I hadn’t realized that Roger Ebert had so far neglected to review Expelled, but he has now belatedly rectified that omission with a wonderfully scathing sneer at the movie. Here’s a taste:

The more you know about evolution, or simple logic, the more you are likely to be appalled by the film. No one with an ability for critical thinking could watch more than three minutes without becoming aware of its tactics. It isn’t even subtle. Take its treatment of Dawkins, who throughout his interviews with Stein is honest, plain-spoken, and courteous. As Stein goes to interview him for the last time, we see a makeup artist carefully patting on rouge and dusting Dawkins’ face. After he is prepared and composed, after the shine has been taken off his nose, here comes plain, down-to-earth, workaday Ben Stein. So we get the vain Dawkins with his effete makeup, talking to the ordinary Joe.

I have done television interviews for more than 40 years. I have been on both ends of the questions. I have news for you. Everyone is made up before going on television. If they are not, depending on their complexions, they will look sunburned, red-splotched, oily, pale as a fish belly, orange, mottled, ashen, or too dark to be lighted in the same shot with a lighter skin. There is not a person reading this right now who should go on camera without some kind of makeup. Even the obligatory “shocked neighbors” standing in their front yards after a murder usually have some powder brushed on by the camera person. Was Ben Stein wearing makeup? Of course he was. Did he whisper to his camera crew to roll while Dawkins was being made up? Of course he did. Otherwise, no camera operator on earth would have taped that. That incident dramatizes his approach throughout the film. If you want to study Gotcha! moments, start here.

That is simply one revealing fragment. This film is cheerfully ignorant, manipulative, slanted, cherry-picks quotations, draws unwarranted conclusions, makes outrageous juxtapositions (Soviet marching troops representing opponents of ID), pussy-foots around religion (not a single identified believer among the ID people), segues between quotes that are not about the same thing, tells bald-faced lies, and makes a completely baseless association between freedom of speech and freedom to teach religion in a university class that is not about religion.

I don’t think he liked it.

I know there are a lot of smart people at UW Madison who will be a bit dismayed to hear this: an IDEA chapter is forming in Madison. The IDEA clubs are the sad little organizations that the Intelligent Design wackaloons form on college campuses to spread their nonsense. They don’t seem very effective — they produce people like Casey Luskin and Sal Cordova, so one might argue that they actually help us by dumbing down the opposition — but they are kind of embarrassing to have around.

Anyway, this group is going to show some silly ID movies, “Where the evidence leads” (irreducible complexity proves evolution is wrong!) and “The Privileged Planet” (god is real because we don’t fall up!) on December 4, 10, 18 and in January at the Madison Public Library. They will have discussions afterwards in which they try to defend bogosity.

This could be great fun for the rational folk in Wisconsin. Get a group together, show up for the movie, and tear it down afterwards. Make ’em struggle, then go out for a celebratory beer afterwards. Report back if you do it!

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MAJOR CORRECTION: this isn’t in Madison, Wisconsin. It’s Madison, South Dakota. They are easily confused, one is to the west of me, the other to the east.

This Madison contains Dakota State University — I’m sure there are avid science students there ready to play wack-a-mole, too.

We have made Ken Ham very sad. Yay, bonus!

“We are disappointed with the zoo’s decision and its impact on the families and visitors to the region who would have enjoyed taking advantage of this opportunity to make this a truly memorable Christmas,” said Answers in Genesis and Creation Museum founder and president Ken Ham. “Both the Creation Museum and the Cincinnati Zoo have put together spectacular Christmas displays, and we were excited to partner with them to promote these events in a combination package that would have been of great value to the community.”

“My family and I have been Cincinnati Zoo members for more than 10 years now, so I am also personally saddened that this organization I esteem so highly would find it necessary to back out of this relationship. At the same time, I have learned that the zoo received hundreds of complaints from what appear to be some very intolerant people, and so I understand the zoo’s perspective. Frankly, we are used to this kind of criticism from our opponents, and so being ‘expelled’ like this is not a huge surprise,” Ham continued.

…

“Our museum will continue to promote this excellent zoo on our website and also in the printed material we pass out inside the museum. We are committed to promoting regional tourism. It’s a pity that intolerant people have pushed for our expulsion simply because of our Christian faith. Some of their comments on blogs reveal great intolerance for anything having to do with Christianity,” Ham added.

Awww, Ken just wanted to promote regional tourism. It wasn’t about trying to get validation from a legitimate research and educational institution, then. Right.

Let’s deal with some of his other claims.

• They were not attacked for their Christian faith — that is one of the most common dodges of liars and con men and other scoundrels, to hide behind the petticoats of generic ‘faith’, when what they’re actually being criticized for is lying and cheating. Ken Ham’s Creation ‘Museum’ is despised because it is a temple to falsehood.

• He keeps talking about expulsion and being expelled. Were we more successful than I could have imagined? Is the Creation ‘Museum’ closed? Are people hindered from visiting it? Have we blocked all ticket sales? No, unfortunately: all we’ve done is prevented a fraud from acquiring an entirely false veneer of authority by association. Save the martyr’s lament for a time when you haven’t been caught faking your credibility, Ken.

• I haven’t been to the Cincinnati Zoo myself, but I’m willing to accept Ham’s claim that it is an excellent organization (I shouldn’t, really. Plaudits from Ken Ham is like a good restaurant review from Jeffrey Dahmer.) The zoo’s reputation is precisely what Ham was trying to trade on by linking his awful little collection of lies to them. We have successfully defending that good reputation by exposing a tie that would have undermined it.

• The only intolerance here is an expectation of rigor, good science, and evidence-based reasoning from an educational institution. It’s what we’ll continue to promote, as long as hucksters like Ken Ham are out there trying to dilute our standards to allow biblical hogwash to stand on an equal footing with legitimate biology.

• Speaking for this blog, I don’t have intolerance for Christianity — I simply lack any respect at all for that grand hodge-podge of delusions. We leave the intolerance to Christians, who are historically expert at practicing it.

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There’s more! Ken Ham has a long whiny blog post up today, complaining about those intolerant evolutionists, and making the same tired complaints I dealt with above.

I can tell that Ham is bit peeved that we squelched his attempt to ride on the coattails of the zoo.

“While we are saddened”…”These people basically worship Darwin–they worship evolution and cannot tolerate anyone who doesn’t agree with them!”…”Sad that someone with an atheistic agenda can cause a business relationship to be dissolved”…”they resort to censorship and underhanded campaigns”…”we are used to such integrity bashing.”

But he can’t let it slide without trying to pretend it was all alright.

Thank you, P.Z. Myers, for thousands of dollars’ worth of media promotion for our Bible-upholding museum! Actually, this will benefit the Creation Museum much more in the long run.

For the right effect, you have to imagine Ken Ham blubbering that out through his tears. Sure, he got media attention — all of it pointing out that he failed, that he’d tried to sneak in a link to a legitimate educational institution, and that a few people with blogs were able to put a stop to him. He looks rather pathetic, don’t you think?