Creepy ol’ Uncle Rudy

Project Veritas should pay attention. James O’Keefe keeps setting up these pathetic stings that only succeed because his gullible right-wing wants to believe, but Sacha Baron Cohen goes extreme and sets up these unbelievable scenarios that we can’t believe anyone would fall for, and we all say “NO!” when some idiot actually falls for them. The idiot this time is Rudy Giuliani, a big fish in the Trump circle of friends.

So apparently Sacha Baron Cohen is playing his character Borat, which is the first thing that had me shaking my head. Really? Doesn’t everyone recognize him yet? Isn’t the Eastern European yokel schtick all played out? I guess not, since Giuliani got played, falling for Borat pretending to be a Kazhakh diplomat bringing a bribe to the Trump campaign — a bribe which happens to be the opportunity to have sex with his 15 year old daughter. I would have told him to take a hike at the word “bribe”, and would have called the cops when he offered me a child.

Not Rudy!

In the film, released on Friday, the former New York mayor and current personal attorney to Donald Trump is seen reaching into his trousers and apparently touching his genitals while reclining on a bed in the presence of the actor playing Borat’s daughter, who is posing as a TV journalist.

Following an obsequious interview for a fake conservative news programme, the pair retreat at her suggestion for a drink to the bedroom of a hotel suite, which is rigged with concealed cameras.

After she removes his microphone, Giuliani, 76, can be seen lying back on the bed, fiddling with his untucked shirt and reaching into his trousers. They are then interrupted by Borat who runs in and says: “She’s 15. She’s too old for you.”

Guiliani has excuses — he was just tucking in his shirt! — but seriously, he’s fallen for a Borat skit, willingly went into a young woman’s bedroom, and flopped down on the bed. Give up.

Of course, he’s a Republican, so there will be no consequences. Rudy will still be Trump’s incompetent consigliere, he will still get invited on CNN and Fox to rave, no one will care.

I snubbed Mike S. Adams again

Way, way back in 2006, I heard that Mike S. Adams was coming to UMM. I was surprised. He was one of those far-right loons who ranted on various conservative websites, and I’d commented on some of his poisonous crap, but why would he come all the way out here? And why would any of our students bother with such a goofball?

I attended his talk. I arrived late, had to listen from the hallway, and didn’t think much of it…but apparently, Adams was looking for me, and noticed that I didn’t ask any questions, and wrote a whole column calling me a coward and misspelling my name. I had to write an article explaining why I was unimpressed and repelled by him, but I was touched: he actually cared about me, and expected that I’d want to talk to him, and seemed disappointed that I found him so repugnant that I had no interest in engaging with a right-wing troll.

It was surprising then, to discover that Mike S. Adams is dead, as I learned in this video (it’s mentioned somewhere around the 15 minute mark, before dissecting Adams’ odious beliefs). He had been battling his university, demanding a promotion to full professor that it had denied him, and went through a long painful series of court engagements which he eventually won, I guess: he was promoted to full professor and given 7 years of back pay, about $500,000, but also agreed to retire. I imagine that cost him, maybe more than he was awarded, and the week before he was due to finally retire, he killed himself.

That was back in July. In a final snub, I didn’t even notice at the time. I ignored him when he gave a talk here, and I ignored him when he blew his brains out.

I wonder how all those people who sent me hate mail, prompted by his column, feel about this unforgivable injustice? They’re welcome to write to me some more, vent their rage and all that, since I don’t mind, and have enough self-confidence that I won’t be affected by their impotent fury.

Poor man.

Tired creationist arguments, again

Oh god no, not another Ray Comfort special. He (or rather, some outfit called Genesis Apologetics, which for some unfathomable reason thinks Ray Comfort’s narration is a selling point) has a new movie out, titled “Genesis Impact”, and of course it’s a wretched pile of incoherent nonsense. Here’s the trailer.

It starts off with the patented Ray Comfort trolling technique of hitting random lay people with rapid fire questions of the creationist flavor, which they are not prepared to answer with substantive evidence. They aren’t scientists, Ray. We know that if they were scientists, you’d chop out their answers on the editing room floor, because that’s how you roll.

But then, there’s a difference: this movie has a premise, beyond just Ray bleating out questions at random strangers, like most of his “movies”. In this one, a woman is reminiscing about the time she studied “both sides” of the evolution question, and confronted a science guy at a museum and peppered him with questions he couldn’t answer. I guess if you don’t have a confused civilian handy, you just script up a confused scientist and have a young girl crush him with creationist dogma. This is also a familiar genre; it’s basically “Big Daddy” in movie form, where the adorable Christian confronts a professor with imaginary problems in evolution, and he goes staggering back, trounced and questioning his life choices.

In this one, our Christian teenager troops up on the podium and says, “Sir, I have a question.” The “sir” is a giveaway. I’ve never been addressed as “sir”, ever — it’s practically archaic, calculated to make you think this is a respectful approach, when it’s anything but. She says, “Isn’t that an unusually long time without any transitions between apes and humans?” What does that even mean? What is the expected time? How do you judge an appropriate length of time when you are simply refusing to believe in any transitions at all?

