You fill in the blank. Greta Christina interviews Edwina Rogers.
Did you know 70% of Republicans are pro-choice? And that there is no Republican party position on abortion? It’s only a few elected officials who are anti-gay, not the majority. You shouldn’t stereotype Republicans! Republicans believe in the separation of church and state, too. But not a majority now (she’s backed down on this one). Republicans at the federal level have not been promoting creationism and intelligent design. It was OK that she donated money to Rick Perry because a) he used to be a Democrat, b) he was head of the Republican Governor’s Association, and c) she was interested in promoting health care. And we all know what a friend to health care Rick Perry has been. She joined the Republican party along with everyone else in the South because she like Ronald Reagan’s message, which was about working hard.
I learned many Surprising Facts™ about America in this interview. I haven’t been thrilled with the Democrats for some time, but apparently the Republicans have an agenda more in tune with my views (!), and I ought to have been voting for them.
Is the Secular Coalition for America fucking kidding us? I’ve said nothing about this hire and decided to mull it over and see how it panned out. But that’s getting harder.
I joined because Eisenhower built highways and Nixon started the EPA. But mostly I joined because Lincoln won the war.
Seems very odd that they would pick her, given her long time support of a party that has as its members the worst sort of god-botherers and whose party’s official positions have been anything but secular. Still, there is no (or there ought not be) any political litmus test. AFAIK it is possible to Republican AND secular. So my guess is that the SCA vetted her well enough to feel that despite he Republican Party politics, she is for a secular government.
The interview does not bode well, though.
With regards to turning Republican, she specifically said it was Reagan’s message about working hard and “tightening your bootstraps” that made almost everyone in her state turn from Democrat to Republican. I didn’t realize this was how the parties had drawn the battle lines:
Republicans – the pro hard work party
Democrats – anti hard work party
Oh wow. I cannot wait to hear her respond to questions about atheists…
I can already imagine..
Q. Why don’t atheists believe in God?
Answer by E. R.: “Well, actually, you’d be surprised at how many atheists do believe in God! I think it’s like 2/3’s of them!”
… and so on…
Seriously–if the SCA’s goal was just to pay someone a lot of money to lie about them.. Why not actually just hire one of our own and have it be known that we’re all in on the joke..
” And we all know what a friend to health care Rick Perry has been.”
Well, he was for a little while, when he thought it was politically expedient. But he found out he was mistaken about his base…
Is it time to get out the pitchforks and torches yet?
Just give her a chance, PZ. The point isn’t that anything she said is true, but that secularists shouldn’t give a fuck what the truth is. We want our lobbyists to be good liars, because there’s no honest way to lobby for secularism. That’s why they need to be Republicans.
I seem to have misplaced my tinfoil hat…
@5: More importantly, why not pick someone much better at lying, who isn’t absolutely transparent. Making baseless statements that don’t stand up to rational scrutiny might fly over at FOX News, but they’re not going to work with the skeptic community. The data on Republican party member attitudes re: abortion and gay rights, the lack of which she kept bemoaning, are available from Pew Research Group. I found them with thirty seconds on Google while listening to the interview. Does she lack a smartphone and PC?
The more I read about her, the more she strikes me as a Romney or Newt type politician. She doesn’t really have any principles, except the ones that will make her money.
Short version: she’s either disingenuous towards her constituency or she’s utterly delusional. Neither answer warms the cockles of one’s heart and engenders confidence.
I’m only at the beginning of the interview, but I’m already afraid my face will be permanently set in the WTF?! expression by the time I listen to the end.
I hope there will be a transcript in the morning, it will ease the discussion.
Why do I feel like she’s a plant or mole?
@fastlane As I mentioned in Greta’s blog, if she were a shrewd politician, she would’ve come up with a better answer than she did. So if she’s completely mercenary, she’s not very good at it.
Um. We do have the research. Why does she keep saying we don’t have the research? She is so massively wrong on her the majority of republicans don’t believe this or that, it’s stunning, didn’t someone do interview prep???
http://www.gallup.com/poll/147941/republicans-unified-democrats-abortion.aspx
68% of republicans are pro-life; 27% pro-choice
http://www.gallup.com/poll/147662/first-time-majority-americans-favor-legal-gay-marriage.aspx
28% of republicans support gay marriage, a number that has not changed in the last few years, despite the massive shift for independents and democrats
http://www.pewforum.org/Politics-and-Elections/more-see-too-much-religious-talk-by-politicians.aspx#conservatives http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/03/link-between-religion-and-politics-is-more-prevalent-in-gop-primaries/
The majority (54%) of Republicans think that churches should have a say in politics and 61% of conservative republicans think that separation of church and state has already gone too far.
