Bad Romance: An Auction, Politics and Bad Actors
SFWA President and ludicrous hat enthusiast Jeffe Kennedy has been keeping herself busy lately. Last week she was the guest of a reddit AMA where she answered such burning questions as whether her work was considered fantasy romance or romantic fantasy, and this past Valentine’s Day saw her auctioning off her services as someone’s personal writing coach to the tune of more than $1,500.
Yes, you read that correctly. The woman who wasn’t quite able to sell 7,000 copies across her voluminous body of work was offering six months’ worth of her platinum literary insights for the Romancing the Vote auction. The winning bid was $1,501.50. Thinking this was as much a joke as one of Kennedy’s millinery orders, I did a little research. It turns out that a) someone did indeed seem to have $1,500 too much in their bank account and b) the group is run by a gaggle of progressive thornbacks who never met a lost cause they didn’t like to throw money at.
A reveiw for Kennedy's Dark Wizard. Irondically, the AMA she was part of was on behalf of a group that worked to prevent violence against women.
Romancing the Vote’s site, which is little more than a list of donation links, does feature a one-paragraph mission statement vaguely proclaiming that their aim is to combat voter suppression. Also featured is a gripping origin story of how it started out as a group of romance authors raising a ton of money to aid in the immolation of Stacey Abrams’ gubernatorial hopes in Georgia. Congratulating themselves on that job well done, they continue to raise money which they funnel to another nonprofit, Fair Fight, a national group advancing all manner of leftist political fantasies, among which are Medicare for All and the aforementioned fight against voter suppression.
Still following? Good, because here’s the thing: voter suppression is a myth, and Fair Fight’s own website peddles roundly disproven talking points in an effort to fundraise off of voter rage. The language doesn't even attempt to sound any more subtle than Maoist agitprop, referring to anyone challenging election results as “extremists”, “conspiracy theorists” and “anti-voter”. All of the rhetoric is anti-republican. This is important, as it makes Romancing the Vote’s claim on their webpage of “Supporting the right to vote for everyone” a bit difficult to believe.
In throwing in with Fair Fight, Romancing the Vote and its associates have declared themselves openly hostile to those whose worldview contains any rightward nuance whatsoever.
As I write this article, Fair Fight’s homepage features a slider referring to the efforts by various states to secure mail-in balloting as “Jim Crow 2.0”. Clicking on it takes you to its own minisite, stopjimcrow2.com. If that wording sounds familiar, it should: president Biden used it during interviews last year to describe Georgia’s SB202, and he was roundly drubbed for it.
A review for Kennedy's The Orchid Throne
Without venturing too far into the political here, a brief synopsis of the controversy is as such: the covid pandemic allowed for widespread mail-in balloting, for various races in the 2020 election cycle. In the months running up to election night, the internet was alight with horror stories of ballot tampering everywhere one turned. While many of these articles varied in accuracy, legitimate instances of abuse did surface. Georgia, Stacey Abrams’ home state, garnered national attention due to her contentious loss to Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp (which she never formally acknowledged) and Trump’s insistence that he’d lost the state due to widespread fraud. In 2021, SB202 was introduced and eventually passed. Joe Biden was quick to call the legistlation “Jim Crow 2.0” and “Jim Crow on Steroids”. So what does Jim Crow 2.0 look like? Are there literacy tests and poll taxes?
Review for Kennedy's Pages of the Mind.
Of course not. Ballot box drop-off sites were limited to places with better supervision, voters were required to provide a driver’s license ID number or social security number on mail-in ballot envelopes, and, giving lie to the entire asinine claim of voter suppression – implemented standardized minimum poll operating hours, expanded in-person early voting to 17 days, and expanded the amount of time to request an absentee ballot to 67 days. Even that bordello masquerading as a news source, the Washington Post, rated Biden’s claim four Pinocchios. MIT elections expert Charles Stewart III told the Post that the bill “Indicated an expansion of hours, especially in rural counties.”
All of which is to say this: Obviously Ms. Kennedy (and Donna Herren, and Bree Bridges and Courtney Milan) are free to lend their time and talents supporting anyone they so wish. I’m sure whoever it was that paid $1,500 for six months of coaching from a woman who can barely string together three successive coherent thoughts in her vlogs thought they got a good deal. But if you’re a writer or a sci-fi or fantasy fan who finds themselves on the opposite side of these or other issues, would you feel accepted at SFWA? What about WorldCon? Do you think you’d be seen as part of the “larger community” the organization proclaims to champion? In throwing in with Fair Fight, Romancing the Vote and its associates have declared themselves openly hostile to those whose worldview contains any rightward nuance whatsoever. Writer beware, indeed.