How to profit from your own sleaziness

The entertainment industry leads the way in turning exploitation into money by adding another layer of exploitation. This sounds like the worst television show idea ever.

Disgraced CBS anchor Charlie Rose is being slated to star in a show where he’ll interview other high-profile men who have also been toppled by #MeToo scandals.

Among the people Rose would interview are Matt Lauer, Louis C.K., and Mario Batali. They intend to use their own notoriety as harassers to drive an “entertainment” program where they’ll schmooze with each other and talk about how unjustly they were treated and how they ought to be given a second chance. I suspect their accusers will not get a moment in the limelight, and that their accusations won’t even be discussed.

There’s a really good piece by Lindsay Zoladz on these efforts to reward very bad men with an unearned redemption, as if they haven’t been soaking in their ill-gotten rewards already.

But in what felt like some sort of quota for needlessly sympathetic stories about odious men, the very same issue of The Hollywood Reporter in which Miller’s C.K. story was published also contained a lengthy, much-criticized feature that asks, in the gently curious tone usually used when one wonders where a beloved child star is now, “What Happened to Charlie Rose?” (What happened to Charlie Rose, you’ll remember, was that 17 women said he’d committed sexual harassment and misconduct, including groping, making unwanted sexual advances, and “walking around naked in front of colleagues who were required to work at one of his New York homes.”) In the months since the accounts, if you were wondering, Rose has mostly spent his time reading and ordering takeout in Bellport, Long Island, where he owns a waterfront home valued somewhere between $4 million and $6 million. In case you would like more information about the other multimillion-dollar homes the accused sexual predator owns, in Manhattan, Washington, D.C., and North Carolina, The Hollywood Reporter printed fawningly descriptive blurbs about each of them at the end of the story.

So brace yourself. These nasty men are plotting their comebacks, and there are plenty of enablers in the upper echelons who want to give it to them.

“The consensus is that while his behavior was clearly wrong it was not at the level of a Harvey Weinstein, James Toback, or Bill Cosby,” Miller wrote in his piece about Louis C.K., before quoting a flippant and painfully unfunny joke that the comic Gilbert Gottfried made about the “different levels of misbehavior” enacted by these men. Sure. I am not denying that there are different levels of sexual misconduct — and, like the New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, I am sick of people assuming that feminists are inherently denying or unable to see that. As Tolentino wrote in January in an excellent piece about the inevitability of the #MeToo backlash, it is incredibly frustrating when people are more willing to see nuance on the side of the accused than the vocally critical. And yet it is crucial that we also see the way that the forgiveness of a “lesser” predator paves the way for one “at the level” of Weinstein, Toback, or Cosby to be redeemed. To welcome someone like C.K. or Batali back into the fold not six months after these accusations broke is to intimidate other victims from speaking out, because it will make them think their stories don’t matter, or that the power granted to them by the #MeToo movement was just a temporary spell. To write about them sympathetically, to give them more ink than the names and achievements of their accusers, to run headlines suggesting a “likely” comeback, is to participate in the very culture that allowed these men to behave badly in the first place. It is a failure to imagine a different story, a better world.

C.K., Batali, Lauer, and Rose are all rich, having profited for years off a system that protected them from accusations leveled by people with less money and power. They don’t need to rush back to work. They can afford early retirement or lengthy public hiatuses ensconced in one of their multiple properties. And fans who miss their work and are eager for a “comeback” can buck up and let themselves be sated by many alternatives: In the streaming age, women who create the kind of dark, self-loathing, confessional comedy preferred by C.K. are currently thriving; lord knows people can find other recipes for marinara sauce or cinnamon rolls. But to demand that these men return to the spotlight too early, or in some cases at all, is to risk a cascading effect that will undo the necessary work of the #MeToo movement and to intimidate victims back into silence. Be warned: After Louis, le déluge.

