Month: April 2008

Fuck Your Framing

jacob5 Comments

I’m remarkably pissed right now.

I generally enjoy Dispatches from the Culture Wars. Ed Brayton’s got a sharp wit and a sharper pen. He calls bullshit with concision. And he’s merciless with a variety of right-wing hate merchants. So I went over there tonight expecting the usual incisive posts, not a flame war over framing and an incredible degree of bullshit from… Ed.

But this isn’t about Ed. This is about the smarmy little fuckers who want us atheists to shut up and play nice with the pious.

For those of you coming late to the party, a bit of history, as I understand it. A bloke named Matt Nisbet has decided that science needs to bow and scrape to religious sentiment. It needs to defang itself in the interest of not scaring away all the godly folk. He calls it “framing.” Another bloke named Chris Mooney, who used to be well-respected, has turned into a toadying worshipper of this framing. And they both like to beat up on people like PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins because they’re vocal atheists and that might scare the timid religious folks away.

I haven’t been keeping up on that drama. I read a few posts by both of the gents in question and found them smarmy suck-ups with no balls and fewer morals. I’ve heard Mooney’s not that kind of man, that he’s actually a grand defender of science who’s done great things. I have no idea if that’s true, simply because his recent work has been pure fucking swill and I can’t stomach it.

Right? Now that you’re up to date, let me ‘splain what’s got me steaming like a pan of water on the sun.

Ed put up a post saying that Expelled wasn’t much of a success. Mr. Mooney dropped by to say this:

Hi Ed,

If you compare Stein to the single most successful political documentarian ever, Michael Moore, then no, Ben Stein hasn’t beaten
him after one week.

In other words, if you define success as something virtually impossible to attain, then no, Ben Stein did not succeed.

He got his ass soundly handed to him by many of the commenters, as well he should. If ever a man deserved to take his balls home in a baggy, it was him. You do not preach to a bunch of independent-minded scientists to shut the fuck up and let the big boys do the framing, and then fail to frame. You don’t post a defeatist claim that Expelled succeeded wildly and then come by to belabor the point on the blogs of people who believe otherwise. He seems to have developed the same desire for martyrdom that the IDiots have. I dropped by his blog to make sure I wasn’t treating him unfairly, and got a blast of “oh, poor me, I’m fearfully mistreated!” whining worthy of the Republicans. Chris – here’s some pearls, and I’m sure the neocons will be happy to budge over on the fainting couch so you’ve got room, dear. Have a good lie-down and stop fucking bawling.

Jesus H. Christ.

But that wasn’t what got me outraged. That’s tangenital. What’s really gotten up my nose here is the little fuckers who’ve taken it upon themselves who decide who speaks and who doesn’t. Commenters and bloggers who like to tell folks like PZ that they should engage in some enlightened self-censorship:

Now PZ is probably getting a lot of negative newbies at his blog this weekend, and this was on the front page for a good portion of it. Now imagine what some of the moderate Christians who are new to his site think when they see that post.

So I throw out this question to every one. Could PZ have framed this post better? I think if he had said “Parents – don’t send your children to THIS Christian school”, that the moderate Christians new to his blog would have agreed with him entirely.

You know what, Doctorgoo? No, he fucking well couldn’t. It’s not PZ Myers’s fucking job to muzzle himself. He has not been annointed the Supreme High Science Ambassador. He is a vocal atheist who couldn’t give two shits about framing. He’s one of the loudest and clearest voices speaking against religion’s hypocrisy and evil. It’s beyond ridiculous to expect him to switch to a fruit-basket offering, smiling, conciliatory atheist just because you think that maybe if he did that the fundies would start thinking of him as actually a pretty nice guy. I have news for you, all of you, who want us to “frame” things in a nice and inoffensive manner: you don’t know fuck about fundies. An atheist who whispers sweet nothings into religion’s ear is just as demonic to them as one who blasts them at every opportunity.

Don’t hand me this bullshit about framing. Do not stand around wringing your fucking hands talking about how we should all be nice to each other, even to the bastards who are doing their level best to destroy science and impose their fucked-up fundamentalism on the rest of the country.

We got to the state we’re in because we were nice and conciliatory and tried desperately hard not to offend people.

It’s time to go on the fucking offensive.

And if you think that’s not so, why is PZ hands-down the most popular blogger on ScienceBlogs?

