Writer Harlan Ellison slams Limbaugh over Michael J Fox comment.

[3121guitarist]

Harlan Ellison, for those who don't know is a leading short story writer and man of letters. He wrote this on his forum, in response to someone who said that Limbaugh didn't mean what he said.

Copyright 2006 Harlan Ellison. Do Not Copy!

"TODD:

You really should have seen/heard the totality of Limbaugh's vile performance.

He accused Michael J. Fox of acting; that is, PRETENDING to have the acute symptomology. And only an ignorant meanspeaking person, either passively or intentionally uneducated as to the symptoms of this awful malaise, would fail to understand that when one goes OFF one's meds with this disease, one grows LESS agitated, and movement becomes so restricted that, eventually, they cannot move at all. Are, in fact, frozen like a gnat in amber.

But even were this NOT the case, Limbaugh did not rationally question Fox's acute wrenching, he repeatedly -- let me say that again -- he REPEATEDLY used the words

DESPICABLE

and

INDEFENSIBLE

and

INEXCUSABLE

though he admitted on-air that he had ABSOLUTELY NOT A SCINTILLA of evidence that Fox was "guilty" of his assumptions, his accusations: not taking his medicine...merely "acting." (And why SHOULDN'T he, if he was trying to make a passionate point, to demonstrate as powerfully as he was able, what the scourge looks like to the uninitiated, all in service not of, say, a lying semiliterate president who spins truth to his own self-righteous purposes day after day, sending hundreds to their deaths, just to keep his party in power and to burnish his ego, but in aid of scientific advancement that well might banish such awful terrors from human ken,) Urged to be their attack-hound yet again, Limbaugh unshipped his faux-outrage not because he gives a fuck about the verities of Fox's appearance, but because of the power, the passion, the EFFECTIVENESS of what this young man did. Had it been a dud, we'd have heard not a caw from this butcherbird.

He excoriated a young man whose career has been exemplary, his life scandal-free, his behavior gracious and decent, and he did it for odious ends. The pillhead lynch-mob spokesman fulminated on-command for his masters.

He is, like his coven mates Coulter, O'Reilly, Buchanan, Falwell, Robertson and the rest of that slavering wolf-pack of loathesome inhuman scuts, a disgrace to the human race. They operate with twisted eugenics and mildewed DNA, behaving like the worst foaming beasts ever bred in Satan's Cauldron. Their like cannot be tolerated a moment longer. They sully the earth they walk, they poison the air we breathe, they blacken and char the wings of the angels of our better nature.

Do not -- I beg you -- for even one vagrant moment, try to levy rationality into the behavior of these gobbets of human excrescence, all under the misperception that "fairness" requires giving them the barest. They count on ratiocinative evenhanded folks such as you to permit them the duplicity proffered by decency on your part, by well-intended "well, maybe..." rat-holes they need for plausible deniability.

They are the offspring of all the evil, self-serving, amoral Dems AND Republicans who have bludgeoned our great America to its knees, made it wallow in its most charnelhouse behavior, and drive us insane with The Big Lie again and again and again, using golem like this Limbaugh monster. They are no less than KILLING us, by crib-suffocating the kindness in us, the graciousness in our potential. They are turning us, may ALREADY have turned us into their troll and monster like.

This is NOT a minor news item, Josh; this is what one calls an emblematic insight. It is America Today in Microcosm. It is a rune, a glyph, an aphorism of the debased human spirit writ both large and small at the same time. Its resonance is that which we feel when we see the bullies kicking the crap out of a crippled kid in a schoolyard.

Limbaugh is as one with all sociopaths who drown their babies and slaughter their schoolmates with AK-47s and drive through crowded markets with pedal to the metal and fire into random cars on the freeway and pull off Enron scams robbing thousands of innocent investors and dilute medications and knife fast food employees for a few dollars. He is blood-brother to the scumbag who set the huge Esperanza fire here in Riverside, Southern California, today, and set it purposely in such a manner that the santa ana winds would pick it up and carry it directly into residential areas; and in the process got five firefighters barbequed. What soulless drives motivate these selfish, self-serving, bestial creatures?

