Okay, take a breather, Ellen. Just relax a second.
I’m not disagreeing with much of what you say here.
I, too, feel the things you feel about all of this, and have felt the things you’ve felt.
But I don’t think that should lead to the advice you’re giving.
In fact, I think it’s just the wrong message for us.
Your intentions are honorable, obviously. And you know I respect what you stand for.
(That’s why I’m posting this on our blog.)
I saw you on CNN, and I was very proud.
But your specific advice for this situation is just not entailed by any of that.
There are other paths to follow, and other things that need to be done.

I’ll leave the rest for any other comments that people want to give.

Okay, actually it’s “former-Governor Skink” and, obviously, his name wasn’t Skink when he was Governor. It was Clinton Tyree. Neither was one of his eyes yet glass, nor his diet yet grazing the prodigious buffet of Florida roadkill- nor his home yet whatever secluded chunk of the Everglades he could find.

And, if you want to get technical, he’s rather godlike in that he doesn’t exist outside of a book- or a series of books, in this case(Native Tongue, Double Whammy, to name just two). Books by a native Floridian, the terminally humorous, Carl Hiaasen.

Carl’s also a columnist for the venerable Miami Herald and he’s had his delirious, malarial eye trained lately on the Florida Cracker creationists attempted frog marching of the state board of education. Not surprisingly, Carl’s got a different take on the matter:

“In a move that could endanger Florida’s flaky backwater reputation, the state Board of Education is poised to endorse the teaching of evolution as a science.

This is a dangerous idea — not the presentation of Darwinism in schools, but the presentation of Florida as a place of progressive scientific thought.

Over the years the Legislature has worked tirelessly to keep our kids academically stuck in the mid-1950s. This has been achieved by overcrowding their classrooms, underpaying their teachers and letting their school buildings fall apart.

Florida’s plucky refusal to embrace 21st century education is one reason that prestigious tech industries have avoided the state, allowing so many of our high-school graduates (and those who come close) to launch prosperous careers in the fast-food, bartending and service sectors of the economy.

By accepting evolution as a proven science, our top educators would be sending a loud message to the rest of the nation: Stop making fun of us.

Is that what we really want?

On Tuesday, the Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a proposed set of new standards that describe evolution as the ‘fundamental concept underlying all of biology’ and ’supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence.’

Certainly that’s the position of every reputable academic group on the planet, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Science Teachers Association.

But forget the fossil record, OK? Forget DNA tracing. Forget the exhaustively documented diversification of species.

This battle is about pride and independence; about boldly going against the flow, in defiance of reason and all known facts.”

snip

“True, students in those same districts have produced some of the worst science scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, but who needs Newton or Copernicus when you’ve got the Corinthians? ”

and…

“Nice try, pinheads, but there’s no sin in being a slightly backward state with extremely modest expectations for its young people. That’s been the guiding philosophy of our tightwad lawmakers for years, and the degree to which they’ve succeeded is illuminated annually in the FCAT charade.

If snubbing is to be done, Florida should be the snubber, not the snubbee. Keep your elite biotech payrolls up North and out West — we’ve got hundreds of thousands of low-paying, go-nowhere jobs that require little training and minimal education.

Should state officials vote this week to put evolution on the teaching agenda, it will be a small yet radical step out of Florida’s backwarding-thinking past.

Resistance is not futile. We’ve worked hard to keep ourselves so far behind in education, and we must stay the course.”

Think of it as job security for a national treasure. Carl Hiaasen knows where his bread is buttered.

_{I apologize for my absence as I have- or had, been shooting the fish that teem in the Religion and Spirituality barrel over at Yahoo Answers. Then, they canceled my account. Heavy sigh.}

This was sent to me by Spirula…

You might need some of that Jack Daniels they produce there in Lynchburg after watching this…

Let the mockery begin!
Omama, Bahama, Osama, Obima, Obama…well…whoever…he’s BAAAAAAD!

Spirula writes: “As penance for linking that interview with cabbages, I give you this.”

(Cross posted at The Uncredible Hallq)

Somewhere in the synoptic gospels, Jesus tells a parable of a widow who goes daily to beg a less-than-principled judge for justice, and eventually gets it just because the judge gets tired of listening to her. This may be my favorite parable in the entire Bible: on the one hand, the stated moral is dubious (as this is supposed to be a model for how prayer works), but on the other hand, it does provide a memorable statement of the fact that sometimes, whining will get you what you want.

The fact that whining sometimes works, however, doesn’t mean it’s a good strategy (that’s what makes the moral of the parable so dubious). First of all, you’re working from a position of weakness. The fact that your target sees it lowers the chances of success vs. other methods, and means you’ll look contemptible even if the target gives in. Furthermore, whining is a technique which has no inherent tendency to favor the person in the right. True, it’s a useful tool for the little guy, but sometimes the little guy is wrong. In our modern society, full of special interest groups struggling to manipulate the media and public opinion to their advantage, too many people live in avoid speaking freely for fear that they will be hit by an attack of concentrated whining.

For example, I once heard a story involving one of Bill Richardson’s political campaigns, in which his opponent attacked him as not being a real Hispanic. This was obviously a silly idea, and it happened that Richardson went on a talk show where the host thought to set up a joke where Richardson would poke fun at the idea by insulting his opponent in Spanish. Richardson went with it without missing a beat, and it was funny. The catch? The host decided to use the word “maricón,” which happens to be a derogatory term for homosexual.