It’s time for the non-believers to start screaming. It’s time to come out with fist and fang. These people see moderation as weakness. And the folks on the sidelines, they hear the loudest side. The sweet voice of reason doesn’t rise above the din. But people come out swinging for science, and suddenly there’s more than the religious freaks to watch. There’s something fascinating going on.

And you know what? They learn a little science.

I’m so fucking through with treating religion with kid gloves. My ideas and philosophies get trampled and spat upon and derided, and you want to tell me and people like me that we should be nice? Bull fucking shit. I’m not pummeling the moderates. You know my stance. But this bullshit about atheists needing to step aside for religious folk, that stops now.

If religion’s too fucking delicate to take it, that’s its problem. The Christians I know, they’re not afraid of contentious atheists, and you know what? I respect them a fuck of a lot more than those fainting violets who think they’re teh awesome in God but need to hide behind snivelling “no fair” arguments the second someone says the least little thing not nice about it.

It’s not fucking fair. It’s not supposed to be fair. You go into a lion’s den, you’d better fucking expect teeth. You’d better enjoy danger. PZ’s not going to moderate himself for a few folks with delicate sensibilities and a “can’t-touch-this” attitude toward religion, and it is beyond insane for his fellow free-thinkers to expect him to. Maybe, just maybe, instead of asking PZ, Dawkins et all to don muzzles, the more religiously inclined scientists could take theirs off and join the brawl.

Oh, and Ed? No hard feelings. I still respect you. But you’re making an ass of yourself running around demanding apologies for poor Mr. Mooney. He’s a big boy. He can wipe his own tears and maybe earn back some of the respect he lost when he became a pandering whiner.

For a more level-headed view of the need for a good fight, see Greg Laden, Nullifidian, and Blue Collar Scientist. You’ll get a more reasoned opinion from me later. This was the initial eruption. This volcano has not yet begun to explode.

Fuck Your Framing
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One Hundred

jacob1 Comment
That’s right, my darlings. The 100th post. A landmark day.


Pop a cork and celebrate with me. I couldn’t have done it without you.

You know what else I’d like to see reach 100? The Skeptologists! Which means it needs to be picked up by a network. So drop on by, if you haven’t already, and send a note of support. I think the Skeptologists would go nicely with some Mythbusters, don’t you?

Kick back, raise your glass, and have a little skeptical TV.

Here’s to you, here’s to quality programming, and here’s to life.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled ranting, already in progress.

One Hundred

Tequila and Great Music, Anyone?

jacob

Post-dated to stay up here awhile.

My darlings, I’m not sure how many of you may be near Seattle, but if you’re in town April 25th, so are the Peacemakers. We should go.

Never heard of the Peacemakers? No problemo. You’ll still have a great time. I’d never heard a Peacemakers’ song before I went to my first show. I enjoyed it immensely anyway.

Don’t like that kind of music? Doesn’t matter. Neither do I. I’m a symphonic/power/black metal person myself, the occasional foray into my sordid Western/80s New Wave distant past aside. But the Peacemakers transcend normal tastes.

Besides. You’ll be drinking. A lot.

Don’t like tequila? For shame That’s perfectly fine. There are plenty of other beverages that will compensate.

And you can hang out with Dana. Really in real life Dana. How cool is that?

It’ll be pretty cool. I’ll be pissed, plastered, smashed, hammered, and not to put too fine a point on it, pretty damned drunk. People tell me I’m fairly amusing when I’m sloshed, snookered, or otherwise intoxicated. You’ll at least have that for entertainment value until the Peacemakers take the stage.

So drop on by Neumos on April 25th. I’ll be there. You know what I look like. Same hair, same hat. Just look for the drunken black metal chick in the black straw hat screaming “Roger!” at the top of her lungs.

Tequila and Great Music, Anyone?

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

I generally choose our discurso on the What the Fuck? factor: if an item makes me say, “What the fuck?!” I include it. This one from the AP certainly qualifies:

White House calendars are not generally considered public records, but reporters and watchdog groups have used Secret Service documents, which normally are public, to report on White House visitors.

Rather than having those documents released on a case-by-casis basis, the Bush administration wants them considered White House documents, which would keep them from public view for more than a decade.


Why, other than sheer contrariness, does Bush want those documents withheld? Well, for one, they would show how much influence religious conservatives have had on White House policy. I’m thinking it’s probably a lot more pervasive than we realize.

