Reply #20: I'd go with Harlan Ellison, myself [View All]

[iverglas]

He throws trash back in the car windows of litterers. I turn my garden hose on them.

http://harlanellison.com/review/edge.htm

INSTALLMENT 9: April 25, 1981 (Future Life #23, August 1981)

Synopsis
Ellison verbally braces for the expected rash of kooky letters his previous column would inspire, and mentions he has already been receiving a flood of “sick” letters in response to his anti-gun screed inspired by the assassination of John Lennon, ...

Comment
Ellison theorizes that the rise of lunatic violence and pro-gun fanaticism is not a separate phenomenon from that of religious fundamentalism. David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz had been involved with cults and the Jesus Movement; Charles Manson had been raised deeply and rigidly religious; John Hinckley was a longtime reader of science fiction and adventure fantasy. He believes all of this is linked to the rise of knife-kill splatter flicks and white supremacist military training camps. One of the letters that responded to his gun control column arrived on embossed Nazi swastika stationery from a man in the U.S. Navy, at the Groton, Connecticut submarine base. “I hope he was trying to be funny,” Ellison remarks, because if he received another letter like that, he’d forward it to the man’s base commander, “who may have been in WWII and who may remember what that crippling cross stands for.”

INSTALLMENT 44: September 20, 1982

Synopsis
A serious political plea for activism and contributions in support of California Proposition 15, the Handgun Violence Prevention Act.

Comment
Ellison reprints his Heavy Metal piece in support of gun control, written just after the killing of John Lennon, which “brought more mail to the magazine than anything they had ever published,” including “a vomitous spewing of madness and violence from members of the Klan, from neo-Nazis, from babies with popguns whose verbal insanity was more shocking than the essay….” Such reaction turned many other readers away from the gun lobby, and he hoped this reprinting would do the same. Apparently it did not; the Interim Memo to Installment 48, which also deals with gun control, reports that the measure failed.

INSTALLMENT 48: October 25, 1982

Synopsis
Ellison mounts one last call for gun control and Proposition 15 before the election. He reminds readers that criminals are not really the point; most gun-related injuries and fatalities involve accidents and flareups among decent, law-abiding citizens. Most criminals get their guns from the homes of decent, law-abiding citizens. And a lot of non-California gun companies are pouring money into the state not because they love the Constitution.

Never anybody's fool, our Harlan Ellison.

Oh look, Democrats like him:

http://sync.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1338492
"Now this is a real liberal! The great writer, Harlan Ellison"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=265x4752
Doesn't he sound just like somebody you know? When Phil Ochs hanged himself, a year after I'd missed my chance there, I should have set my cap for Harlan ...

Recommendations:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=265x4752

You could substitute Heinlein for Rand in that famous quote about Orcs. Pretty exciting when one was 13 and didn't see through it. Then one put away the childish propaganda.

If you stop re-reading the stuff, you might be able to move on.