#52920: — 12/08  at  12:15 PM
Nat,
granted that there are the two examples of staged "hate" crimes that she references, and I take your point - but neither of these involves self-harm. Both involve vandalism.

It's quite a stretch to consider either of those supports a thesis of "prevalence" of people hospitalizing themselves.

#52921: decrepitoldfool — 12/08  at  12:16 PM

the Fundies wish to portray themselves as representing the entirety of Christianity.

Well now, that's an interesting point. The fundies don't even acknowedge other, more moderate Christians as truly Christian. Then when anyone illuminates the excesses of fundamentalists, they say; "You're generalizing the actions of a few to all Christians!"

So which is it? Can't have it both ways. If you want to claim to be the "only true Christians" you can't complain when people generalize your acts to Christianity.

#52922: — 12/08  at  12:18 PM
" You will scarcely be persuaded, that [religious principles] are any thing but sick men's dreams: Or perhaps will regard them more as the playsome whimsies of monkies in human shape ..."

I infer that Hume didn't buy common descent or he wouldn't have distinguished believers from non-believers in this way. (and yes, I know the relevant chronology - it's intended to be a joke!)

#52928: — 12/08  at  12:31 PM
Any idea is fair game for mockery. I see mockery as a form of challenge to the idea: It's just a challenge that's intended to provoke laughter as well as thought.

Of course, most attempts at mocking atheism and evolution fall flat on their faces, thanks to faulty premises.

#52929: — 12/08  at  12:32 PM
Yes, CBBB, this is a Christian-bashing site. Nothing wrong with that. Amusing and important work and how many of us get to say both about our avocations?

But it is one thing to prefer to bash Christians, another to claim to be even-handed when, events demonstrate, you are not.

yorktank, Lapchick's foray into redneck-bashing happened before there was an Internet, so, no links. If you really need to know, I can put you in contact with the reporter who broke the story.

Malkin is a mean-spirited fabulist. So far as I've heard, Marecki's story has not been falsified, even though it smells like yesterday's mackerel.

I don't do much police reporting any more, but I still do some, and right now I'm in the middle of a complicated series of reports about an attack that was so unprovoked and so out of the usual that I would have said it smelled like old mackerel, too, but there's a videotape to show that it really did happen.

The idea that leftists routinely fake incidents to embarrass rightists is absurd; on the other hand, it isn't unknown either.

I suppose the current 'War on Christmas' hype from the right is a cognate phenomenon, but so far that's just a war of words. No animals were harmed in the making of that brouhaha.

#52939: Doc Rampage — 12/08  at  01:18 PM
Wow.

Loris, can you name any crazy militia person who is a fundamentalist Christian? I doubt it. And one attack on one person (assuming it wasn't fabricated) over the last century in a country in the hundreds of millions of people makes it too dangerous to put a Darwin fish on your car? I find your assessment of risks to be a bit inaccurate.

PZ, would it be evil, un-American, unpatriotic, and indefensible for me to suggest that it should be culturally unacceptible to mock Jews, blacks, or gays in this country? I'm not saying, "should we mock them", I'm saying, "would you be outraged if someone suggested that we should not mock them?" If so then I can find thousands of leftist/progressives for you to be outraged at.

Cauldron, if Malkin's "normal pattern" is to claim that something is a fraud and then never acknowledge when it is proven otherwise, you should be able to find an example. The only time I can think of when she _suspected_ something was a fraud and it turned out not to be one (the letter in the Senate about Terri Schiavo), she prominently said so on her blog, both in a new post and in an update to the original post.

You guys really should read some conservative blogs. You just keep spreading stories among yourselves and never enage in any activity that might possibly falsify them, leaving a lot of false stories running around.

#52942: — 12/08  at  01:23 PM
Harry,
I tried to e-mail, but it got returned. I would appreciate it if you could point me toward the facts of the Lapchick case. The only accounts I've ever heard about it were from you and a racist on a sports MB who spouted off a complete different set of facts (i.e. Lapchick had been stabbed, 'KKK' had been carved into his stomach, and the doctor who examined him thought the wounds were self-inflicted...the poster also referenced unnamed experts who agreed with the doctor in question).

#52943: — 12/08  at  01:25 PM

#52928: BronzeDog — 12/08 at 12:31 PM
Any idea is fair game for mockery.

I think we should mock the idea that any idea is fair game for mockery. After all, it wouldn't be fair to mock squid.

#52944: MJS — 12/08  at  01:26 PM
When a so-called Christian sends young men and women from the United States off to kill in a foreign country, a country that did not attack the States, that qualifies as mocking Christianity.

