From today's
Star Tribune:
(House Majority Leader Republican Matt) Dean also singled out a $45,000 payment of Legacy money that was made last year to science fiction writer Neil Gaiman for a four-hour speaking appearance. Dean said that Gaiman, "who I hate," was a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota."
From Neil's twitter feed this morning:
Sad & funny. Minnesota Republicans have a "hate" list. Like Nixon did. I'm on it. They also don't like capitalism.
http://t.co/FObmLGoIt's strange watching a grownup high school bully in power. But the bully vocabulary remains the same.
http://t.co/FObmLGoAnd for those curious how and why I made it onto the hate list, what I wrote at the time on my blog.
http://bit.ly/lMxsWQThe Cliff's Notes version: Neil does charge a lot for public speaking, in order to discourage a shitload of public speaking requests he receives that would otherwise prevent him from what he should be doing, which is writing. He was reluctant to accept $45,000 from a small public library like Stillwater, until he was told that it was a government fund that the library could not spend on books or salaries, and either had to use within a month or lose. So he accepted it,
and donated it to charity.More from Neil:
Any nice, sane Minnesota Republicans reading this, please vote for someone who isn't a bully with a hate list next time.
A few hours later:
Bizarrely, the twit who called me a pencilnecked weasel has posted my blog on his and claims copyright on it.
http://bit.ly/j9dEwk #mad
Neil Gaiman, it should be noted at this point, has over a million and a half followers on Twitter -- a substantial fraction of whom went to visit Matt Dean's blog the moment Neil posted that link. The result was a "problem" that has become somewhat common with Neil, so much so that he has invented a hashtag to describe it. Visit the link yourself to see what I mean.
A few minutes later:
Bugger. Did not mean to #neilwebfail the twit's site. Sorry.