{"id":4169,"date":"2015-08-17T16:45:32","date_gmt":"2015-08-17T21:45:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=4169"},"modified":"2015-08-26T01:35:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-26T06:35:35","slug":"a-very-peculiar-lynching-anne-rice-political-correctness-and-free-speech-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=4169","title":{"rendered":"A Very Peculiar Lynching &#8212; Anne Rice, Political Correctness, and Free Speech, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><span style=\"color: #111111;\"> <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_4170\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4170\" style=\"width: 239px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><em><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/trump.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4170    \" title=\"trump\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/trump.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"239\" height=\"239\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/trump.jpg 948w, https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/trump-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/trump-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 239px) 100vw, 239px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/em><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-4170\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">What does Anne Rice have in common with the Donald? They both think &quot;political correctness&quot; is a threat to freedom.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\">From the GOP Debate 8\/6\/15:<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span>Megyn Kelly: You\u2019ve called women you don\u2019t like \u201cfat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals&#8230;. Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women\u2019s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president&#8230;.?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><em>Donald Trump: &#8230;I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><em>&#8212;&#8212;&#8212;<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><em> <\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><em>Mob: (a) a riotous or disorderly crowd of people<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> &#8212; Collins \tEnglish Dictionary<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><em>Lynch: \tTo put to death by mob action without legal authority.<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><em> &#8212; Dictionary.com<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span>Recently several media outlets on the web have reported bestselling author Anne Rice&#8217;s stand against <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2015\/aug\/14\/anne-rice-hits-out-at-internet-lynch-mobs-attacking-controversial-books\">what she characterizes <\/a>as \u201cinternet lynch mobs\u201d practicing what she calls \u201ccensorship by bully\u201d in the name of \u201cpolitical correctness.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span>While Rice \u00a0has spoken about <a href=\"http:\/\/the-digital-reader.com\/2013\/04\/29\/how-not-to-respond-to-bad-reviews-the-anne-rice-edition\/\">this issue before<\/a>, her most recent call to action to her <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/annericefanpage?fref=ts\">Facebook <\/a>followers has involved the controversial Jewish-nazi romance novel, <em>For Such a Time. FSAT<\/em> offers a happily ever after ending to the holocaust after \u00a0\u201cblonde and blue-eyed Jewess,\u201d (from the book cover) Hadassah Benjamin, converts to Christianity and plans a future with \u00a0the former (fictional) commandant of Theresienstadt, who has also accepted Jesus into his heart (Glory Hallelujah) and been \u201cforgiven by God\u201d (quote from text) for the mass murder stuff. And oh yeah, Hadassah had been his prisoner for most of the novel, and he threatened to send her back to Dachau.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/some-things-we-dont-do.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4184\" title=\"some things we dont do\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/some-things-we-dont-do.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"460\" height=\"253\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/some-things-we-dont-do.jpg 696w, https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/some-things-we-dont-do-300x165.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 460px) 100vw, 460px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><!--more-->For those of you who haven&#8217;t been on the internet recently, I&#8217;m not making this book up. This isn&#8217;t a parody. It&#8217;s what some 5-star reviewers have referred to as &#8220;a beautiful love story.