Couple of things. First, I like Scalzi and I like Ringo. Redshirts was not the best work that Scalzi has ever done. The discussion thread on Facebook has been grossly oversimplified in this article and in fact is still ongoing. Read the entire thread and form your own opinion.

I read one of Ringo's books. I can't recall the title, but it took place during an analogue to the Bush Administration, and his Marty-Stu was some scientist who was also a sexy rugged man's man, a fighter pilot, and a Southerner who was out to show those pinhead lib'rulls that someone with a redneck accent could be Mr. Scott. Gateways to another world started showing up and the alien invasion was on.
The Bush Admin. was shown to be a competent group, above politics, ready to hand everything over to Mr. Stu and his down-home technobabble. Meanwhile, victims of the aliens, when given any personality at all, were portrayed as clueless lefties or in some other way caricatured as politically flawed. I'm assuming this is so they could be part of a body count but the reader could still take joy that one less non-Republican had been killed.
Marty, at some point, meets a super-advanced alien that confirms creationism. I'm not kidding.
Then, after Marty works out a strategy to beat the aliens, the way to do it is given to our allies, but the Middle East is allowed to be invaded and pretty much crushed before any help is given since they're, you know, Muslims.
I welcome a story that challenges my own beliefs and values. Characters, especially protagonists, shouldn't be clones of my worldview. I do require a suspension of disbelief as to how plausible something is, and frankly, Ringo's Fox News fantasy-land never passes muster. Alien invasion wormholes were far more passable than a Post-9/11 Bush cabinet that rolled over for Southern Science Stu.

how the hell does having a friend - or maybe just interviewee - who cheated on his wife render confronting the harassment problem in SF fandom hypocritical

:|

I thoroughly enjoyed "Redshirts". The meta-meta-meta spiral was pure brain candy, and the three short stories wrapping up the loose ends from the characters were touching. Is it the best SF novel ever, or in the past year? I don't know. It's what the people who attend Worldcon nominated and then voted in. After the awards are announced, all the numbers for the Hugo voting and nominations are made public. Sixteen books received 55 or more nominations, and the top 5 went on the ballot. There weren't 55 people who thought Ringo's most recent book was Hugo-worthy. http://www.thehugoawards.org/content/pdf…

I'd never heard of John Ringo until people started laughing at his post about Scalzi's Hugo award. I was amused that what he said about "Redshirts" was "it's not exactly Stranger in a Strange Land or Nightfall." Heinlein and Asimov? They weren't exactly on the ballot this year, or any time in this century. If "Stranger in a Strange Land" was on a ballot today, how many of us could read it without howls of laughter?

When I searched for info about Ringo, I didn't find a blog, but did find an article about a talk that he gave at a SF club. In included "He had the audience rolling as he recounted tales from his days in the US Army (he was a veteran of the Grenada intervention)." I do believe that is the first, and last, time I'll see someone described as a veteran of the Grenada intervention.