Limbaugh should not be given slack for having abased himself (after months of denial and posturing) after he came out of rehab, because his forelock-tugging was mockery, and his true hemlock behavior toward someone whose affliction should have brought kindness and moderation to his criticisms, manifested itself yet again, for the thousandth time. They are swine, all of them -- Coulter disrespecting 9/11 widows, Santorum trying to force us back into Biblical Times, O'Reilly pretending Democrats are responsible for the Senate page sex scandal -- and giving them the barest claw-hold on "well, maybe..." plays right into their duplicity.

Please don't reply to this.

You're a good guy, and I don't mean to jump all over you.

I could hold my peace no longer.

Go, FBI, arrest a 16-year-old schoolgirl because she had the Emperor is Naked audacity to put on her blog what most of us who did NOT vote for the Beasts in Power think every day.

I have rejected the misuse of the word "rant" as used by blathering webfarts for any posting in which passion is demonstrated, but I think it only fair to say yes, this HAS been a rant.

Daily, I grow more and more ashamed of what my country has become. What it tolerates. What it responds to with "well, maybe..."

Harlan Ellison"

He gave everyone permission to send this out, only if the copyright data is there. Good stuff.

[3121guitarist]

1. His picture.

[Parche]

12. harlan

A fantastic writer, who wrote 'Demon with a Glass Hand' and also 'Soldier' on the
Outer Limits

You go Harlan!!!!!!!

[TheDebbieDee]

15. Didn't he also write the classic Star Trek episode

"City on the Edge of Forever", too?

[AnneD]

24. Don't forget...

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep AKA Blade Runner.
I think he summed the situation up better than I ever could. And Dang that man can hurl an insult. I'm sure some of these folks felt their nuts shrivel (even Coulter).

[eppur_se_muova]

29. Uh, that was Phillip K. DIck.

I really liked the rant, but honestly, it's the only thing written by Ellison that has ever left a favorable impression on me. So kudos to him for this.

[AnneD]

33. Rats...

Your right :blush: Thanks and I stand gratefully corrected. Do I get partial credit for knowing 2 outta 3? This gets me to wondering if he did script a big movie. I think he did but maybe I am mixing it up. City on the Edge of Forever was great and could have stood alone as a movie.

[Pithlet]

71. Me, too.

But, credit where credit is due. It was pretty awesome.

[Parche]

36. yes

That was one of the best episodes..........


"Jim, do you know what you have done.......'

Spock : "He knows Doctor, He knows................"

[magellan]

63. He wrote the original script

...but Gene Roddenberry put it through a major rewrite, which led to bad feelings between the two. As much as this episode is favored by fans, it was Ellison's original script that won the Writers Guild of America Award for best teleplay.

He deserves an award for his forum post about Limbaugh et al. Pure un-f**ked-around-with Ellison!

[Aristus]

50. Here's me with the master himself. Excellent writer and oral storyteller.

[splat@14]

2. Couldn't have been said any better.

[Phredicles]

3. Recommended, and thanks for reminding why Harlan Ellison is

one of the great writers of our age.

[Rosco T.]

4. You don't piss off Harlan...

.. had the honor to meet him several times over the years at various SciFi cons.

[3121guitarist]

6. He once sent a critic a dead rat.

Fun guy..lol

[Aristus]

51. It wasn't a critic he sent the rat to. It was the owner of a publishing firm

that refused to pull a print run of his books that carried cigarette advertising in them. It was a breach of contract, but the old bastard refused every reasonable request to pull the entire print run. Harlan got fed up and sent him a dead gopher by the slowest shipping method he could think of. The "package" arrived at the publishing house two weeks after he sent it. A frantic, hysterical publishing executive released the publishing rights to the book in question back to Harlan that very day.

It's a great story and, knowing Harlan, probably true. :-)

[gratuitous]

10. Note to self

Add Harlan Ellison to list of people not to piss off. (Alexander Woolcott's already on.)

