What are they thinking? You may have heard that Bill Dembski commissioned and posted to his website for kids a very silly flash animation mocking Judge Jones and the words of his decision—it uses images of various evolution supporters to trigger Jones to recite criticisms of ID in a high-pitched voice, with grunts and fart sounds and other such classy touches. Now we learn that Dembski himself did the voice-overs. This was all absurd enough, but here’s the icing on the cake: Dembski was so proud of this effort, and so convinced that it was sufficiently amusing that everyone represented in the animation would enjoy it, that he sent out a letter asking those same evolution supporters for a “high res jpg” so they could be included, and asking Judge Jones to record his voice for the miserable little sneer.
Richard Dawkins has posted the letter. It’s unbelievably oblivious.
If they ever make a movie of the Dover trial, I think they have to get Larry the Cable Guy to play William Dembski.
Wait! There’s more!
In Richard Dawkins’ reply to that tripe, he wrote, “Anybody who resorts to tactics of desperation like this has to be a real loser.” This has prompted that master of decorum, DaveScot, to reply by calling Dawkins a “girly man”.
Now we have a real problem. For the movie, where are we going to find someone to play DaveScot? We need someone able to do crude and stupid even more thickly than Larry, and with even less sympathy.
Good grief, it’s like Dembski is in a contest to demonstrate how stupid he can be (I’m now thinking Jim Carrey must play him in the movie). He has just announced that there’s a new version…without the fart sounds.
The Rembrandt of flash animation and I are working to enhance “The Judge Jones School of Law.” As a first step we have made the animation less offensive to more refined sensibilities. All the overt flatulence has therefore been removed. Go to www.overwhelmingevidence.com for the less objectional version of this animation (we are keeping the original, however, so that when the history of evolution’s demise is written, all versions of this animation will be available to historians).
These guys are insane.
Git-R-Done!
That is just silly. Even with the fart noises and the high pitched voice the animation is unable to make fun of what Judge Jones said.
It’s not even funny as evidence of the IDiots desperate attempt at criticisizing the Dover trial, it’s just sad.
what the hell was that suppose to be?
After listening to Dembski’s speeded-up voice on the animation mocking Judge Jones, I thought it sounded familiar. It’s the same as the voice in Panda-monium, the Invaders-like game on the Uncommon Descent website, isn’t it? The funny thing about that game: The “DembskiDozer” that ostensibly defends Intelligent Design from the onslaught of anti-ID spouting pandas always loses, just like in real life.
I saw Larry The Cable Guy on 60 Minutes last night. Doubtful he could play either Dembski or Scot, because he is very likable.
It’s a toughie. Many of the more unlikable character actors come across as mean, but not dumb. And a lot of the dumb ones come across as likable.
Gregory Itzin, or maybe Cartman from South Park?
Joe Don Baker could probably pull it off.
Carrot Top?
Gilbert Godfrey?
Bobcat Goldthwait?
At least one of the ID’ists on DaveScots blog got some real insight:
“I feel that this episode may not advance our cause.”
how about Elmer Fudd?
In the meantime, however, please enlighten me.
What exactly is ‘stereotypical redneck stupid’.
How is this different from ‘stereotypical nigro stupid’.
Then is that different from ‘stereotypical jew stupid’.
I wonder then if there is such a thing as ‘stereotypical faggot stupid’.
And how much these have in common with plain old ‘stereotypical mongoloid drooling retard stupid’.
and finally how much more about you does that say than about the fools you with to insult (and is that insight ‘stereotypical postmodern stupid’).
PZ i’m usually with you but you fumbled that one. Just don’t make a flash animation out of it.
How come a crapanimation on helium still makes sense.
I get that it’s meant to be a puppet joke. But, really, it still pokes more ribs at ID than it does anything else…
I was expecting the selected quotes to be the kind that just sound embarrassing on their own, but it seems instead like he picked the well-reasoned major points of the decision and tried to make them sound juvenile with a combination of fart noises and a drawstring. “Breathtaking inanity” indeed.
I rather liked the video. For some reason the ID people did “us” actually a favour, picking up some of the most important lines in the decision and up them on the net with rather puerile animation.
