The scoop on Mike S. Adams

For any locals who are curious about that Mike Adams character who gave a talk on campus yesterday, Bartholomew’s notes on religion has a good summary of his career as a professional victim. There’s also a more complete account of the terrible oppression Adams faced after his response to the 9/11 emails, a story he told in part but at some length yesterday. Funny how he didn’t mention that part of the story involving an undergraduate student he’d marry 18 months later…

Mike S. Adams, glib hypocrite

I did manage to get to Mike S. Adams’ talk here at UMM. It was a packed room (not our biggest lecture room here, but it was filled to capacity) and I arrived late, so I had to stand outside the door to listen in. Kudos to our students, who were polite and attentive, and let him blather on without interruption.

Adams is a slick, fast-talking, folksy guy, and he made the audience laugh quite a bit. He had to talk fast, though, to keep his story from sinking beneath the weight of its improbabilities, and I do wonder how many of our students actually caught on to his inconsistencies.

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Mike S. Adams? HERE???

My daughter had mentioned something a while back about some speaker named Mike Adams coming to UMM, and that she’d get extra credit for attending, but it didn’t sink in until I saw the signs around campus. It’s this Mike S. Adams, columnist for TownHall, Horowitzian shill, anti-feminist, creationist clown, homophobic bigot, warrior for free speech, professional racist, gun kook, academic-by-accident, beauty contest judge, and just generally contemptible far, far right-wing nutcase.

I’m very disappointed in our students. We’re far off the beaten track and we don’t get that many speakers passing through our area, and they had to go exhibit the poor taste to invite this sorry sack of rethuglican excreta to our campus. Couldn’t they have at least tried to find an intelligent conservative to bring out here? Why’d they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for this guy? At least we’re seeing our rather dismal right-wing campus rag‘s fading credibility implode with their sponsorship of such a low-wattage guest speaker.

I’ve heard that a few of our liberal students want to protest his visit. I’m not happy about that, either; we paid good money to ferry this stiff here, let’s at least have him put on a show and argue with him.

I’m not sure I’ll be able to make it to his talk, but if I can, suggest some good questions I can ask him. I’m tempted to ask him to simply expound on the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution, so that he can scuttle himself with his own words…although I suspect his talk itself will be sufficiently foolish on its own.

Words of wisdom

Atrios feels somewhat vindicated by Olbermann’s success:

Of course, stupid people like me have long suggested that the way to counterprogram a right wing news network was not to put on slightly less right wing programming, and that a left-of-center block of programming on MSNBC in prime time would spike their ratings, but no one listens to stupid people like me.

There’s a general lesson there. The way to oppose right-wing media dominance is not to set up a slightly less wingnutty version of the Fox News. The way to oppose a Republican takeover of congress, the executive branch, and the supreme court is not to ape the right-wing agenda with slightly less fanaticism. And the way to fight the all-pervasive excesses of religion in our culture is not to support Christians who make nice promises.

Wetterling on ID

I have confirmation from both my son (who was there) and Eva that Patty Wetterling did address the question about whether ID ought to be taught in the schools in a recent debate. Here’s what she said:

We need to teach the truth about science. Evolution is scientifically accurate. We can’t let our science curriculum to be based on religious beliefs.

Exactly right. That’s not hard to say, you know.

There were a few comments in that prior thread that were trying to argue that, since the 6th district has a conservative population, Wetterling was a bad choice to run there—that the DFL should have tried to find a conservative Democrat for a candidate.

I think that’s insane.

  • Wetterling is running a good, hard campaign. She’s putting up a fight, and she’s made it a competitive race. Why in the world should the DFL ask good, progressive candidates who are willing to work a district to step aside? She stands for our values. We ought to be pushing that, rather than looking for some proxy Democrat with Republican values to run.

  • Just curious, but when was the last time you saw Republicans arguing that they ought to be fielding moderate candidates anywhere? Far right wingnuts seem to be happily seized upon as perfect choices to forward the Republican agenda, and the arguments always seem to be about how to get money and support to their people. (Katherine Harris seems to be the rare exception. There are limits to the insanity and incompetence Republicans will endorse, which is good to see.)

  • It seems to me that putting up strong opposition to Republican extremists is exactly what we ought to be doing. Make ’em have to struggle and bleed a little to win when they put up kooks like Bachmann; better yet, make ’em lose to liberal candidates. Let the Republicans look at these races and decide that they need to field a moderate to get a lock on the district. Make them shift a little closer to the center, rather than always ceding that the Democrats must shift a little closer to the right. That’s how we win in the long run. That strategy of always forcing the races rightward and making the Democrats chase after them is how the Republicans have been winning.

One funny thing about that strategy is that it will even make some Republicans happy to see their extremist fringe kicked in the tush a few times. The voters who would switch to a conservative/moderate Democrat would probably prefer to see the nutjobs who are leading their party marginalized and replaced with centrists—and that would be a net gain for the country.

Watch these!

This morning, I’m off to the Unitarian Church of Willmar to talk about creationism. I’ll be back later, but ’til then, you kiddies can watch some TV. Flea has David Rakoff, if you want to laugh at the inanity of the right wing, while Crooks and Liars hosts the latest Olbermann, if you’re more in the mood for tragedy, in this case the unraveling of the Constitution.