Appropriate This

Writing military fiction I run into this line of thinking every now and again:

Ms. Shriver criticized as runaway political correctness efforts to ban references to ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation from Halloween celebrations, or to prevent artists from drawing on ethnic sources for their work. Ms. Shriver, the author of 13 novels, who is best known for her 2003 book, “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” was especially critical of efforts to stop novelists from cultural appropriation. She deplored critics of authors like Chris Cleave, an Englishman, for presuming to write from the point of view of a Nigerian girl in his best-selling book “Little Bee.”

I've been told a few times by vets that I had no business writing about, say, the Battle of 73 Easting. That's right, you were at the Battle of 73 Easting and I wasn't.

We call this is fiction. To paraphrase Ms. Shriver, by this standard, A Line through the Desert would have been about an 18 year kid on his suburban cul-de-sac. I know, I'll write an entire novel about a middle aged college professor with three little girls! Heh, I could write a novel about what it's like to be white and middle-aged in northern New Jersey.

Falling asleep yet? I know I am. Lemm tell you, its pretty damn boring and that's the way I like it. Got the kids off to school....going to the grocery store later...maybe I'll make fish tacos instead of chicken teriyaki...just remembered, gotta stop by the Post Office...wanna finish the second season of Tyrant tonight...

Look, all literary critics are useless, but this particular brand of 'you weren't there' critic is particularly loathsome; especially disgruntled jerks who like to lard up my Amazon reviews.

Really, fuck you. And if you got a problem with that, I'm easy to find.