And, of course, Bush & Cheney just like to keep secrets from Americans. It’s their favorite fucking hobby, innit?

In other news, Kevin Drum from Political Animal went to see Expelled. Kevin, what did you think?

Answer: not very good. Stein’s basic problem is that during the first half hour or so he keeps his film sounding fairly reasonable. Maybe ID proponents really are getting the shaft! But it’s also deadly dull. After 30 minutes I was wondering how long he could possibly stretch this stuff out.

Then it picked up. Unfortunately for Stein and the IDers, it did so only by becoming increasingly unhinged. Stein spends the final half hour wandering around Dachau and telling us outright that his real motivation for attacking evolution isn’t any real flaw in the theory, but his belief that Darwinism leads directly to Nazi-ism, eugenics, atheism, the breakdown of morals, and mass slaughter. Can’t have that, so evolution needs to go too.

Nice. Read the full review: it’s got a happy ending. And no, they didn’t win Kevin’s allegiance. Kevin is smart.

And finally, we’ve got a bit of what you might call a contradiction: McCain, the Earmark Avenger, took a ferry ride to highlight “forgotten Americans.” He seems to have forgotten that earmarks are evil:

But McCain’s appearance at the ferry conflicts with his contention that he will abolish earmarks from the federal budget, considering that the Gee’s Bend ferry was funded by a federal earmark in the 2005 Transportation/Treasury Appropriations Act.

Whoops! Guess that’s what happens when you give up your principles for politics.

Happy Hour Discurso

Gone Splat

jacob3 Comments

I’ve gone splat against the wall, my darlings. Today’s been so full of outrageous political bullshit that I’m overwhelmed, and I’m too tired to digest it. Feels like that closet you’ve been chucking stuff into for decades, and you’ve just watched some program on freeing yourself of clutter. You troop off to that closet, fired with zeal, yank open the door, go “Oh my fucking god, where do I even begin?” and slam the door again. Only in my case, the stuff came out like a tsunami and smashed me into the drywall. Owies.

So I’m going to sit here, eat cheesecake, and ‘splain why that big red A is hanging about the place. You’ve been duly warned. If you’d rather indulge in some meatier fare, you could try Carpetbagger’s “Senator Hothead,” wherein the question is asked, “In the event of a crisis, do we want a leader known for his rage-induced tirades and unstable temperament?” Or skip over to the New York Times, which has finally noticed that Bush authorized “The Torture Sessions.” Glenn Greenwald has a “Major revelation: U.S. media deceitfully disseminates government propaganda,” which I skimmed for Happy Hour. He’s not as nice as I was. Secher Nbiw asks the “10 Debate Questions John McCain Will Never Be Asked.” And I can always recommend Digby’s Hullaballoo as a smorgasboard of outragey goodness. In fact, while I was pulling the link for that one, I saw Tristero’s taken to telling the young ‘uns that “Torture Is Always Immoral.” I couldn’t agree more.

Can’t get enough of Expelled-bashing? Try Thoughts in a Haystack. There’s a plethora of great stuff up just since yesterday. It’s the go-to place for a good, hearty laugh at IDiot’s expense. And Evolving Thoughts has a wonderful little fable that meshes beautifully with my own views, so of course I adore it.

Right, then. Don’t say I didn’t give you alternatives.

I’ve recently reconnected with some cherished friends from long ago. We haven’t talked in years. Last they knew of me, I was headed down to the Valley of Death the Sun to get myself a degree. I was officially agnostic, I talked a lot about the voices in my head (yes, my characters do chatter at me), I didn’t give two tugs on a dead dog’s dick for politics, I’d been leaning toward a strange amalgamation of Zen Buddhism/Taoism with a smattering of Odin, and I was officially agnostic.

Next thing they know, I’m up in Seattle with a big red atheist A splashed in the sidebar of my blog, bitching about politics and creationists.

My, how things have changed.

I am, indeed, officially an atheist now. It was a little hard to deny after I calculated my God Delusion Index and came up with a 5. I answered exactly one (1) (uno) question Yes:

5. Do you believe that a deeply contemplative act such as prayer or meditation can result in knowledge or understanding not attainable through ordinary thought?


