If you've been following the recent Kate "Dead Jews are hilarious" McMillan fiasco recently, you'll certainly have noticed one of the more entertaining defenses from a number of Kate's groupies -- that all Kate (and NAMBLA Boy Richard Evans) did was set a "trap," into which walked one Warren Kinsella, so it's all Warren's fault and Kate was just having some fun and, geez, can't you folks take a joke?
Sure, that sounds reasonable, except that it doesn't quite work that way when the residents of Wankerville are on the other end of the hoax. Then it's not quite so amusing.
As Tim Lambert explains, it was last fall when a hilarious hoax purporting to refute man-made global warming was published. The point of the hoax was, of course, to see how enthusiastically the climate change deniers seized on something that was utter rubbish and, to no one's surprise, a number of them bit. Hard.
The entertainment here was based on the fact that the paper was so clearly, obviously and thoroughly nonsense that it shouldn't have taken anyone more than five minutes to figure out they were being yanked. So, yes, it was just plain funny to watch folks line up to sing its praises, only to expose themselves as utter cranks because of it.
Now, using the recent Kate McMillan logic, those gullible cranks should have had no one but themselves to blame. Not surprisingly, it didn't work that way:
Yesterday, I posted not one but two warnings about a fraudulent website that supposedly exposed the theory of anthropogenic global warming as being completely wrong. I posted in my update who the entire thing traced back to. People are still being caught by this scam. Folks, I do not think this was a hoax. I think it was a quite intentional fraud meant to trap some dissenters. This sort of thing will probably become more common - and more sophisticated...
Again, for the search engine records: geoclimaticstudies.info is a FRAUD. Dr Hiroko Takebe of the Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. The study on the effect of benthic bacteria on global warming detailed in the "Journal of Geoclimatic Studies" is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Benthic Bacteria study + Global Warming is a FRAUD.
Hokey smoke, Bullwinkle ... that entire production was a disgusting, dishonest FRAUD!!!!!! Well, of course it was, you doofus -- it was a beautiful con job to expose a bunch of credulous idiots for what they are, and it worked wonderfully. And yet, notice how the exposed cranks turn the tables and make out the hoaxers to be the villains here.
I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this: When the Right are the perpetrators of the hoax, well, they're just having fun and setting a trap and anyone who falls into it, well, that's their fault and pay no attention to that disparaging of the Holocaust.
But when the Right are the victims of what is clearly a bit of comic genius whose only purpose was to expose a bunch of scientific buffoons, well, damn it, that's just mean-spirited and downright cruel and a fraud and a scam and, damn it, it's just not cricket!
Yes, the Right have some very strong opinions on hoaxes and practical jokes. And they'll be happy to tell you what they are, just as soon as you make it clear who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. Because, to no one's surprise, that apparently makes all the difference.
17 comments:
my neighbor had one of those climatist number tattoos on his forearm. he didn't like to talk about it....
KEvron
The latest theory I've heard [theory mind you], is that a person of Warren Kinsella's strategic cunning and knowledge about the holocaust would be unlikely to fall for a VIN number.
Hence he may have, and I say may have, allowed himself to fall into said trap. For instance, if he did WHOIS and found out it was a trap, and walked into it, it sure does make Kate and Richard look pretty bad. And conservatives by proxy.
Now that's pretty far fetched, first because I genuinely believe Warren fell for it like most normal people would. But then, Warren isn't normal. He's a strategic and cunning intelligent master of gamesmanship. So if he was punked, maybe the punking serves some greater purpose. After all, what could be more purposeful to his new job in the Canadian Jewish Congress than to show that the internet is rife with people who trivialize and make fun of holocaust victims for their own personal enjoyment and profit?
Checkmate Kinsella? Who knows?
"Checkmate Kinsella? Who knows?"
(as if) and kate and dick fell for it! chumps! survivors fucked at both ends!(/as if)
no, i'm not buying....
KEvron
And they'll be happy to tell you what they are, just as soon as you make it clear who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. Because, to no one's surprise, that apparently makes all the difference.
Well ... duh. BTW, nice double-backflip with a triple twist conspiracy theory there, Raph. Tinfoil hat, anyone?
"Tinfoil hat, anyone?"
i looked at it more as a bait, meant for us to hypocitically commend kinsella's masterful move.... again, at the expense of honor.
better pass me one o' them hats....
KEvron
By the way, KEvron, your 1,000,001 comments were deleted over there...
yeah, but pine-sol doesn't mask the smell of kkkate's desperation.
as for my prolificacy, i blame the flamers.
KEvron
and you can tell who the regulars are on kkkate's blog: they're the ones who soon stop using your screen name in their comments, in hopes of avoiding kkkate's radar come purge time.
KEvron, guerilla performance artist
RA — That’s quite the nifty little theory you’ve got going there. On the one hand Warren loses, but on the other he doesn’t win. “Conservative” logic…
Truth be told, folks, I'm going to cut Raphael a little slack on this one.
Yes, what he's proposing regarding Kinsella does sound a little too clever by half but, in all honesty, if I was in Warren's place and I immediately realized what was happening, I'd certainly be tempted to give Kate and Richard as much rope as they wanted.
I have no evidence to suggest that's what happened, but it would be a devilishly clever bit of turnabout, wouldn't it?
Hmmmm... Perhaps.
The question now becomes: Is Warren Kinsella "too clever by half"?
Never mind that spoofing the Holocaust stuff.
Maybe the "blogosphere" is "too clever by half" and has lost sight of fairly clear-cut moral distinctions.
I doubt very much that Kinsella knew he was being duped by the con.
For one thing, it exposed that he wasn't aware that the real tattoos of survivors have much fewer characters than was presented in the faked up photo.
