Ender's Game looks like a good time at the movies, right?
The sci-fi epic features a strong cast (including Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis, Abigail Breslin, Hailee Steinfeld and Asa Butterfield), a solid trailer, and an enviable pedigree — Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is widely considered one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time.
Why, then, is the movie's marketing department having such a tough time? Well, that'd be because Orson Scott Card is a goddamn madman.
Card's latest insane rant was actually posted to his blog in May, but it's only picked up steam around the internet today. In it, he explicitly compares Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, and says that Obama "is, by character and preference, a dictator".
That's not even the best bit, though — that'd be when Card puts forth his massively racist theory that Obama is building an army of "urban men" to serve as a national police force.
Obama will claim we need a national police force in order to fight terrorism and crime. The Boston bombing is a useful start, especially when combined with random shootings by crazy people.
Where will he get his "national police"? The NaPo will be recruited from "young out-of-work urban men" and it will be hailed as a cure for the economoic malaise of the inner cities.
In other words, Obama will put a thin veneer of training and military structure on urban gangs, and send them out to channel their violence against Obama's enemies.
Instead of doing drive-by shootings in their own neighbourhoods, these young thugs will do beatings and murders of people "trying to escape" — people who all seem to be leaders and members of groups that oppose Obama.
Wow. This is worse than that time George Lucas digitally replaced the Cantina Band with a Neo-Nazi skinhead group.
In what seems more and more like a deliberately timed campaign to sabotage a movie based on his own work, this is only the latest in a long string of disgraces for Card. Earlier this year, the noted LGBT opponent gave the laws of America the most cursory of glances before writing "there are no laws left standing that discriminate against gay couples".
In 2008, he made his opposition to same-sex marriage — and any government that would support it — clear: "I will act to destroy that government and bring it down, so it can be replaced with a government that will respect and support marriage, and help me raise my children in a society where they will expect to marry in their turn."
So, that leaves the tally of people who have an issue with Orson Scott Card at "urban men", same-sex couples, and anyone who cares about either of those groups.
To their credit, virtually everyone else involved with the film has gone out of their way to distance themselves from Card — director Gavin Hood told LGBT-focused magazine The Advocate that Card's "position in real life is really at odds with his art" and that his struggles with these issues are "very sad"; distributor Lionsgate called themselves "proud longtime supporters of the LGBT community" and stated they "do not agree with the personal views of Orson Scott Card"; Harrison Ford has said "none of Mr Card's concerns regarding the issue of gay marriage are part of the thematics of this film".
"I am aware of his statements admitting that the question of gay marriage is a battle he lost," Ford added. "He admits that he lost. I think we all know that we've all won. That humanity has won. And that's the end of the story."
(Questions have certainly been raised about how effectively Lionsgate can shut the creator of Ender's Game out of the promotion of Ender's Game, but they're damn sure giving it the old college try; even announcing plans to hold a screening of the film to benefit the LGBT community.)
For what it's worth, Card sees himself as the victim in all this; he's even asked for "tolerance" from supporters of same-sex marriage.
"Ender's Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984," he wrote last month.
"With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state.
"Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute."
Ender's Game will be released in Australia on December 5.
