Stop writing to me about Mairson and Grossman. I have no respect for their opinions at all.
Grossman is the religion columnist at USA Today; Mairson is some disgruntled ex-employee of National Geographic who has appointed himself guardian of all propriety of anyone associated with NatGeo. Grossman is wondering “if the august Society would try to rein in Myers, just let him quietly bear the coveted NGS brand or whether Myers would high tail it out from under editorial control.” Mairson is concerned about my “profanity-laced diatribes and my lack of “civil discourse about religion”.
Bugger ’em.
My policy has been and always will be to write as I will, to say without reservation what I think, and to have a damn good time while doing it. I will not mute the way I express myself because a couple of delicate little flowers wilt when a blog does not have the same formal tone as a long-established magazine, and I will categorically reject the criticisms of idiots who look at what I say and see only shrill, rabid, militant, screaming, hysterical, obscenities — that is a slanderous mischaracterization that immediately calls into question their capacity for critical thought. It is also the very same clumsy character assassination that we atheists are entirely familiar with — every one of us seems to get accused of savagery and barbarous abuse of the mores of decorous civilization, when we’re not the ones bombing abortion clinics, raping children, or moronically believing in an invisible telepathic superman in the sky.
So to all of you who’ve been pestering me with Grossman and Mairson’s ginned-up non-controversies and bluenosed fussings, don’t worry. Nothing is changing for me. Web servers might change, blog software can shift, different paymasters might try to borrow my pages, but I am completely free: I write what I write because it is what I want to write, not because I am obligated to put myself in a straitjacket to please an advertiser. And I am especially not constrained by a pair of prissy, shallow whiners who have no association with me, no input into what I say, and absolutely no relevance.
I have a simpler solution for those two. Don’t read my blog. Is that so hard to comprehend?