They did an attempt of “viral marketing” but I think it will bite them in the ankle. People are smart enough to figure out viral marketing when they see it (remember http://alliwantforxmasisapsp.com). On the other hand, they do a rather nice job summarizing why ID isn’t science and why it shouldn’t be taught in classrooms :P
Erasmus,
You ask, “What exactly is ‘stereotypical redneck stupid’.
How is this different from…”
Well, for starters, you know one when you hear one, and secondly, people choose to behave in ways that identify them as rednecks, but they don’t choose their race or sexual orientation.
What exactly is ‘stereotypical redneck stupid’?
Hermaphroditic deer with seven legs ‘tasty’
Wisconsin hunter bags odd beast with pickup in driveway, eats it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16210496/
courtesy of your neighborhood nucler plant
No one has mentioned the person that best fits the description of “crude and stupid even more thickly than Larry, and with even less sympathy.” the Shrubmeister Himself. G W Bush?
Teutonic referral intended
For the movie, where are we going to find someone to play DaveScot?
One (or both) of the guys from Kenny vs. Spenny.
Richard I assume that you misspoke and that you don’t really believe in such a deterministic biology.
those on the forefront of the culture wars might perhaps trim their pronouncements with a slight tinge of decorum rather than a latent sneer. don’t worry about me, i’m on board. but we all know that the most rational argument doesn’t always win, presentation is key.
and that presentation strikes a chord with the swing voters. i’m all on PZ’s side about fuck religious appeasement, but taking it into this level is a prescription for disappointment.
when those ’round heah have to choose 1) What daddy’s church has always said (but somehow doesn’t seem right) or 2) What these city types say (that seems right) but then call us stupid, which choice seems the most appealing?
here in east tennesse there are regular and frequent attempts to teach creationism in public schools. one winning tactic is that ‘evilutionists’ are city liberals that ain’t from around here. this is not completely true of course, but sound bytes like the ones above make that case harder to make.
it just heightens the divide, and for nothing more than street-theatre low humor attempts that eventually are only self-serving and hurt the cause. stop it.
“What exactly is ‘stereotypical redneck stupid’?
Hermaphroditic deer with seven legs ‘tasty’
Wisconsin hunter bags odd beast with pickup in driveway, eats it.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16210496/”
Well, a true red-neck would’ve tried to have sex with it first.
Well he could of said stereotypical creationist stupid…
but the fart sounds and whatnot drop it a notch below that.
Are rednecks now a group that deserves special respect? Larry the Cable Guys anyone?
That’s an act created by a comedian to MAKE FUN of rednecks and now he has taken it so far he’s their hero.
Dan Whitney before his giterdone act
Should we not use the term stereotypical jock atupid? Stereotypical frat boy stupid?
Notice that PZ himself drew attention to his use of the word “redneck” as stereotypical. So anyone reading this that knows anything about stereotypes knows there’s a good chance, no matter who they are, that they don’t exactly fit the stereotype, the tendancy being to overgeneralize. If someone out there does actually fit the stereotype, then so much the worse for them. So I don’t think PZ has said anything inapporpriate.
For the movie, where are we going to find someone to play DaveScot? We need someone able to do crude and stupid even more thickly than Larry, and with even less sympathy.
Jar-Jar Binks.
PZ: Thanks for posting this thread.
On the subject of casting the role of William Dembski: he may be a trifle old (46), but James Spader would make a pretty good Dembski, projecting that odd combination of academic poseur and frustrated adolescent.
If you want somebody younger (and definitely with a creepy feeling), how about Cilian Murphy, who played Dr. Jonathan Crane in ‘Batman Begins’?
BTW, PZ, you haven’t commented on my suggestion that Beau Bridges be cast in the lead in the inevitable Pharyngula biopic.
Joshingly…SH
AA there are millions of people out there who while referring to themselves as rednecks take umbrage at one who is not in the fold referring to them in this way. My point is not about that but to emphasize that many of these people are the swing voters who we don’t need to alienate.
As I said before, fuck religious appeasement. But this is quite different. It hurts the cause in a way that doesn’t do any justice to anyone. The Judge Jones video is stupid, but it is not redneck stupid. It is plain old garden variety dumbass stupid and I don’t understand how calling it redneck stupid is any more descriptive or enlightening and how it is not making trouble down the road with the very folks we’re trying to reach. I tried to make this point wiht Gary Hurd on PT the other day and he of course completely failed to understand and started rattling off about inbreeding and how Californians were so enlightened. Haven’t I heard that CA has one of the highest frequencies of incest from all those religious loonies? Just goes to show how stupid broad brush thinking is.