How to deal with a Shermer attack

It could happen at any time. People are still inviting Shermer to give talks at various events, despite his sordid history. He could suddenly show up on your campus! Do not fear, however. One thing we know about the Shermer is that he’s toothless. He’ll bluster and threaten, but he’ll back down, just as he did in his threats to Santa Barbara City College and their campus newspaper, The Channels.

Following threats to pursue legal action against The Channels, Professor Raeanne Napoleon, and City College as a whole, Dr. Michael Shermer announced in an email Saturday that he was dropping his case.

Although we have an excellent case that I was defamed, it is not worth the time and cost pursuing legal recourse for what is (hopefully) an inconsequential incident, Shermer wrote in his final letter regarding the matter. The letter was circulated on campus email by instructor Mark McIntire.

This is what he always does. He tries to silence people who mention the ugly things he has done with legal intimidation, and when that doesn’t work, he wilts. So don’t let it work! Stand strong!

His threats are empty. The Channels did stand strong.

The Channels maintained its position that the article was not libelous, and again decided to ignore the request to remove it from the website. The editors agreed at this point, however, to postpone publishing any more articles related to Shermer.

“It seemed apparent that there was no case of libel here,” said Aidan Anderson, the Editor-in-Chief of The Channels. “Because of that, we didn’t feel it was necessary to respond to the letter at all, let alone fulfill the demands.”

On April 4, Shermer sent a second Cease and Desist to Wallace and Beebe, listing the same demands, but with an extended deadline of 5 p.m. April 12. This time, Anderson responded to the lawyer via email on behalf of Wallace and The Channels.

He wrote that The Channels would not take down the article, and instead invited Shermer to submit a Letter to the Editor. In that letter—which The Channels would publish—Shermer could outline his objections with the article. Shermer never responded.

I guess Shermer’s lawyer agreed. I suspect Shermer’s lawyer has a stack of form letters at hand, ready to go, whenever he gets a phone call: “Who are you mad at today, Michael?”

But also notice that his complaints were effective: “The editors agreed at this point, however, to postpone publishing any more articles related to Shermer.” That’s exactly what he wanted, and he got it.

You should read Shermer’s surrender. It’s pitiful. One of his major complaints is that it was stated that he was investigated by the police, and he quotes his accuser to show…that that was…NOT true?

The newspaper did not fact check the claims nor did they even offer me a chance to respond. That was bad enough, but Napoleon did not simply repeat lies told about me in these blogs, she added a new one:

Although the police did not bring formal charges against him, there have been many witnesses that have publicly corroborated the stories of the victims.

What police? Where? When? Never in my life have I been investigated by the police—or any law enforcement agency—for anything anytime anywhere.

You will not be surprised at his other defense. It was Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed has a solid news division that is quite distinct from their goofy listicles and quizzes section — I think we can guess which one brings in more ad revenue — so it has become de rigeur for the pseudoskeptics to dismiss any uncomfortable facts that the news division brings up by pretending it’s just another bit of clickbait. Read critically, people.

Fact Checking. That’s all it takes to debunk Alternative Facts and Fake News like this, which is why the way The Channels newspaper handled this issue is so inexcusable. There is a reason why no newspaper or print publication or journalistic source of any repute has ever published anything about the allegations against me: they fact check. The author of the BuzzFeed article that launched this whole affair four years ago is a regular contributor to The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. There’s a reason he ended up publishing it on a click-bait site that features such articles as “Butt Facts That Will Surprise You” and “Can We Guess Your Favorite Sex Position?”

Yeah, and the Los Angeles Times still publishes horoscopes, and the New York Times publishes David Brooks (I’ll leave you to decide which is more appalling.)

There’s a reason why I am still a professor at Chapman University, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, a regular public speaker at colleges and universities around the country, and my books are published by one of the most respectable book publishers in the world: they fact checked the allegations against me and dismissed them. Social justice activists whose priorities veer far from the truth-value of claims and allegations have actively tried to get me fired and failed. Why? Fact checking.

