{"id":5108,"date":"2019-06-24T01:25:27","date_gmt":"2019-06-24T08:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=5108"},"modified":"2019-06-24T01:25:27","modified_gmt":"2019-06-24T08:25:27","slug":"nicholas-sparks-scandal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2019\/06\/24\/nicholas-sparks-scandal\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicholas Sparks Scandal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Then there\u2019s&nbsp;<strong>Nicholas Sparks&nbsp;<\/strong>\u2013 author of those dreadfully saccharine and syrupy stories where straight white people fall in love after overcoming horrific obstacles.&nbsp; Last week, Broadway producers announced that they were doing a reading of a new musical based on&nbsp;<strong><em>The Notebook<\/em><\/strong>.&nbsp; This has the potential of being a huge moneymaker for the author.&nbsp; But not so fast.&nbsp; The very next day, the former headmaster of the Christian school Sparks founded claimed that the author tried to ban LGBT clubs and protests.&nbsp; In fact, the former headmaster is suing Sparks, stating that he \u201cunapologetically marginalized, bullied, and harassed members of the school community whose religious views and\/or identities did not conform to their religiously driven, bigoted preconceptions.\u201d&nbsp; What would one expect from&nbsp;<strong><em>Epiphany School<\/em><\/strong>?&nbsp; Yes, that\u2019s the name of the school.&nbsp; And Sparks did found it, so it\u2019s his way or the highway (likely not the highway to heaven).&nbsp; In an e-mail, Sparks accused the headmaster of having \u201can agenda that strives to make homosexuality open and accepted\u201d.&nbsp; Lest you think his vitriol was limited to the gays, Nick also said the school had few minority students because they were \u201ctoo poor and can\u2019t do the academic work\u201d.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Once this story went public, Sparks did some fancy footwork via&nbsp;<em>Twitter<\/em>: \u201cAs someone who has spent the better part of my life as a writer who understands the power of words, I regret and apologize that mine have potentially hurt young people and members of the LGBTQ community, including my friends and colleagues in that community.\u201d&nbsp; Being Sparks, he goes on and on, but you get the gist.&nbsp; In fact, the only thing he didn\u2019t address was the racist accusations.&nbsp; Anyhoo, the producers of the musical were satisfied, and said (in part), \u201cWe are encouraged that Mr. Sparks has made a strong statement of support of the LGBTQ+ community today.\u201d&nbsp; And, on with the show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Then there\u2019s&nbsp;Nicholas Sparks&nbsp;\u2013 author of those dreadfully saccharine and syrupy stories where straight white people fall in love after overcoming horrific obstacles.&nbsp; Last week, Broadway producers announced that they were doing a reading of a new musical based on&nbsp;The Notebook.&nbsp; This has the potential of being a huge moneymaker for the author.&nbsp; But not so<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5109,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions\/5109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}