When a religious leader pounds the pulpit and disparages gays or secularists or what-have-you-willy-nilly, depicting our neighbors and fellow-taxpayers as living in sin or as being hell-bound, that is mocking their titular leader's directive to forget about the mote in the other's eye and to pluck the beam from one's own.

What we do to the least of humanity we do to all: isn't the very existence of GWB as President a mockery of all the healing, loving and forgiving teachings of their god?

Christians are the ones mocking Christianity, by acts of commission and omission. They are the ones who kill their religion. Jesus wept and then went to lunch.

Happy Holidays!

+++

#52950: — 12/08  at  01:44 PM
I'm with Nat--generalizations suck...except that one.

How many of you who have this generalized vitriol against fundamentalist Christians have known and cared for some of them? My two college roommates, two of my best friends, were "fundies", as were their whole families. Really good people. Took this atheist materialist into their homes, broke bread and turkey with him. I can't say they're all thugs or come close to that sentiment.

And for those who will jump up and say, "Oh, but they all abet thuggery by their tacit approval or inaction," tell me what you do to stop the wrongs we see around us every day. Have you bought clothes lately? Did you see where it was manufactured, and by whose hands? We all fail ourselves, we all look the other way. We should strive to do better, but don't be so sure of your moral superiority while you're at it.

#52952: Foyle — 12/08  at  01:57 PM
Since I've been called out as a "right winger" by Orac, I guess I can comment.

If you read my initial post on the Mirecki attack, I was pretty angry about it. Angry that anyone would be stupid enough to do something like this. I said I was all for these people getting the maximum the law allowed and that if they were Christians their pastor should accept responsibilty for failing to get across to these two morons that this is unacceptable.

Since then the story has gotten a little fuzzy. I honestly can't understand how the Professor could forget where the attack occured just minutes afterwards. I don't understand why he waited 20 minutes to call the police. I don't understand why he refuses to talk to the AP about the incident. I don't understand why he got out of his truck at 6:20AM when the sun didn't rise until after 7AM. Prof. Mirecki is clearly a bright man. This does not seem like something a bright man does.

Bottom line, if he's telling the truth then the two individuals will probably be caught and we'll see who they are and what they were about. If so, I'll be sure to correct the record and let the chips fall where they may. Until then, the whole thing is just too weird and too convenient to be taken at face value.

#52953: — 12/08  at  01:58 PM
OK, yorktank, I've sent you an email directing you to the guy who broke the story. I know what I'm talking about; we sat at adjacent desks when he broke it. He was a friend of Lapchick's and it was painful for him to do it. We talked about it a lot.

Doc, I know an instance when Malkin wrote crap and refused to acknowledge the correction.

The corrections are in my review of her 'In Defense of Internment,' and I can send you a copy if you want.

She said she'd post it on her site. Then she saw it. Silence since then.

To be perfectly fair, an antiMalkin site said it would post it, too, and then backed down. I had something in it unpleasant for all political persuasions.

#52956: — 12/08  at  02:11 PM

Cauldron, if Malkin's "normal pattern" is to claim that something is a fraud and then never acknowledge when it is proven otherwise, you should be able to find an example. The only time I can think of when she _suspected_ something was a fraud and it turned out not to be one (the letter in the Senate about Terri Schiavo), she prominently said so on her blog, both in a new post and in an update to the original post.

Here's a start:

http://www.isthatlegal.org/archives/2005/09/michelle_malkin.html

#52957: — 12/08  at  02:11 PM
As long as we're engaging in wild theories about faking health problems, does anyone else find it odd that two of the most key players in "intelligent design" are conveniently unavailable to discuss the garbage which they spawn and/or promote???

I'm talking about ultramillionaire, anti-science anti-gay bigot Howie Ahmansen, who allegedly "suffers" from Tourette's syndrome and doesn't give interviews.

And Phil Johnson, the AIDs-denying who allegedly has had a couple strokes.

But I haven't seen the hospital records.

We need to consider whether these leaders are kept from entering the fray by their disciples out of fear that their stupidity and corrupt motivations will be revealed for all to see.

I'll bet that Howie Ahmansen doesn't have Tourettes. My guess is that he just can't talk about anything for more than five minutes without going off on how he wants to amend the Constitution so it defers to the Bible in all matters.

#52959: — 12/08  at  02:18 PM
"Cauldron, if Malkin's "normal pattern" is to claim that something is a fraud and then never acknowledge when it is proven otherwise, you should be able to find an example. The only time I can think of when she _suspected_ something was a fraud and it turned out not to be one"

Malkin is a parasite on society and a prime example of the sort of human scum that is responsible for the absurdly low levels at which we public discourse is conducted in this country. She's just another plastic figure cut from the same shitstained Port-a-Potty that brought us Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh.

Why would anyone spend two seconds defending Malkin from any charge made against her? She's a worthless human being.