There’s no “balance between those two ideals.” They’re the same secular ideal, which the Republican Party opposes.
Repost of my comment at Christian’s blog:
Wow. I’m at the 14 minute mark. If Rogers flogged the Magical Balance Fairy any harder, she’d be arrested for aggravated assault.
I’m sure there are atheists/liberals/Democrats who are anti-gay rights and anti-abortion. She might want to compare percentages, as in there’s way more people in the Republican Party that agitate for that.
The woman is in complete denial about how batshit crazy the GOP has become over the last 20 years. This is not going to end well for the SCA.
she became Republican because “ZOMG Welfare Queens and Teh Lazy Poors”?
jesus fuck, what the hell is this shit.
Critical thinker, she is not.
So what exactly where the pros to hiring this woman again? The cons seem to be piling up rather quickly. She’s absolutely oblivious to what the atheist movement stands for and desires politically, and her vague opening statement about her qualifications was pretty pathetic and irrelevant as well if you ask me..
Fuck, what a rambling idiot. I don’t even know where to begin.
DO NOT LISTEN. IT WILL RUIN YOUR DAY.
This is part of one of the great divides between sciency types and most politicians and their ilk. Trained as lawyers, most politicians and lobbyists thoroughly understand that their job is to be advocates, not analysts. Just as an attorney can ethically suspend their personal opinion to advocate for a serial killer in court without approving of their behavior, a lobbyist can choose to advocate for a position with which they do not entirely agree.
Many of us would feel uncomfortable doing so, trained as we are in a different school of thought – that of analysis and evidence based decision making. However, there are many scientists who do not share that discomfort and are, for example, willing to serve as expert witnesses stating a position for their client on technical matters even if in their scientific judgement they have contradictory evidence in hand. And don’t think that they are simply hypocrites; they feel that this is quite appropriate in a legal setting – although other expert witnesses take the opposite opinion that they are obliged to provide full disclosure even to their client’s disadvantage.
The balance between advocacy and analysis is important, non-trivial and nicely illustrated in this case.
Please don’t infer from the above that I am advocating for this particular appointment – given that analysis and evidence based reasoning are central to the thinking of the SCA which she is purportedly representing, they made a very ill-advised decision.
Being anti-gay and anti-choice is not a party position, it’s a position held by individuals in the party. Some. Maybe a couple. A leader or twenty at most. Some. She doesn’t know all the statistics, what do you expect?!
Also : because there exists a Republican who isn’t anti-gay one can’t say that all Republicans are anti-gay. Which she then repeats a couple of times because she apparently has nothing else to say about anything. A born leader!
GAH. Stopped half way through. What an idiot.
The only thing I can figure is that the SCA decided that they need someone who knows how to play politics and they didn’t give a shit about what was between that person’s ears. It is sadly true that empty craniums, slimy ethics, no accountability and cognitive dissonance are pretty much required on Capitol Hill. So long as she can say the word “secularism” while doing the dirty work of politics, nothing else is required.
@23
Yes, but the problem is she seems to be clueless about the issues that interest the secular/atheist movement the most.
For some reason only part of the interview will play for me, but it’s enough to confirm that she’s exactly the kind of disingenuous scumbag her CV led me to expect.
Merrari @23
I think it’s something along the lines of: “Gee, those right-wingers think we’re a bunch of commies, but maybe if we get a Republican spokesperson they’ll start to like us!”
@27
try reloading the interview, it kept stopping for me too about every couple minutes or so
@28
I just don’t get it, there has to be somebody more in tune with this movement that could represent us, and also be pragmatic and willing to play the political game too..
Right.
All those ultrasound bills are just rogue individuals pushing through their own agendas. Nothing to do with the party at all.
Same with DOMA.
Right.
I posted on Austin Cline’s About Atheism blog that I think she has her head in the clouds. But that’s a polite forum. Actually, I think she has her head up her ass. She’s clueless.
Actually, what we need to do is to convince Obama to come out as anti-choice and anti-gay.
The Republican party will immediately and automatically change into a pro-choice, pro-gay party in order to obstruct him.
@32
http://i3.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/002/250/what_the_fuck_am_I_reading.png
it’s… it’s…brilliant…
I think one could make a very good argument that the SCA has turned to prayer and wishful thinking to decide that she was the best choice.
I am sure all the secular-hostile GOP are just going to do a double take and listen to Atheist/Agnostic America now that she’s in charge. They sure do listen to pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-environment, pro-labor Americans…..