That is incorrect. Before I posted any accusations against him, the first thing I did was check the facts — they’re pretty much unassailable. Multiple women stepped forward to complain about his creepy behavior. The reason is not fact checking at all, it’s more like fact ignoring that permits him to get away with it. There are two real reasons he still gets that positive attention:

  1. His chosen domain is the skeptic movement, which you may have noticed has a sexual assault and harassment problem. Major figures in that movement have a history of turning a blind eye to harassment problems. This is the kind of response he gets from skeptic leaders:

    “Shermer has been a bad boy on occasion — I do know that,” Randi told me. “I have told him that if I get many more complaints from people I have reason to believe, that I am going to have to limit his attendance at the conference.

    “His reply,” Randi continued, “is he had a bit too much to drink and he doesn’t remember. I don’t know — I’ve never been drunk in my life. It’s an unfortunate thing … I haven’t seen him doing that. But I get the word from people in the organization that he has to be under better control. If he had gotten violent, I’d have him out of there immediately. I’ve just heard that he misbehaved himself with the women, which I guess is what men do when they are drunk.”

    He only misbehaves himself with women. Well, that’s alright then!

  2. The other reason, the biggest reason, is that he is goddamned litigious. He is litigious as fuck. If you listen to his accusers, he will cheerfully sic a lawyer on you.

I just want you all to know that the power of #1 is fading, as more of these enablers in the movement find themselves out of power. And he’s effectively weakening his main tool, #2, because he threatens but backs down. He has to back down, because if he followed through he’d find himself exposed in the court of public opinion.

Your stereotypes are not helpful

Fascinating. My daughter is a graduate student in computer science at the University of Colorado. I wonder if Colorado is just like Maryland, where the TA handbook has different advice depending on your sex?

Advice to male TAs, in summary: Take charge and pay special attention to your male students, and watch out for the female students, who may be trying to get into your pants for a better grade.

Advice to female TAs, in summary: Be patient and friendly with students, and face it, people aren’t going to regard you as a professional in your career anyway.

Both sets of advice look terrible.

I don’t think my daughter is the type to put up with much nonsense, and she’s got more professional experience than any of her students, or many of her peers. Maybe UMD ought to rethink the message they’re sending here?

Fortunately, UMD recognizes the problem and has deleted the advice.

Have you ever wondered why the #MeToo movement hasn’t caught up with Michael Shermer?

I can tell you why: it’s because he bullies people, is litigious, and does his best to make life miserable for anyone who squeaks. I publicized a woman’s first person account of how he took advantage of her at a conference — she was terrified that he’d go after her and he did — and he responded by encouraging conference organizers to blackball me, and threw a lawsuit at me (he later backed down, since it was just going to be a parade of witnesses describing his deplorable behavior).

That turns out to be a common reaction on his part.

Shermer spoke at a west coast college lately, and one faculty member objected, sharing articles others had written about his behavior to the college’s in-house e-mail list. Shermer went ballistic. He sent a long, angry email to the professor; had another person who writes for his magazine contact them; made legal threats; defamed them (confirmed by a lawyer); sent multiple aggressive emails to the campus email list; blustered as he does, and eventually backed down on his threats of a lawsuit, after compelling my correspondent to hire a lawyer to deal with all the sabre-rattling. A portion of their email to me:

Shermer was a recent campus speaker at my college and after I shared articles about the allegations against him, I received legal threats from him (among other things in a 10 paragraph long email), intimidation from someone that writes for his magazine, I had to retain a lawyer, all while my college administration knew it all has been happening and stayed quiet (and then sent a late night email saying “let’s not get distracted…” after the campus faculty and staff generated a 8k gofundme account so I could afford a lawyer, but I’ve digressed…). This Saturday Shermer sent his second all-campus horrible email defaming me for the second time and said even though he has a “really good case against me” (he doesn’t) he’s decided to not sue me (when really his lawyers probably told him there is no case after my lawyer responded twice). There’s a million more details that I’m leaving out for now.