#52960: — 12/08  at  02:19 PM

Cauldron, if Malkin's "normal pattern" is to claim that something is a fraud and then never acknowledge when it is proven otherwise, you should be able to find an example. The only time I can think of when she _suspected_ something was a fraud and it turned out not to be one (the letter in the Senate about Terri Schiavo), she prominently said so on her blog, both in a new post and in an update to the original post.

I almost forgot, loveable old Michelle is the same person who started the 'rumor' that John Kerry's wounds in Vietnam were self-inflicted, that he shot himself just to get his Purple Heart.

This seems fall safely into the Malkinesque pattern of 'make shit up for political advantage'. Tho I suppose you might counter that it was 'never disproven'.

I'm supposed to spend MORE time on websites that propagate shit like this? Good lord, why should I punish myself like that?

#52962: — 12/08  at  02:21 PM
John Altevogt is hardly an example of civilized discourse:

From the March 30, 2005 Lawrence Journal World:

'John Altevogt, a conservative GOP activist from Wyandotte County, also welcomed Coulter.

"Ann Coulter is logical, rational and an independent thinker," he said. "In essence, everything the left hates in their womenfolk."

"I've come to find I like liberals a lot more," Coulter said early in her speech. "They're kind of cute when they're cold, shivering and afraid."'

Presumably, his intemperate comments will now be thoroughly disavowed by the Kansas legislators, right?

#52963: — 12/08  at  02:28 PM
I've always sort of thought of Ann Coulter as Julius Streicher reincarnated as a blond American bulimic.

#52965: — 12/08  at  02:35 PM
The only time I can think of when she _suspected_ something was a fraud and it turned out not to be one (the letter in the Senate about Terri Schiavo), she prominently said so on her blog, both in a new post and in an update to the original post.

I think another great example of her claiming something is a fraud is the whole John Kerry Swiftboat thing.

#52968: — 12/08  at  02:45 PM
And for those who will jump up and say, "Oh, but they all abet thuggery by their tacit approval or inaction," tell me what you do to stop the wrongs we see around us every day. Have you bought clothes lately? Did you see where it was manufactured, and by whose hands? We all fail ourselves, we all look the other way. We should strive to do better, but don't be so sure of your moral superiority while you're at it.

No one is demanding that the Fundies be perfect human beings but time and time again people like Robertson and Dobson make inflammatory remarks and are rarely if ever called out for them by the fundie community.

And in my opinion, one of the strongest evidences that the Fundie community is populated by whacko thugs is the runnaway success of the "Left Behind" series - books that are filled with racial, religious hatred and violent imagery. So it's not that the fundies aren't speaking out against people like Robertson and LaHaye but they are lapping up the radical messages that these people expouse.
Yes there are certainly some good Fundies but a very large chunk of them are loony radicals.

Another big about Malikan; I've seen here a few times of O'Reily's show and remember he stating that Cindy Sheehan's son would be disgraced by his mother. She's not accusing people of fraud but she is implying that she knew Cindy's son better than his own mother did. Malikan is a scumbag like Coulter. The two of them just blow hot air and inflamatory remarks which are based on precious little hard evidence or statistics.

#52973: — 12/08  at  03:18 PM
Bayesian,

Would it be okay to mock turtle soup for dinner?

#52979: — 12/08  at  03:55 PM
Well, I'd like to save 'thug' for people, who, you know, attack strangers by the side of the road.

If we start calling people who say unpleasant things thugs, then I will be called a thug. I could stand it, but I worry about Ward Churchill's tender ego if this standard should actually be established at pharyngula.

#52982: — 12/08  at  04:11 PM
I'm not a Republican, I'm not a conservative, I'm not a Christian, I definitely don't think much of Malkin or the guy who does her writing, but I have to admit when I heard about Mirecki getting beaten up I had a gut feeling that it might be kinda sketchy.

I guess I'll have to hope he did get beaten up (and that the perps are caught), because if he faked it he won't have done any favors for the teaching of science.

#52985: — 12/08  at  04:19 PM
guess I'll have to hope he did get beaten up (and that the perps are caught), because if he faked it he won't have done any favors for the teaching of science.

'Twould deserve the usual brand of mockery and derision, no doubt.

But I still find it interesting that most wingnuts think it's a hoax. Hm. Which side was caught making bald-faced lies in court?

#52988: — 12/08  at  04:48 PM
If the attack turns out to be a hoax, I suggest we give Mirecki a tongue-lashing worse than those we give Creationists.

If it's real, we proceed as usual.

Back on the topic of mockery: Sometimes the best thing for shooting down silly ideas is a deep belly laugh. I'm not about to take that item out of my arsenal. (I should take it out and use it more often.)