Once Again, It's Personality Over Policy, Or: SFWA Politics

So the SFWA politics are reflecting mainstream politics, which irritates me.
Here’s the background, for those of you who aren’t SFWA members: John Scalzi is running unopposed for President again, which is fine because he’s done a good job.  Mary Robinette Kowal, however, has stepped down from her position as VP, leaving two people to run: Rachel Swirsky and Lou Antonelli.
Lou posted a blog entry announcing his candidacy, and in his personal bio he said: “Louis and Patricia have two adopted Canine-American children, Millie and Sugar Antonelli.” Author Nisi Shawl (who literally wrote the book on writing about other cultures respectfully) took offense at this characterization, saying, “I, too, am a dog-lover, but I struggle for the words to tell you exactly how and why your flippant trivialization of the ethnic identity movement with this phrasing revolted me.”
Lou replied, perhaps unwisely, “I have no damn idea what your problem is. If I offended some esoteric aspect of political correctness, I don’t care… If this some way of saying your genes are more important than your citizenship, then it’s bullshit…. You obviously take yourself way too seriously.”
…at which point a heated discussion broke out on Twitter and in his comments (and in Jim Hines’ blog) about how a man who responded so angrily to a complaint from a SFWA member wasn’t fit to be Vice President.  (Most of the people I saw referencing it fell into the category of “Weren’t bothered by the Canine-American silliness at first blush, but the response was so full of swearing and tone-deaf dismissal that I don’t think this man has what it takes to represent a diverse organization.”)
These discussions brought all sorts of additional scrutiny to his biography – which claims that Lou would bring “diversity” to SFWA by being an older white Baptist.  (Which, to be fair, may be a minority among SFWA members, but still.)  And many decided not to vote for Lou based on the mini-scandal brought by his blog post.
All valid points.  You know, if a fairly prominent SFWA member comes to you with concerns about your tone, swearing at her is not a smart political move.  Do we want to elect a guy who can’t Google “Nisi Shawl” and then “Ethnic identity movement” before responding?
But.
But.
This is politics in a nutshell once again, with personality trumping policy. Because the real bombshell was buried in Lou’s goals for SFWA, were he elected:
“I would like to see an amendment to the criteria for a professional short story publication, going back to the three cents a word standard (which I believe was the pay rate over a decade ago).”
In other words, Lou’s main platform is “I would like to lower the minimum pay rate for authors to be considered professional.”  Which is a nice way of saying “I’d like authors to earn less money,” because the “pro rate” of five cents a word is what lower-tier magazines struggle to make in order to be called “professional.”  They make triumphant blog posts when they do make it.  SFWA sets the standard for payment.  The second you lower that rate, the marketplace will adjust to three cents a word.
How fucked up is that?  For the record, I had three professional short story sales in 2011 – more than most members, I’d wager.  And for those three sales, I made a sum total of about $600, two from online markets who were quite proud about finally hitting the “pro” rate.  Not exactly a princely sum, you see.
Under the Lou three-cents-a-word program, there’s a better-than-even chance I’d have made $440 instead.
So why would I vote for this guy?  His argument is that we’ll get more SFWA members with a lower rate – which is great for SFWA’s coffers, but actually actively terrible for me as a writer.  Five cents a word wasn’t really livable back in 1990, and after two decades of inflation we’re going to roll it back?
Seriously.  What the fuck?
To my mind, that’s the real scandal.  Not to dismiss Nisi’s complaints (though I should note she later accepted Lou’s apology, an apology I think was genuine), but what the blog-o-sphere should have reacted to was the cockamamie proposal on the table, one that would have made the economic realities of struggling authors patently worse.
Once again, we have the real world at work.  In a just place, Lou would have been dismissed out of hand for bad policy long before we even thought about writing him off for any political missteps.  But because policy is boring and insults exciting, we have the shitstorm raised by personal error, with the policy being raised only once the blog-o-sphere erupted in anger over something Lou did wrong.  (And I’m not immune – I didn’t notice the three-cents policy until Keffy pointed it out to me.)  I think Lou’s probably well-intentioned overall, not a bad man by any means, but that policy…. oof.
That vexes me.  I wish more people paid attention to platforms and got as angry about them as they did the scandals of personal misconduct – me included.  But we don’t.  Even in the small world of SFWA.
In other news, Rachel Swirsky is a wonderful human being and a very competent woman who has my wholehearted vote for SFWA vice president.  She had it before, doubly so now.