&#8221; And no, it was not published by Bialystok &amp; Bloom, but by <a href=\"http:\/\/bakerpublishinggroup.com\/bethanyhouse\">Bethany House<\/a>, a Christian publisher. Marketed to a niche audience, it didn&#8217;t attract much attention or controversy. However, once it was nominated for an award as both a first novel and best \u201cinspirational\u201d novel by the Romance Writers Association, wider attention came. Romance writer Sarah Wendell <a href=\"http:\/\/sarahwendell.tumblr.com\/post\/125859299894\/letter-to-the-rwa-board-regarding-for-such-a-time\">published a letter <\/a>to the RWA expressing her concerns regarding the nomination. There was also a review on the romance book blog, <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><em><a href=\"http:\/\/smartbitchestrashybooks.com\/reviews\/for-such-a-time-by-kate-breslin\/\">Smart Bitches, Trashy Books<\/a>, <\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span>giving the book a \u201cD\u201d grade. After that, came reposts and more opinion pieces in a range of print and internet publications. Plus some very detailed blog reviews like <a href=\"http:\/\/fuzzypinkslippers.com\/2015\/08\/15\/review-for-such-a-time\/\">this one <\/a> and this &#8220;sad but not angry&#8221; epistle <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jackiebarbosa.com\/2015\/08\/11\/a-sad-but-not-angry-letter-to-bethany-house\/\">from a Christian<\/a> addressed to Bethany House. It&#8217;s also led to an increase in reviews for the book &#8212; both positive and negative, on the book&#8217;s Amazon review page. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span>Rice admits to never having read the book, and appears not to have read much about it, stating that she doesn&#8217;t need to in order to defend the principle \u2013 the author&#8217;s right to explore ideas, and she compares the controversy to pre-internet uproars over books now considered classics such as <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><em>Lolita<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span>. The crux of her  argument is that there is an organized \u201cinternet lynch mob\u201d targeting this book and its author with the aim of \u201cgaming\u201d Amazon&#8217;s review system by flooding it with \u201cfalse\u201d negative customer reviews in an attempt to lower the book&#8217;s customer rating and thereby \u201ccensor\u201d the author. (All Anne Rice quotes here are from her Facebook page. Many screenshots to come.) She claims this is not a campaign against negative reviews, but against \u201cfalse\u201d ones, e.g. reviews where people haven&#8217;t read the book, but are relying on what she terms \u201cgossip\u201d about it. She doesn&#8217;t accept that there might be any other reason for leaving these reviews, other then as part of an organized &#8220;gang&#8221; to \u201csabotage\u201d the author and sink the book. Nor is she clear on how she knows that these reviewers haven&#8217;t read the book. She continually uses the (not at all incendiary) phrase &#8220;lynch mob&#8221; to describe what is happening. When a poster mildly disputes her version of recent reviews, Rice doubles-down and questions the authenticity of <\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span><em>all<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span> recently posted negative reviews that call the book badly written, classifying these as &#8220;attacks&#8221; by &#8220;these people.&#8221;<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/not-badly-written.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4172\" title=\"not badly written\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/not-badly-written.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"422\" height=\"198\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/not-badly-written.jpg 422w, https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/not-badly-written-300x140.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 422px) 100vw, 422px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #111111; font-family: Georgia;\">She has called the people leaving these negative reviews \u201cimmoral,\u201d \u201cunethical\u201d and characterized them as \u201cbullies.\u201d Furthermore, she has called her followers to action, repeatedly urging them to report these \u201cfake\u201d negative reviews to Amazon because, she asserts, not having reading the book is a violation of Amazon&#8217;s review guidelines. At the same time, she states many times that this is NOT about \u201clegitimate\u201d negative reviews. Perhaps she&#8217;s ultra-sensitive to this given her own reputation for over-reacting to negative criticism of her own work, as during her meltdown in 2004, when she attacked Amazon reviewers lambasting their &#8220;stupidity&#8221; and accusing them of <a href=\"http:\/\/chuckpalahniuk.net\/discuss\/anne-rice-goes-fucking-insane-amazoncom\">&#8220;interrogating the text from the wrong perspective<\/a>,&#8221; all this in a &#8220;5-star review&#8221; she posted of her own work on Amazon. \u00a0More recently <a href=\"http:\/\/bibliodaze.com\/2015\/02\/anne-rice-the-imaginary-gangster-bullies\/\">she has been criticized <\/a>for going after what she considers &#8220;bully&#8221; reviews although adding the term &#8220;political correctness&#8221; seems new. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia; color: #111111;\">While media for the most part has accurately portrayed Rice&#8217;s basic argument against the &#8220;lynch mob&#8221; &#8220;attacking&#8221; Kate Breslin and her book, what they have not done is explored whether or not she&#8217;s correct in her assessment of what&#8217;s going on and\/or whether or not her statements are factual. Whether or not, in fact, such a lynch mob even exists. They have taken her statements at face value, framing this as Rice taking a stand against internet \u201cbullying\u201d and \u201ccensorship.\u201d They have accepted her premise that there is an organized \u201cgang\u201d attempting to take the book down in the name of \u201cpolitical correctness.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia; color: #111111;\">But don&#8217;t responsible journalists have an obligation to explore her assertions first? Is there a mob? Is there even a mob mentality? Is there a \u201ccampaign\u201d to flood the book&#8217;s page with \u201cfalse\u201d reviews in an attempt to \u201csabotage\u201d an author and end her career? Is the book&#8217;s page \u201cflooded\u201d with reviews in which the readers haven&#8217;t read the book? What is Rice&#8217;s criteria for determining whether or not a review is \u201cfalse\u201d or for that matter whether or not one has read the book? What in fact is the nature of the critique offered in the negative reviews on the book&#8217;s page?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia; color: #111111;\">It&#8217;s as though someone were making  the claim that we are discriminating against our immigrants from Pluto, and this is morally reprehensible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><span>In short, before debating whether or not flooding a review site with \u201cfalse\u201d reviews in the name of political correctness is the biggest threat to free expression in history, shouldn&#8217;t we be asking whether or not that&#8217;s what&#8217;s happening in this case?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\">This is the first in what will be a series of posts. Like Anne Rice, I&#8217;m not overly concerned in this (and future) posts with the content of Kate Breslin&#8217;s book or what Rice terms its \u201ctransgressive ideas,\u201d and others have called its \u201coffensive premise,\u201d \u201chistorical inaccuracy\u201d \u201canti-semitism,\u201d etc. I <em>am<\/em> concerned with exploring whether there is any evidence to support the specific allegations, claims, and accusations made by Rice regarding the critics and criticism of <\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\"><em>For Such a Time, <\/em>specifically as expressed on the\u00a0<em> <\/em><\/span><\/span><span style=\"color: #111111;\"><span style=\"font-family: Georgia;\">Amazon review page for that book. I will explore whether or not her incitement and exhortations to her fans to \u201creport\u201d and \u201cdown-vote\u201d negative reviews is in itself an example of the very things she claims to oppose \u2013 organized unethical internet mob activity and attempting to &#8220;game&#8221; the Amazon review system.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia; color: #111111;\">This is going to be a very long and somewhat data driven post. I have many screenshots saved, as people have a tendency to backtrack and delete posts. I want to get this right. So please bear with me until at least tomorrow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia; color: #111111;\">Coming soon, Part II Manufacturing Outrage or Who&#8217;s Zoomin Who? (Update: Anne Rice has taken down all her facebook posts on this because that&#8217;s what she does. I am planning to continue this series, if only because I started it, but there&#8217;s a lot to unpack.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia; color: #111111;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/its-a-cookbook.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4180\" title=\"its a cookbook\" src=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/its-a-cookbook.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"504\" height=\"378\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/its-a-cookbook.jpg 504w, https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/its-a-cookbook-300x225.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 504px) 100vw, 504px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family: Georgia; color: #111111;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the GOP Debate 8\/6\/15: Megyn Kelly: You\u2019ve called women you don\u2019t like \u201cfat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals&#8230;. Your Twitter account has several disparaging comments about women\u2019s looks. You once told a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice it would be a pretty picture to see her on her knees. Does that sound to you &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/?p=4169\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Very Peculiar Lynching &#8212; Anne Rice, Political Correctness, and Free Speech, Part I<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[107,55,71],"tags":[1220,1224,1226,1227,1228,1225],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4169"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4179,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4169\/revisions\/4179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marioninnyc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}