I don’t believe, I know. Read too much about altered states of consciousness, I have. Studied Zen Buddhism and actually sort of understood some of it, didn’t I? Get into that “zone” where I’m not writing a story, I’m taking dictation, right? Even heard stories of scientists struggling with thorny physics problems and not getting the answer until they stop thinking and fall into a reverie. I’d go look up the particular story I have in mind, but I’m sitting here with some cheesecake, yammering at you lot, and I can’t remember the book it’s in, so it’ll have to wait.

But all of that’s human. And that’s what I realized. For all of my love for mythology, fairy tales, bizarre (to Westerners) philosophies, I’m not a believer in anything but the human imagination.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped looking for the divine. Stopped caring so much whether it existed out there or in here. I’ve become an odd creature, able to believe six impossible things before breakfast, but simultaneously knowing they’re nothing more than imagination. That doesn’t make it any less delightful. That doesn’t mean I love the stories less.

If anything, it’s more incredible. Actual existing supernatural beings would be a yawn. No more fantastic than the chair I’m sitting in. Bo-ring. Rather diminishes humanity in the bargain, if you ask me.

But imagination, now. That’s really something. That’s huge. That’s us. We did that. Incredible.

Let me just tell you a little story. There’s a point to it, I promise.

Many years ago, in Flagstaff, I took a smoke break and walked outside. I was busy lighting up and looking at the pine trees in the lot next to our building, soaking up the sun and thinking of absolutely nothing. And something caused me to turn around. Some sense of being watched. I look over, and I see the gray cinderblock walls through a mist of rain. And they’re shading into stone. And there’s a very young man with longish black hair sitting there, against the side of the building, huddled with his arms wrapped around his knees. The rain is dripping from his hair, and I’m still standing in brilliant, dry sunlight.

I just stand, and stare, shocked. I think I recognize him. I haven’t thought of him in years. “Nikki?” I finally say, and my voice is thin, full of the same sort of disbelief you’d feel upon turning around and seeing your travel-phobic friend somehow behind you right in the middle of Rome.

He looks up, slowly, and nods. Just once.

“I guess it’s time to write you, then.” It never matters how shocked I am. Snark is second nature.

He smiles at me, the rain streaming down his face, and then a squirrel dropped from one of the trees and gave me a jolt. I looked back, and he was gone. But the image never faded, and a character I thought had no place or purpose in my world was suddenly central.

Crazy, isn’t it? But things like that happen to authors. Other people see Jesus in their toast, we see our characters in random places, so real and immediate we could touch them, feel living flesh beneath our hand. It doesn’t matter that they come from so deep in our imaginations we’re not conscious of their residence there. To us, they’re real. And that’s why I understand people clinging to gods. To them, their god is real. To each our own.

That still does not give them the right to try to convert me. Doesn’t give them the right to pass judgement. Let’s be clear, there. I’m not going around preaching the advent of Nikki, the autistic wunderkind and trying to force him into the classroom, so I’d appreciate the same courtesy in return. People have a choice in what fiction they read, and it’s a very personal choice what fiction they choose to believe.

People may get the impression, reading the rants on this blog, that I have no patience for religion. And often, I don’t, because religion gets pretty obnoxious. It’s not the faith itself, so much, but the way people react to it. They push, I push back. It’s the way of things. That shouldn’t give the impression that I’m out to end religion. I don’t want to end it any more than I’d want some complete bastard to come take my characters away from me. Unless, of course, I start forcing their literal truth on folks.

Faith ha
s done some incredible good as well as incredible evil. I’d like to see less of the evil and more of the good, actually. We’ll talk more about that sometime, but for now, I just want to give you two words: Mother Theresa. Yes, I honor those whose faith leads them into a life of sacrifice and service for the poor and sick. I appreciate them, and I wouldn’t want to see them go, any more than I want to see biology crippled by misguided notions of piety.

I understand how comforting faith is. Another story, brief: on September 11th, 2001, when I’d just seen the video of the Towers crashing down, I remember standing with my hand on a cubicle wall feeling as if the entire world was ending. The future fell away in a gaping, black chasm. Some people reach for gods in those moments. I just heard the voice of one of my main characters, saying with calm conviction, “We survived. Dana. We survived this. Don’t worry.”

I know she’s not a voice from the heavens. I know she’s a voice from deep within me. And that doesn’t reduce the power of that moment one iota. It still resonates. I wouldn’t have made it through that day without the certainty her voice gave me. And she was right. We did survive.

