A number of people commenting on my last article noticed and highlighted the disappearance of stories related to the Pianka affair from the website of the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise. Dave Thomas picked up the story, and posted it here. I’m going to provide a bit more detail on the scope of the paper’s dishonest and despicable conduct, along with the text of an email that I’ve sent them.
More on the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise Affair
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The controversy over “Dr. Doom” has taken an interesting and expected turn. After the Sequin Gazette-Enterprise broke the story that Dr. Eric Pianka advocated the deaths of 90 percent of the human population to save the rest of the biospher... Read More
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What is going on here?
Some folks have brought up the Roveian techniques of character assassination going on here. “Swift boating” is a useful descriptive term even if it is has with partisan political overtones.
How about another term? “Danish cartooning”.
This captures the concept of pandering to the base. It really brings out the similarities between recent events in moslem countries and those in the west.
In September 2005 a Danish newspaper published some unflattering cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. Not much response happened until January 2006 when nearly simultaneous violent demonstrations broke out in a number of countries throughout the middle east, Africa and south Asia.
With all the other possible issues confronting citizens of these countries, why did this one inspire so many with such passion? Why the delay in responses after the initial publishing? This is largely a cynical manipulation of devout people by their religious and political leaders. It seems these leaders seek to distract followers from real issues that actually impact their lives. They hope to use this passion to solidify their political power base and insure their jobs and wealth.
Media commentators have argued that these events illustrate the chasm between moslem and western societies. There is less difference here than it appears.
Turn on talk radio, Fox news or one of the religious cable channels. You will hear over and again inflammatory statements about decapitating unborn babies, the attacks on marriage and Christmas, murdering Terri Schiavo, school prayers and teaching atheism (evolution). Now we have the Pianka doomsday advocate. These certainly are issues that can energize some people. What is going on here? Except for the violent protests, this is the exact same process playing out in those supposedly backward moslem countries. The religious and political leaders making these statements are trying to distract their listeners with fake issues. Their motivation is exactly the same as for their middle eastern counterparts. They are in it for political and monetary gain.
Unless these pundits, think tank members, politicians and televangelists can stir up people, they are out of a job. Its their job description. They don’t care about collateral damage caused by their inflammatory remarks and lies.
Deliberate misleading by “Swift boating” may be one of the techniques being used, but the underlying process is really “Danish cartooning”.
Well, certainly “Orwellian” should be on the list.
Davescott has his own theory why the article was pulled:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/inde[…]omment-30560
“My bet is the left wing of the science establishment got all lawyered up and threatened to dover the tiny Seguin Gazette for a million bucks. That’s what biology is all about these days, don’t you know, suing instead of science. But hey, suing and science both start with an ‘s’ and have two syllables so it’s all good. -ds “
I’m not doing his self-important bold font.
Really, Dave? I have $1000 sitting in my pocket.
Poor tiny seguin Gazette for being beaten down by the leftwing man.
DaveScot will invent any story to promote what he’d like to have happened.
Well, for what it’s worth, Denyse O’Leary has picked up the Pianka story and is running with it: http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com
that’s actually great news.
just more evidence these folks jump before they think.
and more evidence that the ultra-right wingers are directly tied to trying to terrorize scientists and make them all out to be “evil”.
Did we need any more evidence after Jill Carroll?
larger datasets are always easier to analyze, and more likely to produce statistically significant results.
it isn’t worth much. She appears to be another ID nutter.
Denyse is the blog-voice of the ultra right wing.
She’s quite famous, unfortunately.
STJ: “Denyse is the blog-voice of the ultra right wing. She’s quite famous, unfortunately.
All the farther to fall.
Here is DaveScot’s comment lifted from Denyse O”leary’s blog:
The Seguin Gazette courageously pulled every mention of Pianka from their website. Ergo, the link you provided to the St. Edwards transcript leads exactly nowhere.
For DaveScot, if you are listening: Precisely why is that action “courageous”?
She’s also a reminder to us Americans that Canadians can be rightwing dingbats just as easily as anyone else.
NEWS FLASH: The explanation for Forrest Mims bizarre behavior has been found. It appears that Forrest Mims was given some brown acid prior to watching the British horror film, “28 Days Later.”
It’s worth noting that “Jamie Mobley”, the by-line on the Mims story in the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise, has disappeared, too. A search of the newspaper’s site over the last month gets zero hits, though a Google search on [“Jamie Mobley” “Sequin News-Gazerre”] yields lots of hits on the newspaper’s site. Where has she gone? Or (here’s a paranoid thought) did she ever actually exist? Google turns up a hit on her email address at the News-Gazette from 2004 and some old stories (e.g., Nov 26, 2004) as well as the Pianka stories she was originally credited with, but poor Jamie hasn’t written a by-lined word for them in the last month, if you believe their search page.
RBH
Erm, the search was on [“Jamie Mobley” “Seguin News-Gazette”].
Never fear, the Focus on the Family keeps repeating the lie.
http://www.family.org/cforum/fnif/n[…]a0040122.cfm
of course the real evidence as to why the rift exists is in the publication of lies done by folks like Focus on the Family.
Do remember that these folks have some serious political weight to throw about.
Anyone who frequents that site will no doubt miss the fact that the people who originally published Mims fabrication have removed all traces of it.
-From the focus on the family link above.
Only 9% of those polled are Real Americans. Only 2% believe in the fairy tale of global warming. Only 6% believe that they exist. Here’s why
retty much nothing seems worth thinking about. My life’s been completely dull , not that it matters. I’ve just been staying at home waiting for something to happen.
I haven’t been up to much these days. Today was a loss. Nothing seems important. I’ve just been letting everything happen without me these days.
What spambot programmer decided that deep depression was the best way to attract potential customers? How strange.
I just don’t have much to say recently. Such is life. I’ve basically been doing nothing. Basically nothing seems worth bothering with. Oh well.
Re “What spambot programmer decided that deep depression was the best way to attract potential customers? How strange.”
It wasn’t intelligently designed, huh?
I just don’t have much to say recently. Such is life. I’ve basically been doing nothing. Basically nothing seems worth bothering with. Oh well.
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