| Subject: Re: YouTube piece |
| From: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> |
| Date: 4/15/09, 12:25 |
| To: Michael Hogan <Michael_Hogan@condenast.com> |
Conservatives have quite a few grievances against Wikipedia and the allegedly liberal influence that pervades the prominent online information source; the Bias in Wikipedia entry at Conservapedia, a website founded in 2007 to serve as the conservative alternative to its more mainstream counterpart, lists over a hundred and fifty such offenses.
Among other things, it is noted that Wikipedia promotes suicide with 21,544 entries that mention this depravity, which is to say that Wikipedia mentions suicide too often; that Wikipedia's article on atheism fails to mention that atheism is a causal factor for suicide, which is to say that Wikipedia does not mention suicide often enough; that Wikipedia is insufficiently respectful of Johnny Appleseed and that this ill-treatment is due to Appleseed having been a Christian minister; that Wikipedia administrators deleted the entry on Hollywood values which some helpful social conservative had gone to the trouble of writing and which listed examples of how the liberal ideology harms people; that Wikipedia is replete with Anglophilia, a charge not often leveled at American liberals; and that Wikipedia lies to exaggerate the credentials of atheist Richard Dawkins by claiming that Dawkins was the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford. Wikipedia's campaign of deception on this last point has been so pervasive that even the administrators of Oxford University believe that they conferred this title on Dawkins.
Of course, Dawkins was indeed the Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, and Conservapedia's own entry on Dawkins now acknowledges this to be the case (although its Bias in Wikipedia page still accuses its editors of lying in service to liberalism for stating the very same thing). The process by which this simple fact finally made its way into the Dawkins article is recorded in full on the associated talk page, a feature of wiki entries wherein contributors discuss changes to be made to a particular article. On Wikipedia, such talk pages are often very interesting, particularly when the subject in question is controversial. On Conservapedia, they are often surreal, even if the subject in question is not particularly controversial at all.
The written debate over whether or not Oxford is better qualified than Conservapedia to decide who is and isn't a professor at Oxford took over a year and involved tens of thousands of words. This is more time and energy than usually goes into such wiki-arguments. In this case, though, the chief proponent of Conservapedia's authority over Oxford was Andrew Schlafly, founder of Conservapedia, son of conservative icon Phyliss Schlafly, and one-man metaphor for what ails the modern conservative movement. On the other side of the debate were several other Conservapedia contributors who argued in vain that Oxford itself had already made clear that Dawkins had held the professorship in question since 1996.
At some point, a contributor actually filed a U.K. Freedom of Information Act request in order to obtain clarification from Oxford; a university representative replied that the title of Professor was properly conferred on Dr Dawkins and addressed several other points that had been brought up in the course of the argument. But Schlafly was unconvinced, oddly claiming that the answers received were simply too general to be helpful, and at any rate still disagreed that the professorship conferred upon Dawkins was a real professorship. The argument went on well past the point at which Dawkins finally resigned from the position in 2008; by the time things had finally wound down, a new debate had arisen over whether or not it was appropriate for a Conservapedian administrator to have added a picture of Adolf Hitler to the top of the Dawkins article, with several other contributors taking the position that it might make more sense to put up a picture on Dawkins instead. A compromise was eventually reached whereby the Hitler picture was placed a bit lower down on the page.
Most of the conflicts that arise on Conservapedia's talk pages follow a similar pattern: one or more of the site's reasonable, economically conservative contributors attempts to add some important fact or remove a dubious assertion, only to run into opposition from the site administrators, who themselves tend to be social conservatives. Because final authority lies within the latter group, Conservapedia has not developed into much of an encyclopedia in the usual sense, but then the world really didn't need another such thing anyway; rather, it serves as a convenient window into the ongoing civil war within the conservative movement as a whole, the one being fought between the intellectually honest Burkeans and the intellectually degenerate Palinstinians.