Being somebody who prides themselves on being Canada's #1 Neo-Nazi hunter, it kind of makes Kinsella look foolish that he didn't recognize the fakery right away.
I've seen two of these tattoos in real life. They were not in the same position as this one, and they had a slightly bluish (not black) colouring to them. They ran across the arm, not up and down, like the fake one.
I just assumed (as perhaps Kinsella did) that this tattoos was perhaps different from the ones from the Auschwitz and so looked different and were placed differently.
If I had recieved the email I doubt I would have questioned the authenticity... because come-on... WHO would do that? Seriously how screwed up does a person have to be to fake something like this?
It's something done in such poor taste that it would never occur to most people to question... I mean what the hell??? What if you did question it, and you turned out to be wrong for doing so and you just insulted a survivor by implying that his suffering, pain, loss and the horrors he/she suffered weren't real?
No reasonable person WOULD question a holocaust survivor.
But I am not an expert on the holocaust or Nazis.
No... I don't think Warren intended to let this thing go on and make it look like he couldn't tell a real survivors tattoo from a fakery.
That's where the conspiracy theory unravels. Kinsella never does anything to make himself look bad or unkowledgable intentionally.
The idea that he faked his being duped just to make Kate and Richard look like scumbags of the highest order really does belong in the realm of "You are giving way to much credit" or Tin-Foil Hat Land.
Come on... This is ridiculous.
So now the spin is - Sure Kate and Richard conned Kinsella by representing a faked up email as belonging to a holocaust survivor (in effect pretending to be survivors -- which is a fraud) -- But now that it doesn't wear so well and it's caused a stir, people want to simultaneously laugh at Kinsella for being duped while promoting the idea that Kinsella himself stage-managed the whole thing to make these people look bad.
You people can't have it all three ways... which appears to be what the main reactions are over at the SDA com-box, or in the com-boxes of various blogs that have now written about this.
1)People threatening legal action for those claiming Richard and Kate pulled this off...
2)People laughing it up over how Kate and Richard CONNED by use of FRAUD, Kinsella.
3)Claims that since very few people beyond Winged-Monkey land GET the joke, that Warren himself was the mastermind behind it all, all along to make these two buffoons look worse than they already do.
At some point the Blogging Tories are going to have to pick a position that is CONSISTENT on this. Or far more likely... just add it to the multiple contradictions they already hold dear to their hearts.
Matty's approach over at Duh Politic is especially funny. He thinks that a) we've all done bad things like this (not!) and should therefore back off and stop being so super self-righteous; and 2) Kate MAY apologize, so again... we should just back off because, you know... she MIGHT apologize. What a hopeless nimrod.
"Being somebody who prides themselves on being Canada's #1 Neo-Nazi hunter"
does he, indeed?
does he track down german nazis from the wwii era, or does he contend with north american neo-nazis, who haven't really had much of an opportunity to issue tattoos?
KEvron
I'm always amazed at how idly gossipy Conservatives are. Bunch of hens clucking and whispering about how they "heard somewhere" that Kinsella let the odious prank go through to vilify the perpetrators.
It really shows how the Conservative mind works; a mind that prefers beliefs based on no evidence at all. I'd be more sanguine if they bothered to apologise more often for their baseless, but that practically never happens...until they're sued, that is.
W. O. W.
I've been staying out of the Canadian blogosphere for the past week or so because I am having some cardiac concerns and I didn't want to get myself too worked up, which this government has a bad tendency of causing in me (details are at Saundrie so I won't repeat them here), but I am breaking that silence for a moment to comment on this.
This is absolutely sickening, and something I would not have believed even of KM (although sadly Richard Evans I would have after his NAMBLA/Stormfront redirects of various close to real bloggers domain names) before actually seeing it. Personally, I have a very low opinion of Kinsella that dates back 20 years now for reasons of my own connected to some things I knew about the way he operated as a Liberal operative thanks to a familial connection so I normally would not defend him, but in this case from what I can see he acted in good faith and rightly believed that this sort of thing should have been beyond the pale for anyone even remotely claiming to be a human being given the horrors associated with the Holocaust of the Jews, Gays, Gypsies, and developmentally challenged human beings in their eugenics program. There can be no excuse for this kind of conduct and anyone defending the actions of RE and KM in this have shown their own lack of humanity.
I'd say more but already I can feel my rage really starting to build and at the moment I cannot afford to allow that. I could not though let this go without comment on it even given my situation because of how serious an issue it so clearly is. Only the most sick twisted and disturbed kind of individuals could do something like this and/or defend it under any grounds.
(I meant to post this into this thread but instead posted it in the Dear Stephen Taylor one, so I am doing something I rarely do and copying it into here as well)
BTW RA, there can be no defence of this, and after taking a look I do not see anything remotely resembling the same degree of outrage from the BT side as there was with the Wanda Watkins incident which I would argue was far less offensive than this action. It is your lack of seeing things like this which undercuts any reason to consider you a rational person on the onservative side of thing in my books and I suspect many others as well.
As to this notion of Kinsella letting this go on for a while, given how much he clearly feels pasionately about defending all things tied to the sufferring of the Jewish people I have a hard time swallowing that one. I have to go with RT at 4am on that score. It never ceases to amaze me though how so many Conservatives claim it is "the left" that are full of conspiracy theories to explain away things when time and again we see things like this come from them.
On that note I am dropping back into lurk mode, I don't have the ability to discuss this calmly, at least not for long, and that is not a good thing at the moment.
Hey Scotian... long time no type :)
sorry to hear about your heart troubles and glad you chimed in...
Now stay off "teh intertubes" for awhile and get better!
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