Yep. Anyone who is famous just has to mention the “R” word (and space exploration funded by the private sector, apparently) and the teabaggers will be all over him.

We’ve got too many Internets.

If he wants to stand athwart J-Load’s internet connection yelling STOP! more power to him, I say. (And I <3 his comment about eBooks.)

Betty, I’m glad you spared me from having to do this.

I love Bradbury, and his books and stories were essential reading over the long Ohio summers of my youth. He and Clarke and Harlan Ellison and Norman Spinrad and a hundred other dreamers kept me sane in a land of endless corncobs and the clownish, time-delay adoption of pop cultural hand-me-downs from our city-slicker cousins.

Once, he was a poet/philosopher of science. Now, he just sounds like a disappointed prophet lamenting the fact that we haven’t already opened honky-tonk bars on Mars, and that the future turned out to have a lot more hardware and a lot less magic and bittersweet romance than he figured.

He wanted a heroic, human-centric future as written by Melville or Twain. What we got was a cybernetic dystopia co-authored by William Gibson, Philip K. Dick and Karel Čapek.

Using his late-life embitterment to ennoble Teabaggery is a pretty shameful enterprise. What’s the point? “A Bobby Heinlein is Just a Ray Bradbury Who’s Been Mugged By Reality”? I ain’t buyin’ it.

I’m a colossal Bradbury fan. Have been for ages. I own and have read almost all of his books.

But the Bradbury who wrote “The Martian Chronicles,” “Fahrenheit 451,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” and “Dandelion Wine” is not the teabagging Bradbury of today.

And his more recent forays into politics have not turned out well. I was embarrassed for him when he tried to claim that “Fahrenheit” wasn’t about censorship…

Sadly, Mr. Bradbury has become a willfully ignorant, flag-waving jingoist in his old age. I attended his appearance at the San Diego Comic-Con a few years ago, at which—well, see for yourselves:

He and Clarke and Harlan Ellison and Norman Spinrad and a hundred other dreamers kept me sane

Oh, I hardly think I’m worthy of mention in the same breath as such luminaries, but hey, glad you enjoyed my e-mails.

“We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

Okay, look, I realize it’s too obvious by half, but honestly, it’s been almost 5 hours. Somebody’s gotta call that a “Dandelion Whine.”

@gil mann—Apologies. I meant the other Norman Spinrad.

We have too many cellphones. We’ve got too many Internets.

This from a man who wanted a rocket ship and a robot in every garage.

“Dandelion Whine.”

Can’t top that.

Can’t top that.

To paraphrase Spike from Buffy, yeah you can, but thanks for saying it.

Bradbury is a hard core Republican. I once saw him in Los Angeles with a couple of other folks and he just went into a rant about how much he hated Bill Clinton. He was so pissed that Dole lost the election. Bradbury sounded just like every other right wing nut in the 90s demanding Clinton’s impeachment. I just shook my head so sad to see a once great man’s mind just go to seed.

Bradbury is an example of the necessity of separating the artist from the work. I’m a big fan, but I don’t really want to wrap my head around the fact that some of my favorite stories were written by Grandpa Simpson. I had a chance to see him at a reading two years ago in LA, but I went to the beach to look at girls instead.

However, I’d love to see him and Harlan Ellison in a crank-off. Christ, that would be soooo epic.