Now doesn’t that sound familiar? It’s what he did to me, except, at least, he didn’t spam my campus email server with his diatribes. This is how he always reacts, rushing to silence others’ free speech.

Somehow, though, those alt-right/right wing crusaders for “FREE SPEECH” never get around to criticizing their libertarian hero. I don’t know why, other than that it’s entirely clear that they’re actually interested in suppressing some free speech…just not their own. Another email from my correspondent:

I guess he’s shut down now, as he sent a second letter to my campus (that was sent all campus for the second time by a problematic adjunct faculty member who is acting like Shermer’s lap dog), but what bugs me is he gets to do this over and over again to people. He sent me two cease desists from his attorneys. Luckily my attorney shut it down both times. I knew he had no case from her go, as all I did was share articles written years ago with my campus.

His first letter that went all-campus (literally everyone I work with!) was 10 paragraphs of vitriol where he threatened to have a restraining order against me and his wife was going to be on “the look out for me”. He defamed me in it (actually defamed me, as confirmed by my lawyer).

Why does Scientific American employ such an asshole? As you know best, he’s been accused of this stuff multiple times by multiple people and even had a title ix investigation on him at Chapman….and he’s uses heavy handed letters to silence people. I was hoping someone would write an article about his tactics. Is that not interesting in the wake of the me too movement to see how people like him operate to silence people? Perhaps you have grown tired of him, but maybe you know someone in your circle that wants to pursue this further? After living through his reign of bullshit of a month, there’s a level of Justice I haven’t felt by him getting the last word on my campus AGAIN with his nonsense with “I’ve decided not to sue.” (When he had no case).

I’ve also read some of the responses of his defenders on campus. Some are shocked and regretful — they’ve been using his articles in classes for years and never heard about any of this (Why haven’t they? Because Shermer launches lawyers at anyone who mentions it). Others flat out lied, saying that all of the accusations against him had been formally debunked. That is flatly untrue.

My correspondent was willing to publicly identify themselves, and it was my decision to keep them anonymous for now — although, at least, there’s enough information in this post that Shermer could figure out who his accuser is. Maybe. It could be there are so many of them he can’t be sure. But they did ask that I include one additional comment — they aren’t going to back down from his bullying behavior.

These horrible attacks by Shermer are intentionally hurtful and you can add mine to the voices objecting to this treatment.

I also have to repeat their question. Why does Scientific American employ such an asshole? It’s not as if he’s even producing competent articles, as has been noted yet again recently.

If only she’d said “no” 91 times…

It’s unbelievable what we men can get away with. Here’s an account of an ongoing trial in which a naval officer is accused of raping a junior officer.

The junior officer testified that Neuhart forced his way into her home and attacked her, only stopping when her screams alerted a neighbor. Neuhart ran out a back door and was caught by police after he fell and broke a leg.

Forces his way into a home, attacks a woman who screams so loudly a neighbor shows up, and then runs away. This is an open and shut case so far, right?

During the trial both sides acknowledged that the woman was intoxicated after drinking heavily with Neuhart earlier at a hotel bar. Hotel surveillance video showed her hugging and kissing him. They drove back to her home in a limousine.

Jurors heard video from Neuhart’s cellphone in which she screams at him to leave and tells him some 90 times to stop trying to have sex with her.

They’ve got an audio recording of the woman clearly saying “NO!” 90 times? That she was drunk and affectionate earlier shouldn’t matter at all.

In case you’re wondering how they came to have a recording sufficiently detailed that they could count how often she told him to stop, this is the unbelievable part — the rapist gave it to them. He thought it was exonerating evidence.

Neuhart testified that the woman consented to going home and having sex with him. He said he recorded part of their encounter in case the woman later alleged rape.

Our foreign enemies will quail before the brilliance of our naval commanders. He’s like Horatio Hornblower made flesh.

