Shut Up and Sing?

The news rocketed through the mystery/crime blogosphere like an electric current: Barry Eisler, author of the excellent John Rain series, has a blog. Barry being Barry, it's a fine blog, a thoughtful blog, filled with Barry's incisive dissection and analysis of current events. Since those events tend to involve hot-button issues, the discussion in the comments section has tended to be, ah, lively. And it's caused some other bloggers, such as Sandra Ruttan, to ruminate on the question of whether writers, who are after all in the business of selling a product, should be overtly political in their on-line discourse, lest they offend potential readers.

Should we just, in the words of the abominable Laura Ingraham, just "Shut Up and Sing"?

Here's my answer: If I offend anyone here, if you don't want to read my books because you don't like my politics or the way I express them....well, I'll just have to learn to live with it. As I posted in the comments section on Sandra's blog, I was a columnist before I was a novelist. I'll most likely continue to do both. In fact, the reason I picked up the pen again after a fifteen year hiatus was because I saw things going on in the world around me that red-lined my bullshit meter. Those things have increased, not decreased.

On the other hand, don't be too disapponted if you've read the columns or blog entries and pick up the books expecting them to be overtly political. That sort of thing makes for cardboard characters and lousy fiction.

I also find it strange that the only people who are being warned "oh, don't write political stuff on your blog, you'll alienate readers" all tend to lean liberal. Nobody, to my knowledge, is telling Orson Scott Card to keep quiet because his conservative views might alienate readers. Why is it only the Barbara Streisands and Dixie Chicks being told to "Shut Up and Sing", and not, say Toby Keith?

Finally, I have to say that, before I was either a columnist or novelist, I was and I remain a citizen of this country, a country that I love with a deep and abiding passion. If I see it being taken down the wrong path by charlatans, mountebanks and fools, I'm not going to just "Shut Up and Sing."

I'm going to stand up and raise hell.