Mark Hartwig's "Homer Moment"
Mike Argento of the York Daily Record has a great column on Dover board member Bill Buckingham’s “Homer Simpson” moment at the Dover Kitzmiller v. DASD Trial, on October 27th.
Earlier this week, Family News In Focus interviewed Discovery Institute CRC Fellow Mark Hartwig about the Dover trial. Family News editor Pete Winn somehow missed seeing that Hartwig had a “D’Oh!” moment as well.
Here comes Homer (below the fold).
First, here’s Argento on Buckingham, from his Oct. 28th column:
Buckingham said he never read about his adventures on the school board in the newspapers and never talked to anyone about them. He also said he never mentioned creationism at school board meetings or in the press or anywhere, for that matter. So at the time the board was talking about creationism, Buckingham granted an interview to a Fox 43 news reporter. I guess he forgot about that new-fangled invention, videotape. On the tape, which you can see here, Buckingham, wearing the same lapel pin he wore in court Thursday, said he wanted to balance evolution in the classroom with something else, “such as creationism.” Oops. He said that the reporter “ambushed” him and that he was “like a deer in the headlights of a car” and that the newspapers were all reporting that he and the board were talking about creationism and that he thought to himself, “Don’t say creationism.” Double oops. It was like he had a Homer Simpson moment. He was thinking “Don’t say creationism. Don’t say creationism. Don’t say creationism.” And then he opens his yap and says “creationism.” D’oh!
Oh, WWNFS? (What Would Ned Flanders Say?)
Moving on to the Family News interview, here’s DI’s Hartwig talking about Barbara Forrest’s Dover testimony:
The expert witness you mentioned, philosopher Barbara Forrest, is a longtime activist in the origins controversy. The bulk of her effort has gone toward trying to prove that ID is a “Trojan Horse” for sneaking fundamentalist religion into the public schools. Toward that end, she has been searching for any “incriminating” statements that ID proponents may have made at some point in their lives. Perhaps the most fitting term for this is “Borking.” That’s where my article comes in. Her concern was not the substance of the article, which laid out the fundamentals of ID, but the way I described some of its major proponents. In some passages I referred to them as “Christians,” “Evangelicals” or “creationists.” And these were the “incriminating” passages Forrest highlighted for the court. Substance was apparently irrelevant. Even worse, the article and the “incriminating” passages are taken out of context. Forrest claims that her work on ID is historical scholarship. But she missed things that should be no-brainers for genuine historians. For example, it never seemed to register that the article was written for a Christian magazine — a market that would naturally be interested in stories about Christians. And in fact, that was my assignment: to write about the latest trends in Christian thinking about origins.
I can’t sum up better than NM colleague Vance Bass already has:
Ha. That was a good one. He complains that he’s been misinterpreted and “Borked”, and that the substance of his article is ignored, then in the next breath he points out that ID is the latest trend in Christian thinking. Hey, dude, that’s exactly what Forrest was trying to show. Helllloooo?
Well said, Vance.