Do you see what I’m saying, you religious folks? Science doesn’t threaten God. As long as you don’t cling to the need for your gods to be objectively real, science can’t touch them at all. Science hasn’t done shit to kick my characters out of my head. They’re still in there, taking up space, saying outrageous things at inopportune moments and making people who’ve never encountered a writer before reach for the nice white jacket with the long sleeves and fashionable buckles.

Science can never minimize the power of the human imagination. The only thing that can do that is insisting that everything in our imagination has to be really real. We place such severe limits on its power and scope when we do that. I did my characters the same discourtesy, once. I nearly smothered them. Then I became an atheist, and they can breathe again. I can feed them with all sorts of new ideas, because they’re not limited to the idea I had ten years ago. Heh, look at that, they’re evolving, and they’re better than ever.

So that’s it, in a not-so-tiny nutshell. The whole reason for that A. It’s there because I have a God Delusion Index of 5 and a universe in my head. It’s there because I refuse to limit my very human and extremely entertaining imagination. It’s there because I don’t need to be anything more than a human being evolved by chance, in a cosmos that’s revealed by science to be more awesome than anything I ever imagined.

It’s there because it sets me free to experience it all.

*Update: Really did go splat, there. Forgot the title. My, oh my.

Gone Splat

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

The word o’ the day is ludicrous. Or we could just go for plain speech and say “fucking stupid bullshit.” You pick:

How stupid has the flag-pin nonsense become? Karl Rove told a national television audience that Barack Obama’s argument is that, “If you wear a flag lapel pin, you’re not a true patriot.” He did not appear to be kidding.

[snip]

When O’Reilly is defending Obama against shameless hackery, you know Rove has gone over the edge.


No kidding. I’m headed outside to see if there’s anybody on a pale horse lurking around.

In other news, in case you were wondering how far the Bush Administration would go to lie to you, the New York Times has an answer:

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have
been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

Isn’t that rich? The Administration says, “Lie to the American public or we won’t talk to you anymore.” The analysts squeal, “No, please! Not that! I’ll say anything, just don’t hate me!”

Let me just ask one little question here: what the fuck good is it for people to have access if all they can do with it is lie? They’re supposed to be analysts, for fuck’s sake. The second you stop analyzing and start lying, you’re no longer an analyst, you’re a mouthpiece. You’re a sock puppet. You’re a worthless piece of shit. Are we clear?

Good. Now, let’s go over something else about analysis:

The New York Times today examines John McCain’s very Bush–like propensity to run around slapping the “Al Qaeda” label on everyone we’re fighting in Iraq, even though . . . it’s completely false to describe them that way. The article, needless to say, asks war cheerleader and Extremely Serious Middle East Expert Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution what he thinks about that and he replies with one of the most striking statements in a while:

Some other analysts do not object to Mr. McCain’s portraying the insurgency (or multiple insurgencies) in Iraq as that of Al Qaeda. They say he is using a “perfectly reasonable catchall phrase” that, although it may be out of place in an academic setting, is acceptable on the campaign trail, a place that “does not lend itself to long-winded explanations of what we really are facing,” said Kenneth M. Pollack, research director at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy
at the Brookings Institution. [emphasis in original]


You’re analysts. Your job is to analyze, not make excuses for brain-dead candidates who can’t tell the difference between a Sunni, a Shi’a, and his own left buttcheek. Calling everybody “al Qaeda” is not “a perfectly reasonable catchall phrase.” It’s lying. Didn’t we just discuss this?

I’m sorry. I must have been drinking too much. I left out part of the word o’ the day. It’s actually, “Ludicrous Buffoon.”

Argh.

Happy Hour Discurso

Pomp and Pope

jacob2 Comments

I’ve been to a Catholic church exactly once. It was embarrassing. Stand, kneel, confusedly try to follow everybody’s lead, fuck up royally by trying to follow them up for Communion (a grubby non-Catholic such as myself doesn’t get to participate in cannibalism). It seemed like a lot of work. And people I knew as total bastards five days a week at school suddenly transformed into altar boys? Puh-leeze. But at least that last bit was fun. It’s always cute when your classmates are mortally embarrassed in white dresses.

So that’s it. The sum of my direct experience with Catholicism. I’ve known Catholics, of course. Read up on Church history. Seen the art. Heard about the scandals. I remember seeing Pope John Paul II on television, and liked him. He seemed decent enough, not batshit insane per se, remarkably down-to-earth for a dude in a funny hat and a robe. And at least he didn’t wear bright red shoes. He wore brown ones.

