Did this cruel, elaborate prank go too far?

Amazing. A couple of young men set up Katie Hopkins, going to extreme lengths to get her to accept a bogus award — flying her to Prague, booking a fancy hotel, hiring actors to play members of a committee — an award called the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy, and she fell for it. I might fall for such a prank if someone were to pay me to travel, of course, but she was totally thrilled with the award. I was starting to feel sorry for her.

Then she gave her acceptance speech.

Ohmygod.

She deserves every scrap of mockery she gets.

Everyone needs more training to deal with racists

Adam Rutherford is coming out with a new and timely book, How to Argue with a Racist, expected here in the US in early February. I’ve already pre-ordered a copy, and if you’re interested, you can get a taste of the story in The Guardian.

In the 19th century, Darwin’s half-cousin Francis Galton and others tightened their scientific arguments for race though, as Darwin noted, no one could agree on how many races there actually were, the range being between one and 63. Galton was an amazing scientist, and a stunning racist. The most delicious irony about him is that the field he effectively established – human genetics – is the branch of science that has demonstrated unequivocally that race is not biologically meaningful. Modern genetics clearly shows that the way we colloquially define race does not align with the biology that underpins human variation. Instead, race is a cultural taxonomy – a social construct. This doesn’t mean it is invalid or unimportant, nor does it mean that race does not exist. Humans are social animals, and the way we perceive each other is of paramount importance. Race exists because we perceive it.

That’s one message I wish I could get across to all the so-called “scientific” racists. The consensus of real, honest science is that the artificial categories people assign to races don’t exist as biological phenomena. You only find it in the pages of racist ideologues like Charles Murray or hothouse niches on the internet for dishonest cranks like Steve Sailer. Or right-wing think-tanks. Or misinformed YouTubers who got millions of views by parroting bigotry.

I think this book ought to be required reading for journalists and other media spokespeople who seem to be responding to the rise of racism among people with power with nothing but rank credulity and reporting that just echoes the biases without criticism. Maybe the Democratic presidential nominee, whoever it might be, ought to read it to be prepared for debates with our racist president.

A dignified white Christian

Check out these tweets from a resident of Kent, Washington, where I grew up.

One of Kayryakoff’s tweets called Mexicans one of the “ridiculous immature vile cruel and extremely evil cultures that need to be genocided!”

Another called Mormonism “an illegally recognized religion that is covertly operating for the Muslim nation.”

“Jews dont belong in Christian countries what do they not understand?” read one tweet. “I only associate with dignified Christian people & more so focus on white Christian people We are the success in the world!” she tweeted on another occasion.

Would you believe she was a first grade teacher? Would you believe she got her job despite having two misdemeanor battery convictions on her record? That she terrorized her students? OK, I know all my fellow Washingtonians will be unsurprised by one fact: she’s a California transplant.

But get this: she wasn’t fired. She was shuffled out of her school, she was demoted to being a PE teacher (those were always the worst), and reassigned to a different elementary school. She also shut down her Twitter account; maybe she’s on Gab now?

WWII was comprehensible as adaptations of the lineages in question. Christ.

I guess Richard Dawkins has limits on where he’ll allow the Intellectual Dork Web to take him. This is a conversation between Dawkins and Bret Weinstein, from a Pangburn debate a few years ago, where Weinstein rambles insanely about World War II as an exercise in population genetics, as if “German”, “Jew”, and “Russian” are distinct, non-overlapping sets of alleles marching off to replace each other.

…you had the Fatherland effectively raping Mother Russia … what this was was a lineage level phenomenon in which a population [Germans] went after two other populations [Jews and Russians] …understood from the perspective of German genes, vile as these behaviors were, they were completely comprehensible from the level of fitness.

That is nuts. “German genes”…what “German genes” acquired an advantage by murdering their neighbors? This is extreme reductionism assembled on a framework of simplistic and false assumptions. It is embarrassing that a biologist would flaunt his ass this nakedly.

One good thing about it is that at least Richard Dawkins demonstrates some good sense. He looks very uncomfortable during Weinstein’s monolog, and manages to utter a hesitant, mild rebuke of the former Evergreen College professor.

I think nationalism might be an even greater evil than religion. And I’m not sure that it’s actually very helpful to talk about it in Darwinian terms.

