Sad Puppies 4, Continued

So I said Friday that Sad Puppies 4 is so far this is everything Sad Puppies 3 was not, namely open and transparent. Unfortunately, the leadership has not made as clean a break from the past as one would have liked.

Specifically, several people, on finding out that they were on the SP4 reading list, asked to be taken off. One person (John Scalzi) had very publicly recused himself from the Hugos well prior to the list being generated. Rather than acting like adults and graciously saying "okay, we'll pull you," the SP4 principals issued various pissy blog posts about how wrong these requests were.

This frankly baffles me. Generally speaking, if you nominate somebody for an award and they say "no thanks" the polite, normal and human response would be "okay, no problem, we'll nominate something else." One might add "but we really liked your stuff, you should reconsider." Anything else is simply being rude.

Further, suggesting that turning down an award nomination is "insulting to your fans" is baffling. I suppose their are cultures in which one must accept any gift offered, but I didn't think we lived in one.

Lastly, saying "but he did X" doesn't cut it either. Two wrongs don't make a right and never did.