Needless to say, I’ve not been keeping close tabs on the current Pope’s visit. But it’s been nibbling at the edges of my consciousness. Hard to avoid, especially when PZ Myers bends him over a knee for a sound spanking.

And I’m catching up on the week’s Daily Show and Colbert Report, and there’s quite a bit of bright white robe shining out from my television. So I started doing some digging.

Here’s the first thing I came across:

“Official merchandiser of the 2008 U.S. Papal Visit.”

You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.

And this man is going to come lecture us on materialism? This is rich.

The man who’s said this:

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday criticized “materialistic” ways of celebrating Christmas, pressing the Vatican’s campaign against unbridled consumerism.

and this:

“People continue to die of hunger and thirst, disease and poverty, in this age of plenty and of unbridled consumerism.”

has an official merchandizer. And has a personal cobbler. And a fucking papal helicopter that he flies between the Vatican and his summer residence. Summer residence? Oh, yes, he’s got a summer house, too, did I forget to mention that?

But this is the man who wants us to believe. He wants us to believe that “reason without faith leads to materialism and selfishness.” Somehow, it’s okay for him to preach to us about the evils of our culture and our belief – and most particularly the non-believers among us. He speaks of living a life in Christ. What was it he said to our Catholic leaders? Oh, yes:

“Indeed a clearer focus upon the imitation of Christ in holiness of life is exactly what is needed in order for us to move forward. We need to rediscover the joy of living a Christ-centred life, cultivating the virtues, and immersing ourselves in prayer. When the faithful know that their pastor is a man who prays and who dedicates his life to serving them, they respond with warmth and affection which nourishes and sustains the life of the whole community.”

And I’m sure that Christ would agree that expensive red shoes, clothes with plenty of gold embellishments, a helicopter, and a summer house are all vital accessories to a life in Him. What better way to preach peace, love and charity, to convincingly argue for a life in faith instead of materialism and consumerism, than to do it while imitating Christ’s love for the trappings of power and glory?

Let’s see what Jesus has to say:

Heh heh heh whoops.

“Democracy can only flourish, as your founding fathers realized, when political leaders and those whom they represent are guided by truth,” you said. Well, you’ll forgive me if I take your meaning of “truth” with a huge block of salt, and turn to truth guided by evidence instead. I prefer my truth without hypocrisy, as did the man you claim to serve.

Pomp and Pope

So Much for $15,000,000

jacob

Heartening news:

The first Box Office numbers are in. Expelled opened in 8th place with $1.2M in revenues in 1,052 theatres resulting in a $1,141 per theatre revenue. You do the math. At an average of 5 showings this makes $220 per showing or 30-40 people. Expelled ranks 4th in the list of “new releases”

While the weekend has just started the movie will have to do some hard work to match the expectations of the PR people:

“He said they would consider the opening weekend successful if the movie sold 2 million tickets (earning $12-15 million).”


Something tells me the weekend ain’t long enough for them to make up the difference, there. So much for the death of evolution.

Epsilon Clue gives us a good rundown of where things stand. Considering Expelled has taken their argument out of the science arena and made it into a popularity contest, the news doesn’t seem good. Honestly, folks, when Catwoman gets higher ratings, you know you’re in trouble.

And with that, I’m done for now. I’m already sick of this movie. I’m already fed up with the lonely few fuckwits who’ve come out with empty guns a-blazing. I’m going to go prop my feet up, catch up on Daily Show and Colbert Report, and just ignore the ignorant for a while.

We’ll let Rowan Atkinson have the last word:

Yes, Expelled.

So Much for $15,000,000

Happy Hour Discurso

jacob

Today’s opining on the public discourse.

It’s Poke the Media in the Eye Day here at the watering hole. I wish I didn’t have such an abundance of material to work with, but alas, our national media churns out a never-ending flood of stupidity, inanity, and just plain bullshit. If they were my treadmill, I’d be dead of exhaustion by now.

Let us begin.

If I watched the news channels, this is the event that would have caused me to give myself a home lobotomy with an icepick:

This one is truly mind-numbing, and enough to suggest a few too many political observers might want to stop sniffing glue. Obama was giving a speech, and ironically enough, commenting on the need to move beyond trivial distractions. Apparently, during his remarks, he had an itch on his face. He scratched it. This, to hear some tell it, was Obama’s way of giving Clinton a one-finger salute.

