Monday, July 09, 2007
Letting Cheri Yecke's Cat Out of the Bag
"Is Cheri Yecke’s advocacy of ID a career-maimer?" asked the Isaac Newton of information theory, William Dembski, in a post published on his Uncommon Descent blog Saturday.
Yecke, as many of you are already aware, is the No. 2 in the Florida Dept. of Education, but she badly wants to be No. 1. That's why she hired an Internet outfit called ReputationDefender to scrub the web clean of references to her support for creationism back when she was Minnesota's Commissioner of Education.
Not long ago, ReputationDefender contacted pro-evolution blogger Wes Elsberry demanding that a quote on his Austringer blog linking Yecke to intelligent design be removed "on the grounds that it was false."
Post Dover, Yecke has taken steps, albeit clumsy ones, to distance herself from her old friends, and that clearly means she sees it, in Dembski's less-than-felicitous phrasing, as a career maimer. It would not surprise RSR if Yecke now wishes that Dembski had answered his question by examining the downward trajectory of his own career rather than dragging her name through the ID mud at this critical juncture.
Until the election of George Bush when it became a virtue, bad judgement was nearly always a career stopper -- the adolescent world of intelligent design excepted. Perhaps even in today's climate, there may be still be some in the Florida education establishment who think it unwise to appoint a commissioner of education who might embroil the state in costly and ultimately unwinnable litigation.
Does this mean young Isaac can now expect a note from ReputationDefender to come his way, as well?
Yecke, as many of you are already aware, is the No. 2 in the Florida Dept. of Education, but she badly wants to be No. 1. That's why she hired an Internet outfit called ReputationDefender to scrub the web clean of references to her support for creationism back when she was Minnesota's Commissioner of Education.
Not long ago, ReputationDefender contacted pro-evolution blogger Wes Elsberry demanding that a quote on his Austringer blog linking Yecke to intelligent design be removed "on the grounds that it was false."
Post Dover, Yecke has taken steps, albeit clumsy ones, to distance herself from her old friends, and that clearly means she sees it, in Dembski's less-than-felicitous phrasing, as a career maimer. It would not surprise RSR if Yecke now wishes that Dembski had answered his question by examining the downward trajectory of his own career rather than dragging her name through the ID mud at this critical juncture.
Until the election of George Bush when it became a virtue, bad judgement was nearly always a career stopper -- the adolescent world of intelligent design excepted. Perhaps even in today's climate, there may be still be some in the Florida education establishment who think it unwise to appoint a commissioner of education who might embroil the state in costly and ultimately unwinnable litigation.
Does this mean young Isaac can now expect a note from ReputationDefender to come his way, as well?
