Success and Failure
The latest to weigh-in on the expelled-from-Expelled debacle is Caltech physicist Sean Carroll over at Cosmic Variance. He illuminates the all important distinction between politicians and critics, which is something the Get Along Gang consistently fails to grasp. I do however find myself disagreeing with Carroll on one point:
But not everyone is amused, even on the pro-science side. Chris Mooney complains that the controversy gives a huge boost, in the form of priceless publicity, to Expelled and its supporters. People who never would have heard of the movie will now be curious to see it; the filmmakers are already gloating about all the attention.
I think that Chris is right: this is publicity for the movie that they couldn’t possibly have received any other way, and PZ and Dawkins are basically doing exactly what the filmmakers were hoping for all along.
Well, yes. They got publicity, but there seems to be a rather uncritical acceptance, even among some of those otherwise on PZ’s side, that all publicity is indeed good publicity. Granted, in terms of sheer box-office and monetary success, you can’t ask for much more than a controversy like this. But monetary concerns are always secondary in these cases, as propaganda flicks like Expelled are rarely big money-makers (in fact, they are usually pet projects among think-tanks or wealthy individuals with an axe to grind). To transfer to this logic to another environment, however, illustrates that one man’s success is another man’s failure. I’m pretty sure a U.S. Senator could get a large amount of pubicity by fornicating with the Declaration of Independence on the Senate floor and lighting it on fire afterwards, but that is certainly not to his or her ultimate benefit. In this episode, the Expelled folks have exposed themselves as liars, hypocrites and, above all, stupid, incompetent motherfuckers to any disinterested observer. Granted, such a thing won’t alter the perception of the True Believer, but we can all agree that they are not surmountable targets for persuasion in the first place.
UPDATE: For SLC:
March 23, 2008 at 11:26 pm
If all publicity really were good publicity, Osama bin Laden would be President of Earth by now.
When “moderate” religious folk hear of disgusting acts performed by the Westboro Baptists or pedophile priests or whomever, you know what their natural response is? Often, they’ll say, “Those people aren’t real Christians.” Now, you and I know that both the moderates and the extremists — the sensible and the revolting — are picking and choosing their favorite passages of Holy Writ. On secular, empirico-rationalist grounds, there’s just no way to tell who is a “real Christian” or a follower of the “true Islam.” But hey, it’s still progress. A baby step in the right direction.
Like a report of a Catholic priest playing Michael Jackson, this is the kind of news which makes the modest faithful and the Christmas-and-Easter churchgoers say, “Those people are not good Christian folk.”
March 24, 2008 at 12:13 pm
It should be noted that the delectable Dr. Kirshenbaum has joined Prof. Nisbet and his sockpuppet Chris Mooney in the Myers and Dawkins should shut up brigade.
March 24, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Now Dr. Kirschenbaum has another post up on the intersection blog and has her knickers in a twist over PZ Myers use of the f word. “They’re getting sillier and sillier over there.
March 24, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Fuck the heck?
Don’t these people have jobs, or something?
March 25, 2008 at 4:58 am
I know this has been asked before, but: Why are the framing crowd so shit at framing? If they have such great insight into how to sell ideas to the many, how come they can’t sell their insights to the few?
March 25, 2008 at 9:14 am
Good question, manigen. It’s like the “framers” never expect to be challenged on logical or evidentiary grounds. Oddly enough, in a blog post once, I referred to Nisbet, Mooney and Kirshenbaum as “framers” or “framists”, and somebody got all over me about it, accusing me of “giving them names to deny them the power to speak” (or some phrasing close to that). I was, predictably, baffled and bemused, not least by the irony: I get yelled at for a tame and neutral phrase, yet Nisbet’s placement of me within the “New Atheist Noise Machine” went unquestioned.
By the way, I still think “New Atheist Noise Machine” would make a great name for a band.