Obama-hating sci-fi author Orson Scott Card appointed to North Carolina PBS board<a href="http://www.zumapress.com/zpdtl.html?IMG=20070908_gaf_g49_049.jpg&CNT=0">Globe Photos</a>/ZumaPress
There’s been lots of news lately about the state of North Carolina, which in a few short years has gone from being a somewhat moderate southern state to one on the extreme conservative end of the spectrum. The GOP has supermajorities in both houses of the legislature and the state governor is also a Republican, giving the party license to, well, party. The GOP has passed anti-abortion laws tacked on to a motorcycle safety bill; slashed unemployment benefits; instituted a horrific voter suppression mechanism; and tried to ban nipple exposure (with one legislator suggesting women cover them with duct-tape to be in compliance), among other things.
Continuing in that vein this week, the Republican leader of the state senate appointed Orson Scott Card to the board of trustees for the University of North Carolina’s public television affiliate. Card is a science fiction writer best known for the bestselling Ender’s Game. But Card has also become rather famous for being something of an anti-gay Obama-hater.
Card, a Mormon, once served on the board of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage. His views on homosexuality have prompted calls for a boycott of the movie version of Ender’s Game, opening in October. He’s also been in the spotlight recently for comparing President Obama to Hitler and Stalin. In May, he published a 3,000-word “thought experiment” in Greensboro’s Rhinoceros Times, in which he envisions a future where Obama enlists mobs of unemployed urban youth to serve as “brown shirts” in his own personal domestic army, and Obama and his wife change the law to allow themselves to run the country forever. He writes:
By the time Michelle has served her two terms, the Constitution will have been amended to allow Presidents to run for reelection forever. Obama will win by 98 percent every time. That’s how it works in Nigeria and Zimbabwe; that’s how it worked in Hitler’s Germany.
Card might seem an odd choice for a seat on a board overseeing 12 public TV stations that broadcast into four states, given how much he hates the media in general. He’s been a vocal critic of pretty much every news outlet aside from Fox News. After the 2012 election, he wrote, “So yes, CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post, and all the rest of you in the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda: You won. But we know you now. We know just how low you’ll go, how compliant you will be with the Beloved Leader.” In the Rhinoceros Times he wrote, “It’s hard to imagine how American press coverage would be different if Obama were a Hitler- or Stalin-style dictator, except of course that everyone at Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the Rhinoceros Times would be in jail. Or dead.”
All of this, of course, makes Card a perfect choice for a Republican party that’s long had it in for public broadcasting. North Carolina viewers probably won’t be seeing shows like Frontline’s “Assault on Gay America” or the 2011 American Experience episode on the Stonewall uprising, but Card’s appointment could be good news for fans of Dr. Who, reruns of which might be necessary to fill the holes left by all the other PBS offerings Card finds too objectionable to air.
