Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Gary Coleman Doppelganger Found
With widespread news coverage of the opening of Ken Ham's Creation Museum over the weekend, intelligent design activists everywhere must be reeling under an acute sense of dislocation.
The Discovery Institute and other outlets that make up the right-wing echo chamber have relentlessly pumped up the volume over Iowa State University's denial of tenure to ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, but this time no one seems to be listening.
Not long ago, ID was the new kid on the creationist block. The legal strategy to put a scientific gloss on Genesis, which once seemed to have such a bright future, now finds itself yesterday's news. A former child actor, out of the spotlight and -- at least for some of its brighter lights -- out of work.
We were just getting ready to write a post noting that the only place in the universe where the grand opening of the Answers in Genesis' Fred and Wilma Flintstone Theme Park went unremarked was the normally voluble ID blogosphere.
Then Denyse "Buy My Book" O'Leary came through on William Dembski's Uncommon Descent blog with a post on a review of the Creation Museum by Edward Rothstein that appeared in the Arts section of The New York Times.
Denyse was prepared to dislike the article before she even read it-- it was, after all, in the NYT -- but she's a game gal, she gritted her teeth and went on.
Denyse tells us she has little use for creation museums, "but way, way less use for self-regarding, overaged art twerps who pretend superiority to millions of people who do real jobs for a living."
Now of course, Denyse knows as much about Edward Rothstein, the award-winning former music critic for The New Republic and now cultural critic-at-large for the Times, as she knows about science: nothing.
That's not news.
What I find interesting about the alternate universe that the O'Leary inhabits, however, is that it allows her to feel morally superior to Rothstein because he doesn't do a "real job for a living."
Isn't she, like Rothstein, a writer and reporter. Isn't that a real job?
Oh yeah, and he's "overaged," and a "twerp" to boot. God's love for his creation just shines through O'Leary's writing, doesn't it?
The Discovery Institute and other outlets that make up the right-wing echo chamber have relentlessly pumped up the volume over Iowa State University's denial of tenure to ID astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, but this time no one seems to be listening.
Not long ago, ID was the new kid on the creationist block. The legal strategy to put a scientific gloss on Genesis, which once seemed to have such a bright future, now finds itself yesterday's news. A former child actor, out of the spotlight and -- at least for some of its brighter lights -- out of work.
We were just getting ready to write a post noting that the only place in the universe where the grand opening of the Answers in Genesis' Fred and Wilma Flintstone Theme Park went unremarked was the normally voluble ID blogosphere.
Then Denyse "Buy My Book" O'Leary came through on William Dembski's Uncommon Descent blog with a post on a review of the Creation Museum by Edward Rothstein that appeared in the Arts section of The New York Times.
Denyse was prepared to dislike the article before she even read it-- it was, after all, in the NYT -- but she's a game gal, she gritted her teeth and went on.
Denyse tells us she has little use for creation museums, "but way, way less use for self-regarding, overaged art twerps who pretend superiority to millions of people who do real jobs for a living."
Now of course, Denyse knows as much about Edward Rothstein, the award-winning former music critic for The New Republic and now cultural critic-at-large for the Times, as she knows about science: nothing.
That's not news.
What I find interesting about the alternate universe that the O'Leary inhabits, however, is that it allows her to feel morally superior to Rothstein because he doesn't do a "real job for a living."
Isn't she, like Rothstein, a writer and reporter. Isn't that a real job?
Oh yeah, and he's "overaged," and a "twerp" to boot. God's love for his creation just shines through O'Leary's writing, doesn't it?
