Expelled from Expelled: The Saga!
Mar. 24th, 2008 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsI'm completely late to this ball, thanks in part to the Friday strike and to my being overwhelmed for much of the rest of the weekend with Norwescon and watching over Kouryou-chan and all.
There's a new documentary coming out called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," produced by someone named Mark Mathis. The film apparently claims that there's a vast Darwinian Conspiracy to keep the cool, hip, radical and rebellious idea of intelligent design out of academia, and that this Conspiracy is engaged in vicious slander and ridicule to get its way.
The Expelled crew has been going around the country doing "pre-release screenings." The invite has apparently been going out via church emailing lists, but to get in you just had to sign up at the movie's website.
P.Z. Myers, a biologist specializing in evolutionary development and a leading light of the American atheist movement, is in the film. He was apparently interviewed under false pretenses for a film called "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion." (Mathis claims that the title was changed later for bankability, but people have pointed out that Mathis owned the "Expelled" website long before he interview Myers, and owns no corresponding DNS addresses for anything called "Crossroads."). Like anyone else, he signed up to see a showing when it came to his home town in Minnesota.
He was expelled from the theater. He was recognized by the producer, who's been going to these "pre-showings" and getting audience reaction and Q&A. But there's a punchline: although he was not allowed in, his wife, his daughter, and his guest were all allowed in. His guest was Richard Dawkins.
PZ went over to the mall next to the theater and live-blogged his own sarcastic amusement at the whole thing. The response all weekend was a kind of whithering, howling laughter. Dawkins finally posted his review, calling it "whiny, paranoid, pathetic really," repeating what everyone else who's seen it without his church-colord blinders on has said: it makes bad arguments ad Hitleram about an alleged connection between "Darwinism" and the Nazi program, all artlessly done and without a hint of irony or introspection. Even worse, the narrator and principle interviewer is Ben Stein, a man who's won Brad DeLong's stupidest man alive and Olbermann's WPitW for his lack of economic insight, and who will probably be better remembered as a game show host and eyedrop shill than for his economics degree or his work with Richard Nixon, who he still claims to admire. Stein seems to think that his Jewishness will protect him from claims of denialist logic, which is exactly what he's doing.
On the "Expelled" website, they have this as a banner: "Expelled is going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant -- which means they're going to draw in about 90% of the American market. -- PZ Myers." They seem to think this is a good thing.
Producer Mathis is in total spin mode. First, he claimed that he didn't let Myers in because he was afraid Myers would cause a stir. Then, when Dawkins stood up and called him out on it, he claimed that even though he thanked Myers for his time, he wanted Myers to have to pay ten bucks to see it. Yeah, this guys with the attitude of a six year old hopes to change the world with his movie.
Sastra's comment on Pharyngula really makes the best point, I think, about Mathis' behavior. Mathis expected PZ to be hurt by "being expelled," with a "Ha, see how that feels now!?" But PZ knows damn well that reality is on his side, has an acerbic sense of humor bar none, and an audience ready to receive it. Mathis failed to grasp his opponent clearly, and is now paying the price.
We're calling it the Good Friday Fiasco It's been my laugh-out-loud of the week. Too much fun.
There's a new documentary coming out called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," produced by someone named Mark Mathis. The film apparently claims that there's a vast Darwinian Conspiracy to keep the cool, hip, radical and rebellious idea of intelligent design out of academia, and that this Conspiracy is engaged in vicious slander and ridicule to get its way.
The Expelled crew has been going around the country doing "pre-release screenings." The invite has apparently been going out via church emailing lists, but to get in you just had to sign up at the movie's website.
P.Z. Myers, a biologist specializing in evolutionary development and a leading light of the American atheist movement, is in the film. He was apparently interviewed under false pretenses for a film called "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion." (Mathis claims that the title was changed later for bankability, but people have pointed out that Mathis owned the "Expelled" website long before he interview Myers, and owns no corresponding DNS addresses for anything called "Crossroads."). Like anyone else, he signed up to see a showing when it came to his home town in Minnesota.
He was expelled from the theater. He was recognized by the producer, who's been going to these "pre-showings" and getting audience reaction and Q&A. But there's a punchline: although he was not allowed in, his wife, his daughter, and his guest were all allowed in. His guest was Richard Dawkins.
PZ went over to the mall next to the theater and live-blogged his own sarcastic amusement at the whole thing. The response all weekend was a kind of whithering, howling laughter. Dawkins finally posted his review, calling it "whiny, paranoid, pathetic really," repeating what everyone else who's seen it without his church-colord blinders on has said: it makes bad arguments ad Hitleram about an alleged connection between "Darwinism" and the Nazi program, all artlessly done and without a hint of irony or introspection. Even worse, the narrator and principle interviewer is Ben Stein, a man who's won Brad DeLong's stupidest man alive and Olbermann's WPitW for his lack of economic insight, and who will probably be better remembered as a game show host and eyedrop shill than for his economics degree or his work with Richard Nixon, who he still claims to admire. Stein seems to think that his Jewishness will protect him from claims of denialist logic, which is exactly what he's doing.
On the "Expelled" website, they have this as a banner: "Expelled is going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant -- which means they're going to draw in about 90% of the American market. -- PZ Myers." They seem to think this is a good thing.
Producer Mathis is in total spin mode. First, he claimed that he didn't let Myers in because he was afraid Myers would cause a stir. Then, when Dawkins stood up and called him out on it, he claimed that even though he thanked Myers for his time, he wanted Myers to have to pay ten bucks to see it. Yeah, this guys with the attitude of a six year old hopes to change the world with his movie.
Sastra's comment on Pharyngula really makes the best point, I think, about Mathis' behavior. Mathis expected PZ to be hurt by "being expelled," with a "Ha, see how that feels now!?" But PZ knows damn well that reality is on his side, has an acerbic sense of humor bar none, and an audience ready to receive it. Mathis failed to grasp his opponent clearly, and is now paying the price.
We're calling it the Good Friday Fiasco It's been my laugh-out-loud of the week. Too much fun.
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Date: 2008-03-25 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-25 06:01 am (UTC)ID
Date: 2008-03-26 03:33 pm (UTC)*Historically, prior to the first crusade, the christians, jews and moslems of the Mediteranean rim all got along fairly well. There were a series of monarchies in the area that considered inter-religious co-operation vital to economic health (read that as copious tax base)and were known to enforce Their will in some definite and occasionally final ways. The second crusade was even worse. Do you think that we can get the roman catholic church to apologize? Compared to the crusades WW1 and WW2 were a cakewalk.