BRAD: A letter I sent to the editors of Entertainment Weekly.
To whom it may concern,
I am writing to point out some rather egregious problems with this article:
Firstly, the SAD PUPPIES slate cited in the article, included both women and non-caucasians.
Rajnar Vajra
Larry Correia
Annie Bellet
Kary English
Toni Weisskopf
Ann Sowards
Megan Gray
Sheila Gilbert
Jennifer Brozek
Cedar Sanderson
Amanda Green
Secondly, I myself have been interracially married for the past 21 years.
Your article writer (ISABELLA BIEDENHARN) needs to correct the disinformation in the article and apologize for deliberately getting the facts wrong.
The article above may have merely been an opinion piece, but there is strong evidence for libel.
Please respond.
Brad R. Torgersen
Award-winning author
Chief Warrant Officer, United States Army Reserve
Brad R. Torgersen 
Alright i’m white, but I am a bloody foreigner. That must count for something.
Do you have a lawyer? If so, you might want to consider having them send a follow-up if you get no response.
EW goes full retard.
A pity Ghengis Kratman no longer practices law. . . this could have been epic. . .
Oww. I was dumb enough to read some of the comments there. About 20% of them are progressive delusions.
Sadly, I am no longer surprised when a popular magazine lies in print, but I am still somewhat flummoxed when I read an article that provides a link to evidence that proves that they are lying. In order to fact check this article you don’t need to go to the library and look something up. You don’t need to even open a new browser and type a phrase into a search engine. All you have to do is follow the link that the author helpfully provided in the second paragraph.
You guys are also not associated with gamer gate.
Antitango,
Some of us are, GamerGate and Sad Puppies are natural allies as both care about SJW infestations seeking to co-opt the industries for their agendas.
If it gets to the point of a libel lawsuit, and someone sets up a paypal account for the fund, I’ll donate $100 initially, and more as I can afford it. Lawsuits have a chilling effect on people that lie about others.
Wow. If you’ve read my posts, Brad, you know that while I agree with some of the Sad Puppies points I do not agree with the SP tactics. And I do think that it was a tactical mistake to have Vox Day be an important part of your movement. But this article is beneath contempt. And awfully bad one-sided reporting, if you can call it reporting and not simply unverified gossip. Whoever sent this information to EW ought to be ashamed of themselves. I’m so sorry you had to experience this. If you disagree with someone you should do it with respect and insight, not venom, something both sides of the Hugo kerfuffle ought to be doing, but not on this, not on this.Time to turn off the Internet and go read some Edmond Hamilton before I turn into a Sad Puppy. Better yet, I’ll go buy one of your books on Amazon. Which one do you think I should buy?
I knew we’d make the mainstream! I KNEW it!
Good grief, these SJWs have no shame at all. She can’t even be bothered to try to lie more effectively.
As the shining, guilt-proving link between #GamerGate and Sad Puppies (according to Patrick Nielsen Hayden and followers):
1 – I only nominated works I read.
2 – I didn’t nominate Sad Puppies works I had read, because I didn’t believe they deserved it.
3 – I nominated other works I felt deserved it, which didn’t make it.
I’m glad I participated, and I’m looking forward to participating next year.
Also, I’m a nobody, who had nothing to do with Sad Puppies except sending out some tweets and joining Sasquan. PNH used my tweets to defame everyone in Sad Puppies. That’s despicable.
The people of Sad Puppies won a victory. #GamerGate had little or nothing to do with it.
Evidence: pic.twitter.com/ilZQ2x8LLu
Congrats, and good luck beating No Award!
Lying is always the hardcore “progressive’s” immediate, instinctive response, in any given situation.
It is also their second, third and fourth response.
You’re telling me they couldn’t spend 15 minutes to do some basic bloody research before printing a potentially libelous article accusing several people of being racist misogynists? Isn’t that Journalism 101?
They posted a retraction at the link.
But the wording of the article remains the same.
It’s like they thought they could get away with another “Gamers are Dead” travesty
Why not? Rolling Stone falsely-accused a fraternity of being gang-rapists and nobody was fired for it.
OK, now it’s been properly updated.
Clamps (under color of his “yamamanama” identity) has already shown up to ooze pus and pestilence throughout the EW comments section. FYI.
“CORRECTION: After misinterpreting reports in other news publications, EW published an unfair and inaccurate depiction of the Sad Puppies voting slate, which does, in fact, include many women and writers of color. As Sad Puppies’ Brad Torgerson explained to EW, the slate includes both women and non-caucasian writers, including Rajnar Vajra, Larry Correia, Annie Bellet, Kary English, Toni Weisskopf, Ann Sowards, Megan Gray, Sheila Gilbert, Jennifer Brozek, Cedar Sanderson, and Amanda Green. ” 🙂
I don’t think they know what a “fascist” is.
It’s increasingly clear the media doesn’t know much of anything.
One can only guess how desperately the CHORFs wanted this one. The EW blunderbuss was just about their heaviest armament, all things considered… and now: not only spent, futilely, but rendered completely and wholly ineffectual.
Oh, the red-faced shrieking and spluttering and foot-stamping that must be going on in the Toad of TOR Hall’s demesne, right about now… 😉
Yup. I’ll bet you anything the “sources” for the article were all the folks who hate our guts.
Getting closer to hoisting the jolly roger man.
You and me both.
Alan Zeibarth: I’ve heard good things about The Chaplain’s War. It’s on my current reading list, though I haven’t gotten to it so can’t give you a personal account of how good it is.
Thanks, bought it.