[Mabus]

5. When I think of America's future, HE's "'Repent Harlequin!,' Said the Ticktock Man" comes to mind

especially if our civil rights continued to be eroded.

I've been an Ellison fan since I was in high school and stumbled upon his works in the library.

[Rosco T.]

13. 'Repent Harlequin!'

a classic and should be reqired reading for every Dem...

the opening...

THERE ARE ALWAYS those who ask, what is it all about? For those who need to ask, for those who need points sharply made, who need to know “where it’s at,” this:

“The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purposes as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others—as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders—serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.”

—Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”

That is the heart of it. Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.

[byronius]

65. My Favorite Story. Period. Ever.

That story guides my life.

[FlaGranny]

7. Ouch!

I haven't read his work in years, now I remember why I read it. He can make your skin crawl with descriptions like that.

[bananas]

8. link? nt

[Synnical]

25. Request #2

Thanks to the original poster, but a link would be great.

:kick:

[Wonk]

43. link

http://harlanellison.com/heboard/unca.htm?beg=101&num=25

It looks like the way that board is organized you may have to click 'next 25' once or twice to find the original post as more posts get added.

[bananas]

48. I see it, thanks

It's almost half-way down the page.
The beginning of the post is time-stamped:

-----------------------------------------
HARLAN ELLISON
- Thursday, October 26 2006 22:20:19

TODD:

You really should have seen/heard the totality of Limbaugh's vile performance.

He accused Michael J. Fox of acting, ...

[Synnical]

58. Reads like an Urban Legend to me

Strong Words, nonetheless

[Kolesar]

69. Remember that "Kurt Vonnegut commencement address" email that was going around?

I received it from a friend. Then I learned that it was not written by Vonnegut at all. Vonnegut was pretty pissed about the email.

"use plenty of sunscreen"

[mcscajun]

9. Wow! This has always been a man with a mastery of words

and ideas. Once again, great writing from Harlan -- and no surprise. Damn, this was good! This is one powerful, literate, passionate diatribe placed in the public arena, and I intend to propagate it wherever I can.

Thanks for sharing.

FWIW, my favorite Ellison works: "Jeffty Is Five" (short story) and "City on the Edge of Forever" (Star Trek original series episode).

On edit: And another thing, he never stooped to one common, coarse, or cheap insult -- every one was very carefully crafted. :)

[SammyWinstonJack]

11. !!

:yoiks: :wow: :applause:

[pretzel4gore]

14. Harlan said it well

hit the goonie on the head
beat goonie to a pulp with simple truth...
limbah needs....to end

[3121guitarist]

17. No link

It was posted on HarlanEllison.com, the Art Deco Dining Pavilian forum, that Harlan posts on a lot. Hard to link, you have to search for it.

[Wonk]

41. Here's the link

http://harlanellison.com/heboard/unca.htm?beg=101&num=25

It looks like the way that board is organized you may have to click 'next 25' once or twice to find the original post as more posts get added.

[Lautremont]

16. I remember when Ellison was almost this pissed off at the

'Back to the Future' movies, which he accused of ripping off some of his own time-travel concepts. Kind of ironic, but of course, even as excitable as Ellison is, he didn't blame that on Michael J. Fox.

[3121guitarist]

19. Funny you mention that.

I asked Harlan about that, and he now likes the Back To The Future films. Doesn't even remember slamming them. odd.

[eppur_se_muova]

31. You may be thinking of the "Terminator" movies. I believe he won that lawsuit.

I've read the story in question, and frankly, there's little resemblance. Given that time travel -- and even time travel by soldiers/warriors -- is well established in SF, I don't think he had a case. The studio, I'm guessing, thought it would be cheaper to settle.

[Aristus]

52. I think the situation was that Harlan pitched the studio his idea from

the story "Soldier". James Cameron then twisted it around until it bore little resemblance to the pitch, filmed it as his own idea, and refused to credit or pay Harlan. If Cameron's idea was born of Harlan's then they needed to pay him.

[Nay]

18. And don't forget Ellison's "A Boy and his Dog."

[3121guitarist]

20. A boy loves his dog.

ruff.