If your jaw is hanging open in disbelief at this guy, just leave it there, maybe grab it with one hand to keep it from falling off: the jury was deadlocked. This was declared a mistrial.

People still insist there is no such thing as rape culture.

Uh-oh. This might just turn everyone gay.

It’s the Straight Pride pin. I am horrified by how boring it is.

This is supposed to represent my sexual orientation? It just makes me look back on my life with regret. Put it away. Honestly, I have no problem with being a straight married man, I just think the symbol for my lifestyle ought to communicate at least a little joy and happiness and enthusiasm, rather than this tepid blandness.

It doesn’t even have any squid on it. What is the point?

The pay gap is painfully real

How about this for a revealing graphic? It’s a plot of average salaries for biology majors in a range of occupations, from airline pilots on the left (almost entirely male) to dental hygienists on the right (mostly female), and the gray dots and pink dots connected by lines show the relative salaries for men and women in the same job. Yikes — it turns out that being a gray dot means you get paid more money, no matter whether it’s a “female” job, or a “male” job.

I had to look hard to find exceptions to that rule. Women who are dishwashers or bank tellers get paid slightly more than their male counterparts. I wonder how much they use that biology degree in those jobs?

It’s a chicken-and-egg problem, says Michelle Ball, a career counselor at the University of Virginia. “Do teachers get paid less because the workforce is largely female, or is it that education is just underfunded and women are willing to go into it anyway?” she asked.

Even in such female-dominated professions as nursing or teaching, men are paid more. And the pay gap is even more severe for women of color: While college-educated white women earn only 55 percent of what college-educated white men do, college-educated non-white women earn even less.

I think we can answer that question from the graph: the proportions of men and women in a workforce doesn’t seem to matter at all, women will get paid less. How much less, and how badly screwed are people of color?

How can we change this? One cause of the difference is that the labor of raising a family falls almost entirely on women’s shoulders. We could fix that by changing the culture and having men share more of that labor (sheeyah, right), or employers could recognize that and adjust their practices to take it into account.

The labor of raising a family, then, is one of the biggest sources of divergent career paths for women and men who attain the same degrees. A recent U.K. study found that universities with generous maternity leave policies employed twice the number of women professors as those without, and a 2009 Center for Work-Life Policy survey found that among college-educated women who had left their careers, 69 percent said that they wouldn’t have done so if their companies had offered more flexible work options.

There are a whole lot of smart, ambitious women graduating from our biology program every year. Maybe employers should think more about what it takes to attract the best and brightest?

First step in writing about others is self-awareness

Check out this thread. A man tries to prove that he can write good woman characters, and all of his writing samples are like cheesy porn.

Then it descends into parody as the women on the thread are challenged to “describe yourself like a male author would”.

So I thought about how a male author would describe me, and given my experience with the nastier side of the internet, it was easy: they would just write “cuck”.

I let my kids watch Ren & Stimpy!

And I even got a laugh out of watching it, too. Now I learn that the creator, John Kricfalusi, was a sick, manipulative pedophile. He actually groomed a couple of young fans, encouraging them to be animators, then brought them out to work with him, and at least one of them, he had live with him. He seemed to regard young girls and women as his trophies.

Sometime between 1998 and 2000, Mora went to a party at Kricfalusi’s house that has bothered him for years. He remembered Byrd, who was no older than 20, was drunk and seemed to be drifting in and out of consciousness when Kricfalusi called Mora over to him. “And then he pulled out these Polaroids of Robyn basically — how can you say it? — going down on him. … He’s like, ‘What do you think of that?’”