Over at the talk page for Conservapedia's article on the pen-and-paper role playing game Dungeons and Dragons, for instance, several armchair demonologists are disappointed with the article's shockingly neutral point of view regarding D&D in general and the game's positive depiction of magic in particular. Another contributor defends the hobby, countering that the game does not actually promote such things as witchcraft, but the fundamentalists aren't buying. I'm sorry, but I've heard too many accounts of demonic attacks stemming from Dungeons and Dragons to take claims of it being innocent seriously, writes one, uh, skeptical contributor.
Indeed, Satan's strategies of deceit are often an item of contention. On the talk page for Genesis, we find a theological dispute regarding whether or not the serpent depicted therein is actually Satan or simply a talking snake. An administrator is firmly convinced that the snake is, indeed, Satan, noting that snakes don't talk to people and convince them to grab some fruit, much less cause people do [sic] disobey God. A contributor arguing otherwise retorts that serpents walked on four legs before God cursed them. The notion that they no longer talk is irrelevant. It's a good point, but the logic seems lost on the administrator, who merely repeats his earlier assertion that Snakes don't talk people into disobeying God. Satan does. His opponent tries to explain that he'd just established that snakes were different in those days, but this only makes the administrator angrier. If you intend to continue this fight, then I'm going to boot you from the site, he responds.
Many such arguments at Conservapedia end with similar threats. During the Dawkins debate, Schlafly himself warned several contributors that they would be banned unless they refrained from arguing with him further. Elsewhere, on a special debate page entitled Why haven't intelligent design creationists published a single scientific article?, Schlafly took issue with a contributor's assertion that the leaders of the intelligent design movement had thus far failed to spell out their theory in a peer-reviewed journal, explaining that evolutionists are censors and do everything they can to suppress other viewpoints and research and then adding, without irony, that your account will be blocked if you persist in posting falsehoods here. He can probably be excused for his outburst; Schafly is a sensitive fellow, and evolution is a sensitive topic for fellows such as he. Above all, Conservapedia is supposed to be something of an online haven for the anti-evolution crowd, a place where decorum precludes mentioning that advocates of intelligent design haven't added any new articles to their own scientific journal since 2005.
In further defense of Schafly, he's usually rather polite. On the talk page for Professor Values, an encyclopedic article on the general perfidy of the nation's academic elite, a contributor writes, What statistical evidence is there in this article of atheism, plagiarism, socialism, censorship etc. [sic] This article makes unfounded claims.
Schafly is accommodating. Help find the support for those observations. It's not difficult to find. Thanks and Godspeed.
Great, thanks so much!Sure, $150 is fine. I'll have the piece to you later this week.
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 12:25 PM, Michael Hogan <Michael_Hogan@condenast.com> wrote:
Hey Barrett,
I like the idea, but Im coping with a budget crunch here and alas could only pay $150. Would you be willing to write it for that?
Best,
Mike
On 4/8/09 11:59 AM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Howdy-
Did you get my last e-mail about the Conservapedia article, and if so, do you have any interest in the idea?
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Sure, sounds fine. In the meantime, would you have any interest in a piece on the behind-the-scenes operation of Conservapedia? It's the conservative version of Wikipedia that Phylis Schlafly's son Andrew started up a while back. The most interesting thing about the site is the "talk pages" whereby contributors discuss how to handle each article subject and inevitably argue about it; these serve as a sort of microcosm of the ongoing Republican civil war between fairly well-informed budget hawks and incredibly ignorant creationist nutjobs. The piece would examine some of the more humorous exchanges to be found there, and, again, the theme as a whole could revolve around the sort of general strife within the GOP coalition that these exchanges illustrate.
Here's an example:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Talk:Dungeons_and_Dragons
Let me know what you think about this.
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 2:39 PM, Michael Hogan <Michael_Hogan@condenast.com> wrote:
Barrett,
I hope youll forgive me but Im having second thoughts about posting this today and linking it to Glenn Becks bizarre video.
I think we should wait for a truly viral video starring Obama or some other prominent politician, since thats more in line with the other videos.
