and did honestly hold.

[lizvogel]

1) A lot of the people objecting to him were doing so in part because "he's not one of us!" -- i.e., not into science fiction. Which he clearly is.

2) A lot of the people objecting, especially from this side of the pond, were spinning off of someone's outrage over something they imagined he might say. Which was IMO poor form on the imaginer's part to start with, but this being the internet promptly escalated from "he might" to "he did" to "he does all the time!!!!1!" Which, sorry, bzzzzt. If one is going to vilify someone for something, it is absolutely incumbent upon one to verify that the something actually occurred.

Remember, most people over here (the source of quite a lot of the fuss, and especially the parts to which my housemate most objected) had never heard of the guy before all this. It might be easy for someone in the UK to form an opinion based on actual data, but most folks in the US would need to do some homework. And didn't.

Now, if you're familiar with Ross's body of work, and dislike it, and feel that he would be ill-suited as a presenter because of it, well, you're entitled to that opinion. (From descriptions, he sounds like the kind of abrasive comedian I wouldn't care for either, though from clips I've seen he also seems capable of adjusting his approach to fit his audience.) And if you chose to express that opinion in a reasoned way to the concom, rather than, for example, hounding his wife off of Twitter, well, that's cool. Unfortunately, neither knowledge nor reason were hallmarks of the most visible and persistent commenters.