Sally Kern’s mouth motors on

The infamous anti-gay legislator from Oklahoma, Sally Kern, was interviewed by the Oklahoma Daily. The story has some fine bon mots, like her definition of evolution:

Kern defined evolution to me as “the process of wanting to create something or have something be perfect. Get rid of that which is not healthy and strong.”

That’s a very common creationist misconception: they can’t imagine a natural process that doesn’t have wants, that is lacking that teleological impulse.

The writer sent me the outtakes from the interview. If you want more Kern uncut and uncensored, look below the fold.

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I pray that angels come down from heaven and heal these polls

Isn’t technology wonderful? It allows the woo-woos to spread their nonsense so much more rapidly, and to look slick and shiny and modern while they do it. Take a look at this report and polls on a site called AOL Health — AOL Quackery is more like it — which describes a survey that says 16% of Americans claim to have experienced a “miraculous healing”, as if that somehow increases the credibility of the experience. It does not. All it means is that the gullible have been primed with an explanation that they will regurgitate when queried.

Do they think this through? No. They even cite that “Pentecostals and African-American Protestants were far more likely than other groups, such as mainline Protestants or Catholics or Jews, to say they have either witnessed or experienced a miraculous healing firsthand.” If reporting were equivalent to actual intervention by a deity, wouldn’t that mean god favors Pentecostals and Protestants with darker skin color?

A silly article must be accompanied by silly polls. This one has two!

Do you believe in miraculous healing?
Of course: 79%
Absolutely not: 12%
I’m not sure: 9%

Have you experienced a miracle?
I believe so: 73%
Not that I know of: 19%
I don’t believe in miracles: 8%

Those numbers sure look wacky. Do you think they will have magically, miraculously changed for me by the morning?

A little comparison

This new movie, Religulous, is doing reasonably well on its opening weekend, bringing in about $3.5 million. This is comparable to what Expelled brought in (about $3.7 million). There are a few differences, though.

  • Religulous hasn’t had much of an advertising campaign. Remember all the Expelled commercials everywhere, including The Daily Show? Maher’s movie has only relatively recently been getting plugged. It’s ads are more intelligently targeted, though.

  • Religulous only opened on 500 screens, compared to Expelled‘s 1000.

  • Religulous is coming off its opening weekend with great word of mouth and good critical reviews. Expelled attendance plummeted steadily from the first day onward.

  • One to think about, and maybe this isn’t a difference: Expelled had a built-in base of evangelical Christians to draw on (although many were disgusted by it, too). Does Religulous also draw upon a base of freethinkers? Is there a neglected audience for more godless entertainment? Will advertisers and investors figure this out?

They also have something in common. I’ve seen neither. I don’t think Bill Maher would throw me out of the theater if he spotted me in line, though. Or maybe he would — it was such great PR for Mark Mathis and company, wasn’t it?

“God is dead, and this is the best thing that could happen to us!”

My colleague at UMM, Michael Lackey, is interviewed by DJ Grothe on Point of Inquiry. He’s written a book on freethought in the American black community, and the interesting point is that black atheists embraced unbelief as a refuge from the Christian rationalizations for oppression — they saw religion as fundamentally anti-democratic, coming as it did from a closed system of knowledge.

You’ll also hear a discussion of post-modernism; hang out with enough English professors, and you’ll begin to realize it’s not as crazy as the caricatures make it out to be.

Four-way stops must be outlawed in Minnesota

They just don’t work. Maybe you’ve heard of “Minnesota nice”, this strange passive-aggressive attitude around here that compels everyone to compete at being the most polite and deferential…and it completely defeats the function of the 4-way stop at an intersection. The rule is simple—whoever first comes to a complete stop gets to be the first to proceed through the intersection—but real Minnesotans can’t grasp it. It’s nice to let someone go through first, so you’ll sometimes run into these situations where two cars are parked at the crossroads, with each driver waving for the other to go ahead, and they just sit there. Then they’ll both edge forward, stop abruptly as they notice the other fellow trying to advance, and the gesticulating commences again.

I just made a trip to the grocery store when I came upon two cars stopped, one to the left and the other to the right, their drivers flapping their arms madly and not going anywhere. My arrival seems to have made the situation worse, because they added me to their pattern of waving. Come on, I’m last at the intersection, I’m supposed to be last to proceed! It’s easy!

Anyway, I’m from Washington. I gave them 15 or 20 seconds, then said screw it, and went ahead.

Palinoscopy

Here’s the VP debate exactly as I remember it: Palin was cheerful, folksy, always evading the questions and changing the subject she was prepped for, and completely devoid of substance. I especially liked the introductory ground rules, which the media have taken to heart: “Due to the historically low expectations for governor Palin, were she simply to do an adequate job tonight, and at no point cry, faint, run out of the building, or vomit, you should consider the debate a tie.”

The ‘folksiness’ grates, as Patricia Williams notes — it’s a misleading proxy for authenticity, and authenticity is too often regarded as a proxy for competence and knowledge. We need leadership that actually has some skill in managing, now that we’re deep in this crisis the last folksy boob we elected led us into, and instead we’re getting a beauty queen whose major qualification seems to be the ability to drop the ending “g” from words. That would be OK if she had some ability beyond that, but nope, it’s not there.

Another example of the contrast: Biden and Palin were asked to name the past vice presidents they admire most. Palin fumbled, mentioned first Geraldine Ferraro (who only ran for VP) because she “shattered part of that glass ceiling”, and then named Bush Sr., because she liked vice presidents who went on to become presidents. (Right. Chills run down the spine, don’t they?) Biden didn’t hesitate and said Johnson, because of his knowledge of politics.

Oh, but Palin does have one other talent: she’s a well-trained attack dog. I think we can expect much more of this kind of slander from the Republicans in the next few weeks. She has come right out and accused Obama of associating with terrorists now.

Mrs Palin described Mr Obama as someone who saw the US “as being so imperfect… he is palling around with terrorists who would target their own country”.

Mr Obama served on a charity board several years ago with Mr Ayers, who is now a professor at the University of Illinois.
The White House hopeful, who was a child when Weather Underground was active, has denounced Mr Ayers’ radical past.

I expect she’ll start talking about how Obama is a Muslim who will want to be sworn in on a Koran soon. It’s all going to be lies and innuendo from the Republican side from here on out, and it might just work — especially if she says it with a dimple and a smile and a few lazily formed gerunds.