[AnneD]

34. This may have been

the movie I was thinking about.

[Cha]

21. Oh, this dude knows how to articulate

himself!

"He is, like his coven mates Coulter, O'Reilly, Buchanan, Falwell, Robertson and the rest of that slavering wolf-pack of loathesome inhuman scuts, a disgrace to the human race. They operate with twisted eugenics and mildewed DNA, behaving like the worst foaming beasts ever bred in Satan's Cauldron. Their like cannot be tolerated a moment longer. They sully the earth they walk, they poison the air we breathe, they blacken and char the wings of the angels of our better nature."

hannity needs to singled out among the "slavering wolf-pack"!

[mzteris]

22. I've always loved his fiction

but his FACTUAL writing is pretty damn good, too!

Rush - indeed all of his ilk - have been royally ripped!


:applause:

[Mz Pip]

23. Coven mates

perfect description for Coulter, Falwell, et. al.

:applause:

Mz Pip
:dem:

[Uncle Joe]

26. Harlan, you said exactly what I was thinking,

but could not put in to such fine words,thank you. What really sucks is, these are the people our mass corporate media put in front of the American People for our daily digestion of hateful rat poison.

Thanks for posting this guitarist

Kicked and recommended

[wryter2000]

27. Way cool

I was worried about the copyright until I got to the last sentence. The power of words well used.

[gulliver]

28. Brilliant as always.

I love his stuff. Makes me want to go out and see what he has written lately... Thanks!

[wryter2000]

30. Welcome to DU

:hi:

[3121guitarist]

32. Hi there.

The Ted Nugent forum guys gave the rant an opposite reaction. Wonder why..hehe.

[TOhioLiberal]

35. Mr. Ellison goes on my short list of...

...American heroes. Especially heroes who are articulate and passionate. Bravo!

[Zhade]

37. He'a a HUGELY arrogant asshole in person, but he's a damn fine writer.

He nailed it.

One of my favorite writers, and my most disappointing in terms of personality.

[3121guitarist]

39. Maybe you were arrogant to him first

Harlan is a nice guy, just needs to be approached respectfully. That's his nature. He has a lot of enemies, so he has to be particular in his friends.

[Aristus]

53. Concur. With me, he was warm, friendly and very funny.

Treat him the way you would like to be treated, and he will reciprocate. He's a tough customer, and doesn't suffer fools gladly, or even at all; but he has a good heart and soul.

[Zhade]

72. This was secondhand from two good friends, independent of each other.

I've never met him.

Some of his arrogance and assholery has been captured on tape before, though I'd have to dig it up.

Glad you had a good experience with him - not everyone is so lucky! And regardless of his interpersonal behavior, he's still a great writer.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

40. He's arrogant but he also has a very good heart

I remember when he used to appear on the Hour 25 science fiction show on Pacifica radio back in the 1970s. On one night, we went on the show to personally appeal for financial help for another science fiction writer who was very ill at the time. It might have been Philip K. Dick who was dying, but I don't quite remember who it was. In exchange for help, he was donating personal signed copies of one of his short stories right off the computer. I bought one and still treasure it. When the show's host Mike Hodel died, Harlan took over the show for free for quite some time. And Mr. Ellison has also mentored and helped struggling writers, often out of his own pocket. He may be arrogant because he's so good. But I also know he has a good heart.

[Bucky]

67. Of course he is. He's a writer. Writers always have big egos.

Even as I write this post I can feel me becoming too full of myself.

[bobbie]

38. Whew, this is the best thing he's ever written

And that's not a left-handed compliment; it's the best thing anyone's ever written.

I would quote my favorite part but every word is my favorite.

[3121guitarist]

42. Preach it Bobby, Preach it.

Make this thread number one guys..lol

[Generic Other]

44. That prose crackled with fire and brimstone

You don't get to read rants like that everyday!!

