[Phoenix]

Hilarious example of someone playing the leftist game to get their artistic work published. What is "good" in the modern art world is a political question, not a question of merit.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morni...-fen-chou/

Quote:

Sherman Alexie read hundreds, maybe thousands, of poems last year while editing the 2015 edition of Best American Poetry, an annual anthology that comes out Tuesday. Just over six dozen of them made the final cut, including “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve” by Yi-Fen Chou, 20 brief, cynical lines on the absurdity of desire.

But after Alexie had chosen the poem for the collection, he promptly got a note from the author, who turned out not to be the rueful, witty Chinese American poet he’d imagined while reading the piece.

It was written by Michael Derrick Hudson of Fort Wayne, Ind.

Personally, I think he should have used the name "Hung-Wei Lo"

Quote:

Hudson, who is white, wrote in his bio for the anthology that he chose the Chinese-sounding nom de plume after “The Bees” was rejected by 40 different journals when submitted under his real name. He figured that the poem might have a better shot at publication if it was written by somebody else.

“If this indeed is one of the best American poems of 2015, it took quite a bit of effort to get it into print, but I’m nothing if not persistent,” reads his unabashed explanation.

Anecdotally, Hudson’s calculation was correct.

Sounds legit. As per the rules, if he can appear to come from a leftism privileged class, he'll get, well... privileges.

Quote:

In a matter of about a day, the scandal was all over “Poetry Twitter,” which can be just as rancorous and swift to outrage as regular Twitter, but with a wider vocabulary. And, perhaps because of its Rachel Dolezal-esque tangle of questions about identity, authenticity, political correctness and “affirmative action,” it didn’t take much longer for the wider world to notice.

Pen names, as some on Twitter pointed out, have long been a staple of the literary world. And there are plenty of cases in which initials or a pseudonym have worked in the opposite direction — most often for women like Mary Ann Evans (George Eliot), Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) and Joanne Rowling (J.K. Rowling), who thought they would be taken more seriously or better reach their target demographic if they didn’t appear to be female.

But Hudson’s critics said the literary bait-and-switch was fraudulent, racist and fundamentally different from Charlotte Bronte publishing “Jane Eyre” under the name Currer Bell.

Of course. As per the rules, there is a different standard. If you are a woman, you can do whatever you want to your advantage and it will always be justified. If you are a man and you copy their tactics, also for your own advantage, let the outrage begin!

Quote:

“When you’re doing this from a position of entitlement, you’re appropriating an ethnic identity that’s one, imaginary, and two, doesn’t have access to the literary world,” poet and Chapman University professor Victoria Chang told The Washington Post. “And it diminishes categorically all of our accomplishments. He sort of implies that minorities are published because we’re minorities, not because of our work. That’s just insulting because it strips everything we’ve worked so hard for.”

Sure... so maybe judge the works based on merit alone? Problem solved, right? Except if it were an actual Chinese, and it had been rejected 40 times, no doubt a university professor ("a leftist that lives in a campus") like yourself would be demanding an end to discrimination.

Quote:

Things only got hairier when Alexie published a defense of his decision to keep the poem on Tuesday. In a blog post for the Best American Poetry Web site, Alexie explained that he read submissions blind, to the extent that he could. He didn’t look up authors to learn more about them or their past work.

“Each poem will stand or fall on its own merits,” went one of his 11 rules for reading.

And he acknowledged that he was “more amenable” to the poem because he thought its author was Chinese American.

Yeah, that's a funny kind of 'merit'. Maybe if the competition was "being Chinese", that would make sense. In which case I guess you'd have to be a tranny or gay to win. Because leftism.

Quote:

“I had to keep that pseudonymous poem in the anthology because it would have been dishonest to do otherwise,” he wrote. “If I’d pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I gave the poem special attention because of the poet’s Chinese pseudonym. If I’d pulled the poem then I would have been denying that I was consciously and deliberately seeking to address past racial, cultural, social, and aesthetic injustices in the poetry world.”

And, most importantly, Alexie wrote, if he pulled the poem, “I think I would have cast doubt on every poem I have chosen for BAP. It would have implied that I chose poems based only on identity.”

“But that’s not what happened,” he continued. “In the end, I chose each poem in the anthology because I love it. And to deny my love for any of them is to deny my love for all of them.”

My brain hurts.
Which is it bro? I think you need to have a few cold ones and untangle that mess inside your head.

Anyway, my intention is not to highlight the race aspect; this is just a great example of leftism generally. You can even use these rules to your advantage: if you're applying for a public sector job, art or culture job, actually probably a lot of jobs, don't bother sprucing up your resume. Just call yourself Caitlin and show up to the interview in a dress. Immediate hire guaranteed!

So next time if a man wins an artistic award, check his demographics. If it turns out he's a straight, white, western, non-tranny, christian male family man, then take note. Dude must have done something friggin seriously impressive .