[snip]

This was not simply limited to otherwise-bored bloggers. MSNBC and FoxNews.com also treated this as a news item of note. In fact, MSNBC asserted that Obama “made an unfortunate gesture.”


I wondered what it would be next. I was plumping for the sort of toast Obama orders in diners, but no, it’s cheek scratching. With two fingers, mind. And not in the British two-fingered salute manner, either, I hasten to add.

Carpetbagger’s right. They do need to stop sniffing glue. And using meth.

Oh, and that ABC debate? Yeah. That one. The one that blew leper donkey dick. You’re gonna laugh when you hear what their premise was:

Wednesday night, ABC broadcast a debate between the Democratic presidential candidates from the National Constitution Center, which co-sponsored the debate. The venue inspired ABC to, as co-moderator Charlie Gibson explained, “begin each of the segments of this debate with short quotes from the Constitution that are apropos to what we’re going to talk about.”

[snip]

Surely a presidential debate held at the National Constitution Center and featuring “short quotes from the Constitution that are apropos to what we’re going to talk about” would touch on some of these issues.

Unfortunately, ABC had other ideas. The Constitution served as little more than window dressing for a debate that has been widely derided. Early in the debate, Gibson referred to a clause in the Constitution that was repealed more than 200 years ago and that wouldn’t apply to the situation he was discussing even if it were still in effect. Later, Gibson asked whether a District of Columbia law prohibiting the possession of certain types of guns is “consistent with an individual’s right to bear arms.”

That’s as close as the ABC hosts came to delving into the candidates’ views of the Constitution. There was, once again, no mention of the constitutional issues raised by the current administration’s actions.


One gets the sense that Jamison Foser might have been a wee bit disappointed when writing this column. Gee. I have no idea why. Mainly because Mr. Icepick is lodged nicely in Mr. Frontal Lobe, and the whole world just looks brighter that way.

Oh. It’s the light reflecting off the metal. Right.

Note to ABC: you might want to read the actual Constitution. The whole thing. Not just the bits quoted by right-wing gun nuts. And not just the random Articles you picked because that’s apparently where your Starbucks cup leaked. Also, there’s nothing in the Constitution about flag pin lapels being a necessary test of office. Just so you know. Oh, hey, whatever happened to that one story you broke a while ago, you know, the kinda important one, it was about, lemme see, oh, yes, Bush approving torture?

Gah. Moving on.

This is why I love dday:

OK, so I should mention the results of our protest yesterday at the ABC/Disney headquarters. It went really well. Note that I had this idea
sitting on my couch at 12:00pm Thursday, and by 4:00pm Friday we had 60 or 70 people out there in Burbank. Considering that in the current age there’s almost an allergy to protesting, that’s not bad (especially in gridlocked L.A.), and we were able to get the word out without making one phone call.

I’ll give you the AP’s impression:

About 50 people rallied at Disney Studios Friday to protest the questions that ABC News journalists asked the Democratic presidential candidates during a debate earlier this week.

Protestors waved signs that read “Restore the Fourth Estate” and “ABC is TMZ,” referring to the online celebrity site.

Organizer Rick Jacobs criticized ABC for focusing on the past gaffes of Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, instead of issues like the war in Iraq and the American economy.


Today, dday is my hero. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an icepick to remove from my brain.

Happy Hour Discurso

The Media and Bushies: A Punk Interpretation

jacob

The American media have treated the Bush Administration with a phenominal lack of interest. It’s gotten to the point where it seems they could reveal literally anything, no matter how outrageous, and the media would respond with a collective, “That’s nice. So, did you hear that Obama asked for toast without butter? Omigod!!”

And then some punk songs started flitting through my head. And I realized: this is exactly what the last several years of political discourse in this country have been like.

Cheney:

I’ve got something to say
I killed your baby today

Media:

And it doesn’t matter much to me
As long as it’s dead

Cheney:

I’ve got something to say
I raped your mother today

Media:

And it doesn’t matter much to me
As long as she spread

America:

Sweet lovely death
I am waiting for your breath
come sweet death
One last caress


Bush:

Well I’ve fucked a sheep
And I’ve fucked a goat
I’ve had my cock right down its throat

Media: So what, so what

Well who cares, who cares what you do

Explains everything, really.

*Goes without saying that these are my views. The bands don’t necessarily concur. Or give a fuck.

The Media and Bushies: A Punk Interpretation