Byrd doesn’t remember Kricfalusi taking explicit photos of her; she also wasn’t aware, she said, that he showed explicit photos of her to other people. But Wyatt recounted an interaction with his then-boss that was similar to Mora’s. He said that at a party at Kricfalusi’s house between 1999 and 2002, Kricfalusi showed him “a stack of Polaroids” of Kricfalusi and Byrd having sex. He never mentioned the photographs to Byrd, nor did he confront Kricfalusi about the interaction. During another party at Kricfalusi’s house, Swarr said the artist pulled out a binder of photos that showed Byrd naked in his pool. “It was gross,” Swarr said. Affecting a gruff voice when he spoke as Kricfalusi, Swarr recalled, “He was like, ‘Oh, you like that?’ I was like, ‘No!’”

He encouraged this relationship when he was in his late 30s and 40s, when when the girl was 13 or 14.

It’s distressing that he was surrounded in his working relationship with this team of animators, and they knew he was carrying on with these teenage girls, and he was bragging about the sexual nature of the relationship (which would not be OK, even if they were his age), and no one spoke out. No one brought this to the attention of authorities. He was making cartoons for a children’s network, and no one thought this was important enough to mention anywhere.

His lawyer has made a statement now, though.

The 1990s were a time of mental and emotional fragility for Mr. Kricfalusi, especially after losing Ren and Stimpy, his most prized creation. For a brief time, 25 years ago, he had a 16-year-old girlfriend. Over the years John struggled with what were eventually diagnosed mental illnesses in 2008. To that point, for nearly three decades he had relied primarily on alcohol to self-medicate. Since that time he has worked feverishly on his mental health issues, and has been successful in stabilizing his life over the last decade. This achievement has allowed John the opportunity to grow and mature in ways he’d never had a chance at before.

I guess we’re supposed to feel sorry for him.

I guess I oppose them in everything

Answers in Genesis is advertising a patriarchy conference this summer. In their promotion, they obligingly list all the values they endorse, which I include below.

[Unfortunately, there was one important word that they consistently misspell — it’s a common failure among fundagelicals, where they even misspell it in the names of their organizations, like Focus on the Patriarchy and the Patriarchy Research Council. I’ve taken the liberty of fixing that for them here.]

Gay “Marriage” Actually, there’s no such thing as same-sex “marriage.” Marriage is a Christian institution God created when he made the first man and woman, Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:24). So-called gay (or same-sex) “marriage” is an attack on the patriarchy God instituted in Genesis.

Gender Issues Almost daily we read news stories about transgender controversies, sex-change operations, restroom-gender issues, and the like. This is all an attack on the basis of the patriarchy structure God designed and ordained in Genesis when he created the first man and woman—the first male and female (Genesis 1:27).

Feminism Much of the feminist movement pushes an idea of female superiority. When God created Adam and Eve, he created them in his image with equal value. God gave different roles to husband and wife—they are to submit to each other as they submit to God and the roles he ordained (Ephesians 5; Genesis 3:16, 17).

Abortion One of the primary reasons for marriage is to produce godly offspring (Malachi 2:15; Genesis 1:28). Not only is abortion the murder of a human being made in God’s image, but the act is destructive to the purpose of marriage and the patriarchy as ordained by God.

Evolution The teaching of molecules-to-man evolution and millions of years has sadly resulted in countless young people doubting the Word of God (including its teachings about the patriarchy) and eventually leaving the church. AiG published an eye-opening study of this youth exodus in my co-authored book Already Gone.

It’s remarkable how AiG’s views are consistently 180° reversals of my own. But then that’s hardly surprising when you realize that all of my opinions are, apparently, defined for my by Satan.

The devil knows that if he can get one generation to doubt and disbelieve God’s Word starting in Genesis, he can destroy one of the main purposes of the patriarchy: to pass on a spiritual legacy to the next generation and to the world.

It’s kind of an ugly legacy, you know. Maybe we should smash the patriarchy to prevent it from infecting another generation.

By the way, if you want to be indoctrinated in AiG’s regressive views (and that of the organization they’re partnering with for this conference, PatriarchyLife), it’ll only cost you $250, or $500 for a family of 3 ($40 for each additional child). Don’t complain! It’s cheaper than Disneyland, which is a perfectly cromulent comparison!