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Read the full post on the guardian.co.uk:
Pencil-necked? Maybe. Thief? No way. Award-winning author Neil Gaiman has defended himself against Republican Matt Dean's extraordinary claim that he is a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota".
The astonishing attack from the Minnesota House of Representatives majority leader, published in the Star Tribune yesterday, centred on a fee of $45,000 (£27,000) paid to Gaiman – "who I hate," Dean added – from state art funds last year for a speaking appearance at Stillwater Library in Minnesota.
Describing the comments as "bullying schoolyard nonsense", Gaiman said Dean's assertion that he stole the money "is a lie". "Yes, I gave the money to charities – a sexual abuse one and a library/author one, long ago, when the cheque came in, well before this ever became a political football. But that seems completely irrelevant to this: I don't like the idea that a politician is telling people that charging a market wage for their services is stealing," the bestselling fantasy author wrote on his blog. "[But] it's kind of nice to make someone's Hate List. It reminds me of Nixon's Enemies List. If a man is known by his enemies, I think my stock just went up a little."
Gaiman was less perturbed about the "pencil-necked weasel" insult. "I like 'pencil-necked weasel'. It has 'pencil' in it. Pencils are good things. You can draw or write things with pencils. I think it's what you call someone when you're worried that using a long word like 'intellectual' may have too many syllables. It's not something that people who have serious, important things to say call other people," said the author, whose 1.5 million Twitter followers managed to crash Dean's website after he posted a link to it. ("Bugger. Did not mean to #neilwebfail the twit's site. Sorry," tweeted Gaiman.)...'
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