Barring that, I think we should do it on a day when we dont have much else going on maybe the week after next, when weve more or less finished rolling out our new issue.
Its just so good that I dont want to launch it without first maximizing our chances of making a splash.
Does that sound OK to you?
Best,
Mike
On 4/2/09 1:05 PM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Okay, here's the new intro:
The Best Political Clips You Probably Haven't Seen
Studying history is very much akin to having a giant inbox that keeps filling up with new material faster than one can keep up with it; the problem is that things simply won't stop happening. Just the other day, for instance, there was a bit of a happening when the inexplicably prominent Glenn Beck dedicated some large portion of his newish Fox show to pointing out that the United States is heading down the road to fascism <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTzCdY6SqDQ> , helpfully illustrating his point with old footage of Nazis marching around like Nazis. Beck did soften the blow by describing our nascent brand of fascism as being of the non-violent sort or, to put it another way, they're marching us towards Nineteen Eighty-Four Big Brother! Of course, Orwell's imagined totalitarian government was not non-violent at all and in fact depended very much on perpetual warfare and unaccountable torture (ahem). But in Beck's defense, he's probably never read the book. Perhaps defense is the wrong word.
The point, though, is that each time something wacky is recorded in the political sphere these days, we risk losing sight of what's really important: wacky things that were recorded in the political sphere decades ago. The political wackiness of yesteryear is less depressing insomuch as that it does not directly reflect on our nation's current decline, as today's nonsense does; on the contrary, it may help to remind us that things have always looked terrible, at least in the eyes of about half of the nation at any given time.
Thus it is that I have helpfully compiled the following set of ten interesting and moderately amusing YouTube clips depicting the political life of yesteryear.
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:18 PM, Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Yeah, I'll get on that and have it back to you in a bit.
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
On Thu, Apr 2, 2009 at 12:15 PM, Michael Hogan <Michael_Hogan@condenast.com> wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTzCdY6SqDQ&feature=player_embedded <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTzCdY6SqDQ&feature=player_embedded> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTzCdY6SqDQ&feature=player_embedded> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTzCdY6SqDQ&feature=player_embedded> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTzCdY6SqDQ&feature=player_embedded>This is insane. Want to take a shot at tweaking the top of your post to tie in to this so we can post this afternoon?
On 4/2/09 11:08 AM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Probably for the best; I don't know anything about art anyway. Also, here's a video that's making the rounds today and which might work as a hook for the YouTube piece:
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 12:17 PM, Michael Hogan <Michael_Hogan@condenast.com> wrote:
Its interesting but its not the kind of thing I can pay for.
On 4/1/09 9:24 AM, "Barrett Brown" <barriticus@gmail.com> wrote:
Okay, I'll keep my eye out for something along those lines. Also, the New Museum is serving as the launch venue for the global Berlin Wall 20th anniversary festivities and I'm supposed to be attending tomorrow night; would you be interested in a short piece for the Culture blog?
More info:
http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/off-the-wall-berlin-bash-in-new-york/
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302
On Tue, Mar 31, 2009 at 2:49 PM, Hogan, Michael <Michael_Hogan@condenast.com> wrote:
Hey Barrett,
Yes, thanks. It looks great. I'm hoping we can find an opportune moment to use it, same as we did with the Friedman piece. If you hear of a wild political video making the rounds, let me know.
Thanks and best,
Mike
-----------------
Michael Hogan
Executive Online Editor
Vanity Fair
http://www.vanityfair.com
-----Original Message-----From: Barrett Brown [mailto:barriticus@gmail.com] <mailto:barriticus@gmail.com%5D> <mailto:barriticus@gmail.com%5D> <mailto:barriticus@gmail.com%5D> <mailto:barriticus@gmail.com%5D>
Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 01:34 PM Eastern Standard Time
To: Hogan, Michael
Subject: YouTube piece
Howdy-
Did you receive that YouTube piece the other day?
Thanks,
Barrett Brown
Brooklyn, NY
512-560-2302