Steve_C I think and perhaps you would disagree but I am not advocating ‘special respect’ unless you think that not calling racist epithets is ‘special respect’. And there is a strong ethnic component to what you call ‘rednecks’. I’m saying it hurts the cause.
For a more specific analysis of this see ‘Redneck Manifesto’ by Jim Goad.
I demand George Clooney. Or M. Emmet Walsh.
As the proud son of a whole long line of migrant farm workers, auto mechanics, layabouts, and residents of shanty towns, I think I get to use the term “redneck”, and I do so with some self-awareness. As has already been noted, I used the word “stereotypical” for a reason: to make it clear that the idea that they are stupid is nothing but a stereotype.
“I don’t understand how calling it redneck stupid is any more descriptive or enlightening and how it is not making trouble down the road with the very folks we’re trying to reach. I’m saying it hurts the cause.”
You’re right.
got tired of those stuck up science people.
“I do not measure intelligence by education or knowledge of particular arcane fields (and let’s face it, evolution really is arcane – David Hull once commenced a book review with ‘Evolution is so simple almost anyone can misunderstand it’).”
-John S. Wilkins, (scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts)
Oh my aching sides (and throbbing crotch)! Now there’s a thread ‘explaining’ the ‘motivation’, with what purports to be this comment from William himself:
It has been said here and elsewhere, but needs to be more generally known, that the ACLU’s suggested findings of fact were published on the District Court’s website in November 2005, that any fool could see as soon as the judgment was published that the judge had used them, and that when a judge finds that one side’s suggested findings of fact are, er, fact, the standard procedure is for him to quote them, with such minor editing as seems desirable.
PZ of course I wasn’t maligning your good name… but what about that hurting the cause?
tangentially i am pretty sure that lots of folks (definitely Gary Hurd) DO believe the stereotype. Refer to the PT thread “Pile It On” for his defense (hint: shooting the messenger).
“Dogmatic rampage”? You mean the dogmatic rampage of making a one hour documentary that will never be aired in the US and publishing a book? Good heavens, Dembski must know he’s living in a balsa-wood house with Kleenex walls if he’s afraid of such a brutal “rampage”.
I know we think of creationists as stuck in the past, but I didn’t realise that they do as well. Between the Isaac Newton of information theory and the Rembrandt of Flash animation we’ve got a whole 17th century revival going on.
but what about that hurting the cause? lots of folks … DO believe the stereotype…
They’re afraid of the stereotype! PZ tickled my funny bone this morning. Red Neck central here – Bible Belt, and doesn’t bother me. Having fun poking back.
Lecter: You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you’re not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you Agent Starling? And that accent you’ve tried so desparately to shed? Pure West Virginia. What’s your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of olean? You know how quickly the boys found you… all those tedious sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars…while you could only dream of getting out… getting anywhere… getting all the way to the FBI.
Clarice: You see alot, Doctor.
Is he a advocate of evolution now? His website is overwhelmingevidence.com so he now understands does he? Someone should register noevidence.com and that can be and ID site.
What a great illustration of delusions of grandeur! Thank goodness the original version will still be available for the edification of future historians; losing the original version would be at least as great a loss as the burning of the Library of Alexandria.
Historians, take note: this is a new local minimum [the location of the global minimum has yet to be determined] of the function y = spiralling descent of Dembski.
In case no one has noted it yet, Dumbski is from Chicago… so whatever the source of his stupidity, it has nothing to do with redneckness.
It’s bizarre. Making fun of a judge and the people who beat you in a case followed nationally and then to have the schoolboard members thrown out of office…
Why would he want to bring more attention to it? The judge is a puppet because he accepted the testimony of those opposed to ID?
Dembski is a joke.
Overt flatulence? Does this mean they left in the more subtle flatulence?
Is there such a thing as subtle flatulence?
I made the mistake of reading a few of the posts at overwhelmingevidence.com, and now I have a headache.