Why can’t she come out and just say, “I’m in it for the money…” At least then honesty wouldn’t be a factor in her questionable credibility.
Yeah, those Republicans are really good at defeating the odds. Just a couple of fringe radical Republicans to be found in the whole movement, and they all somehow got into leading positions. A miracle, I tell ya!
Those that Edwina knows already are. At least some. The majority. A part of the majority. Look, there’s only gotta exist one. It’s enough to keep her blabbering about how naughty we are for stereotyping Republicans.
So let me get this right:
We are Group A.
We want X.
People from Group B largely, but not exclusively, oppose X or anyone having X.
If we get a representative from Group B to pretend that we in Group A don’t really want X, all the while telling us she’s really an A-ish B, people in Group B will give us X.
Is that about the sum of it?
There’s a problem here. It seems to be we black folk are being told if we only let those white folk rule us and act real white we’ll get to be as black as we like.
Hmmmm. I’m not buying it.
I thought one of the important points of the atheist/secularist/scientific/humanist/rational conglomerate philosophy was that our commitment was to reason, evidence, and a troubling thing called honesty. That’s what I signed up for. It strikes me that in fighting for these things we shouldn’t compromise these things because then we’re not fighting for them, their casualties that we can afford. Isn’t that precisely the problem? That the things we want to see happen aren’t happening because people are too willing to betray principles in order to obtain power to inculcate those very same principles?
I realise you can’t eat principles, I understand politics and compromise, but I don’t remember signing up to take over the world. I do remember signing up to shift the Overton window away from the current view. I’m pretty sure compromising what I wish to shift that window with is not how I shift it.
Louis
If the SCA can’t be arsed to find someone informed, honest and principled with respect to their spokespeople then I can’t be arsed to consider them as anything but a hand-waving group of relativistic gits with nothing but pretense towards a worthy cause. The politics game remains only a game if one is willing to play it. Send an adult to Washington who isn’t willing to play those games and you may get adult results, rather than the stultifying idiocy we see coming from the DC on a minute by minute basis.
mferrari
omfg >.<
There is so much wrong with that picture and linking it here. WTF?
Oh! And the answer to PZ’s fill in the blank, if you are Edwina Rogers, is: Good questions ‘kinda, sorta, maybe could (especially if you are Republican, because 72 percent of them think so) quite possibly have, but we can’t say for certain,’ answers.
I feel that my sentiments are going to be so well represented in Washington now that I could just cry.
Wow. Are you sure this wasn’t an interview w/ S.E. Cupp? Sorry, but I have a hard time believing an active GOP lobbyist (& member of the party for decades, fer cryin out loud) has been unaware of their very platform since Reagan.
Well if thank you for smoking taught me anything its that lobbying is all about spin.
If she wants to deny historical reality, she is heading up the wrong SCA.
jefferylanam wins the internets for this evening.
The knives are being sharpened…….
Time to jettison the asreholery and bozo-age.
After hearing (admittedly only part of) this interview, I have decided that Rogers does not, in fact, need to be given a chance to “prove herself”. I think I will no longer be supporting the SCA or its member organizations.
They have appointed someone who is either delusional or a liar to an important position of leadership. An organization that does that must have serious problems lurking. I have little tolerance for that kind of organization.
You know, you never see Rogers and Cupp together at the same time… ;)
Oh, and some of my best friends are atheists too…(/sarcasm)
The obsessive paranoid in me thinks that this is all some elaborate scheme:
A right-wing lobbyist becomes spokesperson for a secularist obbying group, then say the most outrageous BS to cheese of the groups primary constituency until they group let’s them go. The jilted spokesperson runs to FOX News and the right wing squawk radio host to cry crocodile tears about how the mean-old liberal atheists censored and discriminate them because they were a Republican. More hatred and bigotry is generated among the JEEZ-us creeps and the Tea Baggers with a big fat book deal and speak dates to follow.
And if they don’t fire them, all the better! Now they got a conservative mole on the inside to weaken the godless commits from the inside.
Of course, Occam’s Razor tells me that the SCA just made A colossal screw-up, but a lunatic can dream, can’t he?
Crap! Pressed “Submit” rather than “Preview.” Let’s try that again:
The obsessive paranoid in me thinks that this is all some elaborate scheme:
A right-wing lobbyist becomes a spokesperson for a secularist group, then says the most outrageous BS to cheese off the group’s primary constituency until the group let’s them go. The jilted spokesperson runs to FOX News and the right wing squawk radio circuit to cry crocodile tears about how the mean-old liberal atheists censored and discriminated them because they were an all-American Republican. More hatred and bigotry is generated among the JEEZ-us creeps and the Tea Baggers toward us and the spokesperson gets a big fat book deal with speaking dates to follow.
