If you'll recall, yesterday we saw a Hollywood journo eagerly informing their audience how to financially cripple an artist for holding political beliefs they disagreed with. Josh Dickey wanted you to understand that blacklisting the film adaptation of Ender's Game made no sense, as author Orson Scott Card will earn nothing off the film's gross. The correct way to resurrect McCarthyism, Dickey wrote, is to refuse to buy the book, because Card is still earning money off of it.
The blogosphere seized on Dickey's fascist notion. Here's Angie Han at Slash Film:
But now that we know a boycott won’t hurt Card’s bank account anyway, the better way to protest him would be to stop buying his books. Frankly, avoiding those purchases shouldn’t be too difficult in this day and age. Those who still want to read his novels can check them out at the library, borrow them from a friend, or, ahem, pirate digital copies.
Here's Adrianne Jeffries at The Verge:
But if protesters really want to hit Card in his wallet, they should call for a boycott of the book.
Here's Jack de Aguilar at Contact Music:
If you really want to stand up against homophobia, then boycotting his book would be a far more pragmatic step. The book currently stands atop the New York Times’ Paperback Mass-Market Fiction Best Sellers List, ahead of The Racketeer and Mad River. Scott-Card is profiting handsomely from this, so a widespread boycott of his novel – not the entirely separate film – is the way to go.
You get the idea. Unfortunately for the fascists, their efforts to punish an artist for his political views are hitting a brick wall, at least if Amazon's rankings are to be believed. Let's look at the Kindle ranks for Ender's Card:
Hm. Well, what about hard copies?
For now, the neo-McCarthyite left is losing, something for which we should all be grateful. Somehow, I doubt this will deter them from initiating blacklists in the future—something we should all be concerned about.