Alan Ziebarth:
I loved Chaplins War. Thought it was a fascinating read, though it does jump around a bit which confused me till I got used to it. I did listen to the Audible edition.
I have Chaplain’s War but haven’t read it yet. Unfortunately, its going to have to sit behind a dozen or so other books that are at the top of my pile. And the Hugo packet isn’t even out yet…
*sigh* Too many books, too little time. 😦
Jared Anjewierden says:
> Getting closer to hoisting the jolly roger man.
:
Harlock, after being exiled from Earth, to President Triter:
“Dance to your hearts content on that small world of yours. Our world is the whole of space!”
Waga seishun no Arukadia, hasshin!
NO RESEARCH EITHER SHE LIED OR WAS LIED TO… BUT jOURNALISM MEANS DOING YOUR HOMEWORK,,,, mAYBE SHE WAS IN THAT cHOPPER THAT WAS SHOT AT IN iRAQ…
sorry for the Caps lock!
She didn’t need to do research; it fit the narrative that “everyone” knows is true about anything even remotely associated with conservatives & libertarians. Clearly, this was just another case of the neanderthal right trying to marginalize women and minorities; why bother verifying what all correct-thinking people already know? [/sarc]
You have made it to Instapundit.
Wow.
That’s the place to sell memberships.
… and now Twitchy is rudely mocking EW, the Toad and all her sickening sycophants:
http://twitchy.com/2015/04/06/entertainment-weekly-retracts-claim-of-misogynistic-racist-hugo-awards-voting-campaign/
Good times. GOOD times! 😉
I wouldn’t call it libel, but it was shoddy reporting … extracting from blogs what are obviously opinions (often themselves based on second- and third-hand rumors) and calling it “news” without troubling to factcheck it, is hardly quality journalism.
“Entertainment Weekly Lets the Stupid Flow Freely”
I’m not gonna lie: I am just eating this up with the proverbial spoon.
“without troubling to factcheck it.”
IOW, with a “reckless disregard for the truth”–part of the standard for libel.
So, yeah, I would call it libel.
Brad, have you seen this article?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11517920/Hugo-Award-nominations-spark-row-over-diversity-in-sci-fi.html
Repeats the EW libel pretty much word-for-word. You may want to consider a quick email to the Daily Telegraph. If they don’t backpedal pretty quickly, you should consider taking advantage of England’s very generous defamation law. There are plenty of solicitors who would deal with it no-win-no-fee.
They did not retract the assertion that Sad Puppies is somehow “affiliated with Gamergate”.
C’mon, if we make them issue any more corrections, they’ll have to pull the whole article. 😉
Hi Brad, congrats on getting EW to publish a retraction and apology – it’s sickening to see “reputable” publications jump to publish rumours and gossip without any sort of fact checking. However, it seems that EW lifted the article verbatim from this article from UK publication The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/11517920/Hugo-Award-nominations-spark-row-over-diversity-in-sci-fi.html
Might want to fire your letter off to their EiC as well.
“with a “reckless disregard for the truth”–part of the standard for libel.”
Well, when you put it that way…. there’d be damn little left of ‘journalism’ as a field.
Our example here did lead to some mondo comments, tho…
BTW where the heck did I see that list of nominees by gender and politics? I wanted to post it elsewhere to refute someone’s idiot contention that it was all old white guys, but now I can’t find it.
Count me in for that Jolly Roger as well.
Being interracially married doesn’t mean you’re not racist. All of us are. We are formed within an inherently racist culture. And having women and non-white people on your roster doesn’t mean that your drive is not at heart misogynistic and racist.
@Roger B.A. Klorese:
Ya, I’ve read stuff about “institutional racism”. I think you must have to take lots of Sociology courses, and drink lost of Cool-Aid to take that seriously.
All of us are [racists].
Speak for yourself, and ONLY for yourself. Your self-confessed limitations are your own problem, and no one else’s.
I read EW (such an unusually apt abbreviation) about once a month to check on what the clueless mundanes are up to. This is the rag that didn’t figure out that SG-1 existed until late in season 10. And they screwed up their reporting on gamer gate a few weeks ago as well. I am completely unsurprised that this exemplar of the dinosaur media botched SP reportage as well. They really are as dumb as a sack of rocks.
And surprise surprise, the worms crawl from their holes to proclaim that Brad’s show of familial love proves (you guessed it), that he’s even more racist than first thought!
So, so tiresome.
Reading SF for the past 50 years taught me early on the trick of being able to see things through the POV of someone/something completely and utterly alien in nature… but, my hand to God: trying to imagine what daily existence must be for someone like Klorese or Chu — flinching and spluttering on cue at each and every imaginary “trigger” or “microaggression”; automatically viewing other human beings not as people, first and foremost, but as ambulatory check marks on a grey government form fetishistically listing SJW-approved gradients of Race and Gender and Sexual Preference — leaves me both faintly nauseated and nonplussed, in roughly equal measure.
Let them peddle their worn, ideologically bucktoothed wares someplace where the rubes are still buying.
Oh… and one last thing. As the old saying goes: “Until you turn 30, you have the face God gave you. After that, you have the face you deserve.”
Piggish little eyes… doughy, entitled face… lips curled in the perpetually defensive sneer of the moral and intellectual welterweight.
Arthur Chu very definitely has the face he deserves.
Whoops, I didn’t realise that posting the link would screencap the tweet up there. Not sure what your policy on offensive language is here Brad – blow the comment away if it’s a problem.
I probably shouldn’t be giving the toad anymore airtime anyway… 😀