And if they don’t fire them, all the better! Now they got a conservative mole on the inside to weaken the godless Commies from the inside.
Of course, Occam’s Razor tells me that the SCA just made a colossal screw-up, but a lunatic can dream, can’t he?
I think someone should ask the SCA board about what they were thinking when they hired Ms. Rogers. I suspect the tap dancing would rival Fred Astaire.
I was always a Gene Kelly fan myself. “Singin’ in the Rain” is my favorite musical.
You know, even if we assume her personal positions don’t matter if she can be a good advocate for others…
… this pretty much shows she’s not very good at anticipating what an audience wants or what they care about. Lying — and lying that takes less than a minute on the Internet to disprove* — is exactly the way to make most skeptics dislike you, and many secularist are skeptics. Not to mention the concerns about the modern Republican party, in addition to using gays, abortions and general promotion of a particular flavor of Christianity in defiance of the First Amendment to get the religious vote, is that they don’t tell the truth, and they do this blatantly. The last thing you want to do to ease concerns about being a Republican to a liberal-leaning group is to start blatantly lying.
* Someone quoted the surveys above; I noted that the national and state Republican parties post their platforms on their sites.
Oh, come on, J_A_L, that pic was brilliant. I’ve right-clicked and saved it.
As for the topic at hand, lobbying couldn’t possibly bring in more money for Rogers than collecting the royalties from having her photo appear next to the word “disingenuous” in the dictionary.
The board should resign.
Trojan Horse.
Obvious troll is fucking annoying.
Die.
Really bongo? What’s your malfunction?
Goddammit. Ridiculous a-contextual nosebleed, abetted by blood-thinners.
I blame it on bongo.
She does seem to be relatively well versed in what Dan Dennett refers to as the 4 tenets of good spin:
1 It must not be an outright lie.
2 You have to be able to say it with a straight face.
3 It must relieve skepticism without arousing curiosity.
4 It must seem profound.
If the SCA thinks that they are hiring someone with an “in” to Republican legislators, they will probably be surprised when she is drummed out of the Republican party for her heretical opinions.
Your definition of tenents 1 and 2 is far too liberal.
I take it mrbongo slithered his way here from the torture thread?
Mrbongo is apparently like a lot of atheist conservatives. Angry assholes who bitch about how they’re unwelcome in the atheist community because there’s so many liberals.
Akira:
The slime has been spamming all recent threads. Apparently, he had the bare minimum of mental faculties to post again on some.
Just a brain-dead idiot.
Oh I don’t doubt that her face, like the rest of her, is so very straight…
Amphiox
Heh. I was kinda hoping he would denounce the use of self-immolation as an alternative to the filibuster…
More likely they’ll become even MORE anti-allthat and criticize Obama for not being anti enough.
@38
please explain
Well, considering the book was “The Female Anatomy” saying “WTF am I reading?”…
It felt wrong. Like it’s so hard to understand them complicated females and what is going on in there…
Especially considering how people make transphobic jokes about women being men. Maybe I’m trigger happy with what was going on in other threads.
It was more intended for the “what the fuck am i reading” part :). To be honest I didn’t notice he was reading female anatomy in that version. I just found Amphiox’s comment @32 awesomely brilliant. Seems like no matter what Obama does, the republicans will take the 180 degree stance.
I was reserving judgement, but… Does anyone else get the impression that she only found out about atheist/secular issues last week?
Hurin @65:
That one made me actually LOL.
Omniz @70:
You’re giving her far too much credit. Last week? She sounds like she was told about it 15 seconds before the interview.
ER muttering to herself: “Okay…okay…be cool…gotta make shit up…gotta make shit up…”
And afterwards: “NAILED IT!”
Akira McKenzie @46:
Are you insinuating that she’s two women, one Cupp? I know we’re being asked to swallow a lot of crap, but that accusation may be a bit severe, mate.
I know that politics makes strange bedfellows, but getting in bed with the Republicans is always a mistake. You not only wake up with your wallet and clothes stolen on the side of the road. Twenty miles from the nearest town. But also you have a nasty taste in your mouth and thoroughly hate yourself for years after it.
And that’s before you learn you have an STD on top of it all.
Just say no, SCA.
GC has the full transcript up (thank you, Kate Donovan).