Gay rights groups, naturally, were furious, and demanded an apology. Now, granted, it might have been nice if some other insult had been used for the joke–say, if Richardson had called the guy’s mother a puta or some such. But really, so what? Obviously, Richarson’s comment had nothing to do with denigrating homosexuals, it had to do with poking fun at something stupid someone else had said. When the gay rights groups got upset about it, it wasn’t because any great harm had been done. On some level, they knew that they were just trying to show that while a minority, they were numerous enough to whine a politician into submission.

Keeping on the gay rights track, another example: when I was in high school, high school students started using “that’s so gay” to mean “that’s so stupid,” and I recently read an article in a local magazine celebrating attempts by high school students to stop it. Here, I’m somewhat more sympathetic to the protests, because I’ve seen first hand that high school can be a pretty crappy time for students who differ from the norm. However, the problem of weakness remains, insofar as just insisting people not use the phrase is whiny. I seriously doubt loudly insisting on the point has actually done much good. At best it would turn casual disrespect into focused, if muffled, resentment.

You know what I have seen work, though? Ridicule. When students started saying “homophobia is so gay.” It poked fun. It got laughs. It deflated blowhards. It was a hell of a lot more effective than whining.

I was prompted to write this post when I saw this at the blog of Hemant Mehta, of e-bay atheist fame. You see, someone paid to put up a bulletin board with the words “why do atheists hate America,” and someone got the bright idea to send a whiny letter. Hemant thinks it’s “fantastic blueprint if you wanted to write one of your own.” I think it’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. Five paragraphs full of stock, emotionally charged phrases with little substance. They range from a knee-jerk appeal to patriotic sentiment (the bulletin board is said to be “un-American”) to a dubiously-sincere closing (”Wishing only the best for you”).

I’ve written before about how atheism is becoming more like a movement. I really do find that thrilling. However, I hope we don’t become another whiny special interest group. We want to win because we’re smarter and funnier than the opposition, not because we can out-whine them. And honestly, I’m not sure we can out-whine them: Bill Donahue of the Catholic League has proved a masterful whiner, to the point that his Wikipedia page is dominated by a list of twenty-one things he’s whined about. Of course, Donahue doesn’t always have the effect he wants, but that’s because of his deficit in the smart & funny department, not a lack of an ability to whine.

Back to what I said about ridicule. Ridicule is really a wonderful tool, because like whining it can let the little guy level the playing field, but unlike whining, you have to have a point if you’re going to avoid looking like a jackass yourself. The fact that a well-aimed bit of ridicule will have a point means it can earn you some real respect. With this in mind, I decided to send the following message to the people behind the bulletin board Hemant was talking about:

Dear Rev. Nedd and In God We Trust,

I recently heard about the bulletin board your are sponsoring, which asks, “Why do atheists hate America?” This made me wonder: when is Rev. Nedd going to stop beating his wife?

Here is a response from Pat Condell to fundies like Edward who are working and praying for us “evil atheists” to find gawd in 2008. No thank you, Xian folks! Your god is a psycho character from an ancient mythology and we are doing just fine without him. Now “piss off!”

Pat is awesome.

Vjack at Atheist Revolution has written a post bringing attention to this latest news story about controversial Southern Baptist Pastor Wiley Drake urging his followers to pray for the deaths of staff members at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. This isn’t the first time this radical Xian has been calling on his “heavenly hit man” (as Americans United executive director Rev. Barry W. Lynn put it).

Last August, Americans United filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service about Drake’s use of church letterhead and a church-based radio program to endorse presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Federal tax law forbids tax-exempt groups from endorsing or opposing candidates for public office.

In a Feb. 5 letter, the IRS notified Drake that his First Southern Baptist Church of Buena Park is being investigated.

In response, Drake issued a Feb. 14 e-mail appeal to followers to engage in “imprecatory prayers” (curses) against Americans United and three of its staff members.

In agreement with Barry Lynn, “There is more than a whiff of the Taliban in this action”

If you ever wonder what a two-dimensional self-righteous asshole does in his spare time when bad things happen in the world, just read this guy:

The Northern Illinois University shooting is a prime example of the atheist influence in our nation. For decades, atheists have been telling us there is no God, Christianity is bad, Christ was a lunatic, and all religion is false. It’s taught in schools and forced down our throats at every Christian holiday. Where does that leave a person in despair? Where can the next would-be school shooter turn? Because you know there’s going to be another. Atheists tell us that humans are just matter and chemical reactions and synapses firing. Richard Dawkins defends abortion by claiming a fetus has no right to the claim, “human.” How in the world can we expect our world to survive the dehumanizing of humans? Is it any wonder that a person, under this atheistic influence, feels no remorse or sympathy for his fellow human beings? Whether this shooter was an atheist or not is irrelevant. It’s the atheistic influence in our society that has lead to the dehumanizing despair in otherwise mentally ill individuals. We have opened the door and let the demons in. We’re going to have to clean house and close that door, or we’re going to see these horrific tragedies again and again.

I’m sure you all knew it was coming, sooner or later. And right along with the lame-ass values argument, yet again.

Yes, because saying “because God says so” really avoids that bad moral skepticism.

I really have to get Keith’s name tattooed on my ass…

And if there’s one thing we know about Big Brother, Mr. Bush, is that he is — you are — a liar. “This Saturday at midnight,” you said today, “legislation authorizing intelligence professionals to quickly and effectively monitor terrorist communications will expire. If Congress does not act by that time, our ability to find out who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning, will be compromised…You said that “the lives of countless Americans depend” on you getting your way. This is crap. And you sling it, with an audacity and a speed unrivaled even by the greatest political felons of our history.

To see the entire video, pic-click…