The ones to the right of the main column are especially frightening/hilarious – “Junk Astronomy” made me laugh and cringe almost simultaneously. The one right below it was similarly impressive – the misrepresentations of Darwin’s work were so abundant that the author’s silly conclusions were almost beside the point.
Is there such a thing as subtle flatulence?
Silent, but deadly!
… sorry. That was wrong of me. I’ll go to the corner now.
Just don’t light a match on an airplane to try to hide the scent. That results in the embarrassment being spread to the point of getting international publicity.
Rule of thumb I’ve learned: anyone who complains about someone calling someone else a “redneck”, and compares it to calling someone a racial epitath, isn’t a redneck by any stretch of the immagination, probably doesn’t know any, and probably has no connection to them apart from, possibly, an affection for PBR and a penchent for saying “I love country music, but only the old stuff” when they didn’t listen to ANY country music until the hipster intelligensia said it was groovy. Especially if they claim that book-lenghth whine by professional asshole Jim Goad as a source.
And I say that as a native-born stump jumper (Mississippi) living in cracker Georgia. People aren’t “rednecks” like they’re crackers or hillbillies. People act like rednecks when they show their asses in public. Being a redneck is not a good thing to be, though I freely admit you get enough Wild Turkey in me, I’ll certainly give an excellent demonstration of pure redneckism. Hell, I even like Hank Williams, Jr.
But, people do like to pretend they’re victims, too, don’t they.
Anyone else see this as being within shouting distance of incitement to violence?
If they ever make a movie of the Dover trial, I think they have to get Larry the Cable Guy to play William Dembski.
nawww, they wouldn’t bother. Dembski’s part in the actual trial was essentially non-existent; he never testified at all.
I don’t think even Larry the Cable Guy would take an invisible role.
I used to think Dembski was simply in this thing to try to make money with books, like Coulter, but somewhere along the line in his “grand scheme”, he completely lost his mind.
He’s become an object lesson in how cognitive dissonance CAN cause you to go batshit insane.
Anyone else see this as being within shouting distance of incitement to violence?
Posted by: Stephen
Are you saying that someone should report him to the Department of Homeland Security?
Not sure what’s supposed to be redneck about Illinois-born Dembski. I am a redneck, and do not claim him as one of my own. (Nor do I really claim Dan Whitney, the Nebraskan who plays the character ‘Larry the Cable Guy’.)
I think what is most alarming about things like this animation is that they distract from the issue at hand and move the debate to a different arena. Name-calling, ridicule, and flat-out lying are used to far better effect than they should be. How is it possible that something which is not science can be considered a viable alternative to science by anyone anywhere at all?
Indeed… except that both that one and the one below it were both parodies crossposted from shelleytherepublican.com, and both have now been removed (but not before collecting some approving comments, naturally).
Sadly, it’s very hard to tell the difference.
Oh dear. The more I read about Dembski and friends, the more it reminds me of a certain psychological phenomenen. (This isn’t a particularly good description, but I have no time now to find a better one.)
Apparently, it’s only “different levels of dealing with sin.”
Oh, I forgot a comment I was going to appened on what I posted above: Notice how Douglas can so easily rationalize brutal murders and torture (so long as the Bible says it’s okay), but is deeply offended that Dembski’s slanderous video contained “juvenile” things like fart noises. Quite the warped mind we have there. Murdering Jezebel and Jehu? Sure. Making fart noises in an already tasteless video? Impermissible.
The conversations people have over at Dembski’s blogs are downright bizarre sometimes.
stereotypes r bad….
Matt T you have just made a semantical argument but the point still stands.
Bocephus does rock though. And I have never been anywhere that the hipster intelligentsia even knew who Faron Young or ET or Ray Price or Don Reno even were. Where would such a place be?
Matt T., I guess that depends what you are defining as redneck. Personally, I’d list the most defining traits as strong in-group loyalty, equally strong distrust of out-groups and outside authority, and unashamed rural/working-class cultural tastes. And a large chunk of my family (whose roots are in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas) would quite happily call themselves rednecks. I don’t consider myself one, even though a few of the traits will rear up on occasion. But whatever Dumbski is, it is not a stupid redneck… more like an urban Yankee charlatan trying to make money off the rubes.
Is there any penalty for mocking a judge outside the courtroom? I wonder what Judge Jones thinks of it.