It was a net gain for Evergreen to get rid of that guy.

The creationist Paul Nelson reviewed the debate, and sad to say, chose to chide Dawkins for being insufficiently Darwinian…because Nelson seems to share with Weinstein a cartoonish version of evolution. Good work, Weinstein, you’ve got the Discovery Institute on your side.

Now I’m physically incapable of seeing Richard Jewell, because of all the projectile vomiting

Never forget.

Richard Jewell was a security guard at the 1996 Summer Olympics, who discovered pipe bombs that had been planted on the grounds. They were disarmed, he was hailed as a hero, and then people became suspicious and wondered if he had put them there, to win attention. He was later cleared of the accusation.

He is now the subject of a Clint Eastwood movie, with the tagline, “A hero’s life is shattered by one massive, misplaced rush to judgement when the man who thwarted the 1996 Atlanta bombing was wrongly accused as the main suspect.” It’s a pretty good summary. I have no interest in seeing the movie, however, given Eastwood’s political bias.

Do you have a bucket nearby? You might want to be prepared.

American Patriot has put up a review of the movie. Given AmPat’s reputation, you might expect it to be jingoistic and stupid, and you’d be right.

Don’t rush to click on the link, though. There’s one more detail that you need to brace yourself for.

The review is written by…George Zimmerman. You know, the guy who murdered Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black kid who went to the store to buy candy and was then tracked and shot by vigilante Zimmerman.

You will not be surprised to learn that Zimmerman loved Richard Jewell, because he identifies with Jewell.

This movie hit home. I absolutely identified. Richard and I were both cop wannabes — or so the media told us. We were both gullible. We both believed law enforcement had our best interests at heart. We both believed reporters wanted the truth. We both believed everyone was basically good and then we both realized what fools we had been to believe all that.

As I sat there in the dark, my stomach in knots, I found myself wishing Richard was still alive so I could reach out and hug him and tell him, “Yes, Richard, you are a hero.”

Aww, poor George. He identifies with a guy who was falsely accused, because he thinks he was falsely accused. Unfortunately, the facts are that Jewell didn’t kill anyone, and in fact saved lives, while Zimmerman literally and accurately shot a young black boy (this is not in dispute) for being in his neighborhood; he was acquitted, thanks to Florida’s unjust “stand your ground” law. He has since sued the Martin family for $100 million, been arrested multiple times for domestic violence and disorderly conduct, and has tried to raise money by auctioning off the murder weapon.

He is no Richard Jewell.

I’d say shame on American Patriot for publishing that self-serving drivel, but AmPat has no shame.

The comprehensive summary of the implosion of RWA

I am impressed with this detailed dissection of the recent collapse of the Romance Writers of America. Not only does it cover all the bases, it reveals a lot of the blatant racism in this country. One thing that surprised me is that the RWA was founded by a black woman, yet there were all these policies put in place that made sure black authors were handicapped in the struggle to succeed. Like this:

This discovery grew into a widespread Twitter discussion about the important institutional role that Grimshaw had played as the romance buyer for Borders, at a time when Borders commonly shelved all African American authors in a separate section together, away from specific genres, like romance. It raised questions about how she’d made her decisions in such an important gatekeeping role, and whether she had given African American writers a fair shot at prominent placement. (Though, to be clear, the policy was the case across Borders—not just in romance.) Milan weighed in, but she was far from the only participant.

Wait, what? Black authors were segregated in bookstores? This is very white of me to admit, but I didn’t have the slightest idea, yet for years they had this discriminatory policy in place. Were they afraid some delicate white lady might accidentally buy a novel that had two black people falling in love? Let’s not even discuss the possibility that she might pick up something with queer characters in it.

These are practices that I would have thought a writer’s organization would have been at the forefront of challenging, but no, they just simmered for decades because they had an unwritten policy of only saying nice things about romance books. They refused to recognize the conflicts, suppressed all complaints, kept everything tightly bound up, until there was no other option but a messy, damaging cataclysm that has all but destroyed the organization.

There’s a lesson there for all of us, even if you aren’t a romance novel fan.

Don’t island girls count?

I guess the cost of influence went up. It’s not enough anymore to just offer free candy from your beat-up van anymore, you need a private plane and to give away millions of dollars. At least, that’s the lesson I’m learning from the Jeffrey Epstein case, which has taken another lurch into the gutter despite the fact that he’s dead.