“It looks like a lot of speculation, even exaggeration,” she declares, this random uninformed Christian. How would she know? Is she reading the scientific literature? “The earth is billions of years old, which allows evolution to take place,” answers the scientist, which isn’t even a reply to the statement she made. Cut to rapt audience, who look surprised that someone has confronted a scientist with these “difficult” questions. Right. I can tell already there’s going to be a lot of scripted stupidity in this movie, with the creationist making absurd claims and getting no pushback from the scientist…because the scientist’s answers are all written by a creationist know-nothing.

“I don’t mean any disrespect, but I believe that the theory of evolution is the most fluid, ever-changing theory on the face of the planet,” she says with a smile and a shrug beneath her weird shaggy wig. That certainly sounds like a Comfortism to me, the constant pretense of being respectful, because when you’ve got no meat to your answers, you think you can substitute for it with tone.

Fuck that noise, little girl. We’re not going to let you Gish gallop through a dozen ill-formed questions for the next hour and 7 minutes, we’re going to drill down through one and I’ll show you why it’s a stupid question, and we’ll go into the science behind what real paleontologists and geologists and evolutionary biologists say, and then you can go back to your Bible.

The whole godawful movie is on Amazon Prime, and I’ll probably watch the whole thing this weekend. Fortunately, it’s only 67 minutes long. Unfortunately, creationists can pack an awful lot of bullshit into an hour. Here’s the blurb:

Secular museum docent (Reggie McGuire) presents his best case for evolution at the natural history museum, but Christina (Hannah Bradley) has a few questions at the end of his talk that turn the tables… Christina’s questions dismantle evolution and her presentation of the Bible’s account of origins awaken many to the truth.

<snort> Yeah, right. She’s going to “dismantle evolution” with stupid questions. I’ll probably live-tweet the experience. Who knows? Maybe at the end I’ll emerge believing in the literal truth of Genesis I. (No, I won’t. I’ve attended this rodeo many times before, and it’s going to be an hour of garbage.)

A loss at the University of Oregon

I did not know him at all — he was at the University of Oregon after my time there — but I was sad to learn of the death of Jeff McKnight from cancer. He sounds like he was a passionate, enthusiastic scientist, and we always need more of those.

This bit jumped out at me, though.

“Jeff was definitely someone special who saw his students as equals and not as anything lesser,” said Bryson Tyler Ricamona, a UO biology alum. “It was really enlightening and very motivating to know that somebody really believed in us, not only in the work that we’re doing now but the potential work that we could do in the future.”

McKnight supported students inside and outside of his lab. When someone tore down posters encouraging LGBTQ+ students to take part in STEM, McKnight printed and hung 50 new posters and talked to the UO science community about the incident. The posters disappeared the next day, so McKnight printed and hung 100 more.

“He cared very much about our community,” Orlandi said.

That sounds familiar — that was my experience at the UO, that the faculty were all committed activists and concerned about improving the world, so it sounds like he fit right in.

It’s too bad about the individuals tearing down posters, but I’ll trust that they were an obnoxious minority and not at all representative of the student body. I’ve noticed that every university has a few terrible people who have terrible ways of getting attention, and they’ve gotten worse in recent years.

The gods may have already heeded my prayers

Get your incense burning and prayer wheels spinning, everyone! Think really hard! Rush Limbaugh has terminal lung cancer, and is expected to die. Thoughts & Prayers time! Nothing more. He thinks they really work.

Limbaugh said his embrace of religion has helped him cope with the uncertainty cancer brings. After his update generated expressions of support, he thanked well-wishers via Twitter, saying, “Thank you so much for your overwhelming encouragement, support, and prayers out there. They absolutely work! Fear not, I plan to hang around a long time to continue to annoy the left.”

So many questions…what religion has he embraced? I would have thought openly adopting Satan as your Lord and Master when you’re about to die would be unwise, unless maybe he tried selling his soul for more longevity. He wouldn’t have gotten much, though, since his soul was already fully owned by Satan, but desperation leads to desperate measures.

Do you think the inevitable death of Limbaugh would be the sacrifice that would appease the fickle demons of 2020? Or do they demand a human sacrifice?

Are you ready for disappointment and betrayal?

Even if the Democrats win the election, don’t expect much of a change.

Joe Biden’s transition team is vetting a handful of Republicans for potential Cabinet positions — despite doubts it will win him new support from the right and the risk it will enrage the left.

Reaching across the aisle to pick senior members of his administration could shore up Biden’s credentials as a unity candidate, a message he’s made a cornerstone of his campaign. Past presidents including George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have all done the same. But that tradition died with President Donald Trump, and liberal Democrats are already warning that a Republican pick, even a moderate one, could sow distrust within the party before Biden even takes office.

It’s bad enough that we’re settling for a tepid centrist Democrat, but if he caves to that degree, I hope he’s ready to be primaried so hard and to be a one-term president.