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

45. He wrote one of the best episodes of the old "Outer Limits" TV show

about Quarlo (played by Michael Ansara), a soldier who is transported from the ugly, violent, and scary battleground world of the future into the relative calm of 1960's America. Quarlo is seized by the US military for scientific study but they can't understand what he says because he speaks a type of futuristic English. One of the scientists in the lab makes a breakthrough and brings Quarlo home to live with his family. Quarlo resists making friends because he was raised and trained to kill and never had a family. But when another enemy soldier from the future arrives in pursuit of him, he gives his life defending his new family.

A great episode and one of my favorites from the days when Network TV was worth watching.

[Rex]

46. Anyone who would make fun of a person with a disease

Would also cheer on the death of babies and women. Rush = shameless.

[tlsmith1963]

47. Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!!!

Wow, that expressed so well how I have felt over the past 15 years or so. I have watched the rise of the far-Right jerks like Limbaugh & Coulter with dismay. I have seen my country get meaner & meaner. Ellison is good friends with Babylon 5 creator Joe Straczynski, btw. I wonder if Joe has seen this. Thank you, Harlan. You always know how to give it to people who deserve it.

[Liberal In Texas]

49. What a writer! Brilliant. n/t

[ebayfool]

54. Rec'd - been collecting Ellison's writings since I 1st picked up 'The Glass Teat'!

Nobody can fire off on someone that has a need for it like H.E. can!

Bravo!

[Itchinjim]

55. I thought Harlan Ellison was dead.

[bobbie]

59. He was dead

Bush pissed him off so bad he came back to bitch slap him.

[peekaloo]

56. "these gobbets of human excrescence"

I love this man.

[kestrel91316]

57. Wow. Put that man to work writing speeches for the Dems, lol!!!!!!!!

[Quantess]

60. Cool! Recommended.

[tomreedtoon]

61. I love Mr. Ellison, but he ain't COMPLETELY right.

His claim that Rush Limbaugh is just like the kids who kill their classmates in school, for instance, is incorrect.

This will probably get me a lot of hate responses, a la Bill Maher, but here it is. Limbaugh doesn't have any courage. The Columbine killers did.

They were kids who saw a hopeless life ahead of them. Nobody, not their high-falutin' teachers or student counselors, not their peers, and apparently not their parents, gave a damn about them. They could have simply suicided and everyone would have shrugged and gone on with life. Instead, they decided to make a statement. The only one they could make, given the kind of people they were.

You may not like their act. But at least they went down trying to fight their enemies, at considerable risk. Limbaugh, on the other hand, wouldn't have had the guts.

To quote Ellison, "What soulless drives motivate these selfish, self-serving, bestial creatures?" Answer: Desperation. Hopelessness. Despair. Many people have no rational way out. Limbaugh has wealth and connections and self-delusions to keep the dark at bay. Ellison, a respected and talented man, has a few ways out. Ordinary people like you and me have fewer ways out, and those are increasingly closed off. But there are many people, and we will probably join them soon, for whom life is a long string of zeros and impassible walls, with the rich and the powerful either laughing at us or ignoring us.

Oh, and there's this: the person who made the most public study of Columbine, Michael Moore, didn't give a damn about the kids either. He used them to promote his message of gun control. All well and good, but he never gave more than a moment thinking about what horrible forces in society, the cruel nature of human beings that most human beings overlook, that turned them into killers. Ditto for Gus Van Sant and his Columbine ripoff film "Elephant."

[sofa king]

62. Thank goodness Harlan has a mouth and can scream.

[drbtg1]

64. YOU NEED TO EDIT THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mr. Ellison has a long established corporation which owns the copyright, not himself personally.

From Mr. Ellison's board, he stated, "Please add, at the start: Copyright c 2006 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. All rights reserved."

Mr. Ellison took on AOL and made them bow before him. Don't piss him off.

[Old and In the Way]

66. Geesh, I hope he has his pen registered.....

that's one hell of a lethal weapon he's carrying. Great skewering of El Dirtbag.

[David Zephyr]

68. Kicking this up!

Great story.

[3121guitarist]

70. Thanks for the support guys.

Trying to get Harlan on either Malloy or Thom Hartmann, but Harlan usually requests getting paid for interviews. lol