Jeffrey Epstein allegedly transported underage girls to his secluded homes in the US Virgin Islands and forced them into sex work from 2001 through 2018, according to a lawsuit filed by the Attorney General of the US Virgin Islands.

“Epstein created a network of companies and individuals who participated in and conspired with him in a pattern of criminal activity related to the sex trafficking, forced labor, sexual assault, child abuse, and sexual servitude of these young women and children,” according to the lawsuit filed by Attorney General Denise N. George.

The suit, filed Wednesday, alleges that Epstein used a system of private planes, helicopters, boats and vehicles to bring young women and girls to his island residence on Little St. James. There, the victims were “deceptively subjected to sexual servitude, forced to engage in sexual acts and coerced into commercial sexual activity and forced labor,” the lawsuit says.

The scheme led to the molestation and exploitation of “numerous” girls between 12 and 17 years old, the suit alleges.

The lawsuit says that flight logs and other sources established that the enterprise stretched from 2001 to 2019. As recently as 2018, the lawsuit says, air traffic controllers and other airport personnel reported seeing Epstein leave his plane with young girls who appeared to be between 11 and 18 years old.

Remember, he was convicted of doing similar things in Florida in 2008. Convicted. Yet there he was, trafficking in young girls with barely a hiccup from 2001 to 2018. In between raping children, he was visiting prestigious scientists and offering them big bucks to help polish his reputation, and they accepted. They knew! Lawrence Krauss and Seth Lloyd were all completely aware that the source of their money was filthy and tarnished, and they took it anyway, and tried to make excuses to others that Epstein was a good guy, a true patron of science, who was trying to help advance knowledge — Krauss tried that line on me at an atheist conference in 2010, and I didn’t fall for it.

That’s what pisses me off. These people all knew what was going on, even if now they’re trying desperately to pretend they were innocent and unaware. A guy who was convicted of pedophilia and sex trafficking shows up at your door, accompanied by a couple of “Victoria’s Secret models”, and offers you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in free money, but shhhh, don’t tell the university administration, and somehow you’re so fucking stupid you don’t suspect something shady?

Come on.

Am I that much smarter than some of the best-known names in science, at the most prestigious universities in the world?

Or maybe I’m just a little more sensitive to the idea of raping children than they are.

Minnesota has white people

These are the fine residents of Beltrami County in Minnesota.

Fun fact: these white people just voted to forbid settlement of any refugees in their county.

Another fun fact: This is Beltrami County.

Those big lakes in the center of the county? That’s the location of the Red Lake reservation. Southwest of the county is the White Earth reservation. Leech Lake reservation is just to the southeast.

So this county just voted to ban non-native foreigners. The hypocrisy is hilarious.

Love doesn’t always win in the end, as it turns out

I’m not at all involved in this ongoing meltdown of another organization, but wow, does this account of the chaos at Romance Writers of America sound familiar.

It’s interesting to watch a major organization collapse in real time. I’m not involved, thankfully, but seeing the fall of the Romance Writers of America has been something. Whether it truly does cease to be still remains to be seen—a lot of its members are not on social media, and probably have no idea what’s going on—but for the online writing community, it seems the RWA will come to an end, going the way of all dinosaurs.

But to those authors on Twitter who are aghast—AGHAST, I tell you—that there could racism and bigotry in the RWA, I have to ask: why is this news to you? Courtney Milan has been fighting for marginalized romance authors in the RWA for quite some time. What exactly do you think she’s been fighting against?

Yikes. That link has a comprehensive summary of the events, but in short: the woman who was chair of the ethics committee, Courtney Milan, complains about racism in some of the authors’ works, leading several people to file ethics complaints against her, and then everything blew up with a flurry of resignations, firings, retractions, total chaos. Even now further revelations about bias in the management of RWA are trickling out.

It’s rather obvious that bigotry was rife in the organization (as it is everywhere), and what’s driving much of the meltdown is that some peoples method for dealing with racism is to deny that it exists. Problem solved! I’ve seen the same thing happen with various atheist/skeptic groups, and I rarely see them outright ending, they’re more likely to reconstitute themselves. Unfortunately, it’s 50:50 whether they improve vs. ending up under the sway of the assholes.