In addition to the false claim about the party position, Rogers repeatedly suggests that we don’t have the research and there’s no good research and so she’s going to rely on some poll on one issue that she vaguely remembers from 1994[!]. But that’s ridiculous. There’s a great deal of research on opinion on these questions, and much of it can be found through googling (some of it might even help her case). There’s also a wealth of information about the policy histories and public statements of Republican elected officials. I have to assume the SCA keeps track of all of this, but she should have known it all inside and out at the time of her interview for the job. That she plans to lead a lobbying organization and to focus on Republican politicians with no real knowledge of the situation at the national or state levels (or even awareness that the information exists) makes her sound incompetent, aside from the other problems.
The Secular Coalition must be joking with us. What the fuck?!
J_A_L:
That it was Ronald McDonald reading it, and the bizarre expression on his face, made the whole thing too surreal for me to draw any conclusions of bigotry.
Aquaria@73: Your comment reminds me of the bad DirectTV (I think) commercials with the list of bad things (TM) that happen to you because you have cable… Someone should run that past the SCA with this issue…see if they get it.
Reddit AMA
She is currently doing an AMA. Ask touch questions.
That’s what I had to ask myself.
I read the transcript and she said that she was a conservative but did not say what sort of conservative. Since she explicitly indicated that her views were socially liberal (pro-choice, in favor of separation of church/state, not anti-gay) she must mean she’s a fiscal conservative* which means she agrees with the repubs on those issues, which it seems, many in the secular community also disagree with.
*If there’s another sort of conservative, someone can enlighten me.
She’s so socially liberal that she spent her own money and worked against all those causes she says are important.
Aquaria #73:
Oh, posh. The Republican Party is too upstanding to do this, unless you let them do it to you of course. You just hate them because you’re a liberal.
-shifts to other ear- What? Bankrupt? Don’t call me, call fucking Bernanke and feed him the doom and gloom stories. He’s the one who can issue the bailouts, not me…
Okay, where was I? Oh yeah. Everyone on this blog just hates Republicans, that’s right. All you liberals with your justice and equality…I run an equal opportunity company! Everyone gets what they deserve, which is as little pay and benefits as I can give them because that will make them work harder so they can get to where I am!
Just listening now, and a quick ctrl+f doesn’t show me anyone noting this bit yet, but I’m not sure she understands how the major political parties work (well, that or she’s lying). When she says 70% of people who consider themselves republicans are pro choice (leaving aside the veracity of that statement), therefore it can’t be an official Republican position, she has an unstated major premise that is completely false. Namely that official Republican party positions must reflect the true desires of the majority of those who consider themselves Republicans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Official Republican positions are voted on by convention delegates, so all that must happen is that the majority of delegates representing Republican primary voters vote for the position during the convention. I don’t know what’s officially on the Republican platform, and I don’t much care because I know what they stand for. I am quite certain that the platform does not affirm a woman’s right to choose in any way.
So is she fundamentally unaware of what she might have learned in high school civics, or does she think we’re stupid? It’s quite likely that an average person would not remember it, but a high level lobbyist? It think the conclusion is inescapable. She’s spent too long in Washington, and her tricks may play there, but she’ll need to change her approach real fast if she expects to get the approval of the people she has been hired to represent.
@carnerojo (#40) posted a link to the Republican platform, but here are some relevant bits:
The Official Republican Party position is anti-choice:
The Official Republican Party position is opposed to gay rights:
The Official Republican Party position is at odds with church/state separation:
Yeah, look, I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, I want to not have a political party litmus test for a secular organization that need not involve itself in say, economic issues. But I have one absolute hard and fast criterion for anyone who wants to represent rationalists: not lying. She’s lying to us, to the people she wants to represent, and I cannot abide that. I’m pretty much through with her until she’s willing to be honest and apologize for her dishonesty. Political prevarication will only go so far, at some point you’ve got to get real.
gussnarp, thanks for posting that. Now there really is nothing for the SCA to do but try tap-dancing out of this with more bullshit or find a new Chrome Plated Megaphone of Destiny.
Sorry in advance for the Godwin, but…
“Hey guys, I’ve just been appointed as the Executive Director of AIPAC. I’m a proud, life-long member of the National Socialist German Workers (NAZI) Party. Now, I know what some of you may be thinking. ‘Why is a Nazi working for Jews?’ You see, most Nazi’s actually LOVE Jews! According to these statistics I think I saw 18 years ago, over 70% of Nazis have NO PROBLEM WITH JEWS whatsoever! So, because not every single Nazi in the world has a problem with Jews, it is wrong to stereotype all Nazis as anti-semites based on the actions of the leaders, such as rounding up all Jews and shipping them off to gas chambers. That was just the actions of a few! You needn’t worry about me! How dare you assume I’m that way just because I donated $1,000 to Adolf Hitler’s political campaign?”