Category: Culture
From the don’t know whether to laugh or cry department . . . .
Last Sunday’s episode of Boston Legal (“From Whence We Came”) was ripped straight from the headlines in typical David Kelley style. Hotshot young attorney Lori (Monica Potter), with help from Denny Crane (played by William Shatner, and for which he won a Golden Globe the same Sunday night) and Shirley Schmidt (the newest addition to the show, played by Candace Bergen), defends a school superintendent being sued by two science teachers who were fired for refusing to teach creationism. Kelley’s writing is always sharp and his dialogue is witty, but his take on the evolution issue merely regurgitates the old Inherit The Wind trope of religion vs. science. He never even bothers to really define evolution or intelligent design, which Read More ›
Banning of UMOL is PBS’ loss and Amazon’s gain
Leave it to the capitalists at Amazon.com and the free market system to captialize on the censorship of UMOL by the Darwinists. Several months ago UMOL sales were languishing well below 7,000 on Amazon.com’s sales ranking system. However, thanks to KNME censorship , the film actually peaked at 2,500 over the weekend. Currently it has slipped a bit to 4,540. Still this shows a serious spike in sales. We’ve received dozens of requests for the film ourselves. Nothing spurs sales quite like a good controversy. Had KNME just let well enough alone this whole thing would have blown over by now. But, thanks to their protectionism more and more people are seeing UMOL than otherwise would have been the case. Read More ›
Ever evolving textbook sticker issue
Scrappleface.com has skewered last week’s federal court ruling on Cobb Co.’s textbook disclaimers with a clever bit of satire. “U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that the old labels could “confuse” public school students, who are not accustomed to thinking critically.” Indeed! The Scrapplers report that the newly evolved stickers now in textbooks read: “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a fact, not a theory, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with childlike trust, accepted obediently and defended vigorously against the attacks of ignorant monotheists.” Read the entire ScrappleFace satire here (and yes, the Cooper quotations are pure fiction).
KNME Untroubled by the Hobgoblin of consistency
CSC writer in residence, Jonathan Witt had an op-ed published in the Albuquerque Journal Sunday commenting on PBS affiliate KNME’s censorship troubles. The thing that Witt’s op-ed nicely brings to light is the double standard about funding and editorial control that exists at PBS from the top down. He gives specific examples suggesting that KNME normally follows a very different (and much more sane) test for private funders, one that allows foundations who fund documentaries to have points of view and even worldviews. KNME proclaims that they must not let public get the “perception” that funders of a program “might” have had control over the content. “Indeed, no PBS affiliate consistently follows the smell test laid out by KNME. If Read More ›
The cleverness continues
The censorship issue has obviously struck a nerve in New Mexico, as evidenced by this cartoon from Friday’s Albuquerque Journal. Creationism evolves. How original. I think this is only about the 499th time that this has been in a cartoon or headline.