I wonder what this guy has to say?
Everything you argued was about incompetence. Not willfully covering up the truth. And that is how it is distinguishable from a lie–which is a willful attempt to deceive.
Maybe he needs to bite himself.
You appear to be missing quite a few points here.
Maher is anti-religion because he believes – correctly – that religious beliefs have been and continue to be the cause of a great deal of evil, unfairness, and irrationality in the world today. He is particularly hard on Muslim beliefs – not the people, but what the religion incites them to do – because among the prevalent organized religions today, Islam is one of the most harshly prescriptive.
To cite a simple example, in the US, the likes of devout Catholicism and evangelical Christianity have been and continue to be major drivers of homophobia and anti-abortion ideologies which end up influencing legislation in what is supposed to be secular government. Whereas in countries where Islam dominates, you get the same sort of thing only much worse, including all-out Sharia law, and of course at its worst, the belief that terrorism against western nations is OK because their values are so opposite to what Islam teaches, so they must be evil.
So in the US you had religious nutters not only enacting homophobic laws, but actually doubling down and passing homophobic state constitutional amendments. Even after the Supreme Court ruling, you still have religious nutters refusing to certify gay marriages even though it’s their job to do so, and the cake-bakers refusing to provide cakes to gays on religious grounds, or the Hobby Lobby religious bigots flouting health care laws on religious grounds. Meanwhile, as always, Islam manages to outdo Christianity by miles on many of these things, helped along by stone-age thinking; the Sultan of Brunei recently decreed that the appropriate treatment of gays is to stone them to death in the town square, and passed laws accordingly, because Islam says so.
So when it comes to his criticism of organized religions, Maher basically has it right. Beyond that, I don’t have to agree with Maher on everything to consider him to be intelligent, funny, and informative, which is another point I made. He’s a bit over the top in his suspicions about vaccines, for example, though he’s never been nearly as radical on that subject as some media have unfairly made him out to be. And the “germ theory denial” thing seems to be mostly made up.
He’s compared organized religion to a mental disorder that keeps people from thinking rationally. The language may be colorful but is fundamentally correct – see above.
It was hard to get past the first sentence, which claims that Maher is “an outspoken, unapologetic and imperviously self-satisfied comedian and political commentator”. But at least that’s better than the original intro which called him “an asshole comedian”. :rolleyes: That entire article is just a shameless hit piece. If that’s where you get your information it explains a lot. If you want a more or less balanced view go to the Wikipedia page on Maher, not the hateful bullshit on RationalWiki.
Correct, and that’s what I said.
And now you’re changing your story, right in the same post! We both agree that in the context of the discussion about her new book, she was incompetent and not dishonest. End of argument. And indeed the evidence for that is how easily that archaic legal phrase “death recorded” could confuse someone unfamiliar with English legal history.
So I don’t know what the point of this digression about her other book is. Did she lie in that one, or was that more incompetence? I have no idea. It has nothing to do with this discussion. It only underscores the fact that Wolf is not a reliable source of information, which I acknowledged right from the beginning.
I’m not missing the point because I clearly said later, in post #26, that:
Wolf was inexcusably sloppy in her research, no doubt about it. If her central thesis is that there were many executions for homosexuality later than 1835 (the Victorian period is formally considered to have started in 1837) then she’s very much mistaken, and her mistake was based on an egregiously incorrect reading of a strange phrase in English law. But if the point is that severe legal consequences for gays continued through the Victorian era and indeed well into the 1960s in England (and until 1980 and 1982 in Scotland and Northern Ireland, respectively) then that would certainly be correct. The Alan Turing story alone is pretty shocking. There is much that could be said here by a competent journalist, which it doesn’t appear that Wolf is.
She “can’t have it both ways” only in the sense that changing her story seriously undermines her credibility. But if the book is revised to reflect the correct facts, as I said above, there is still a compelling story to be told about the shocking persecution of gays in Britain, not just in the Victorian era, but right up until the major reforms of 1967. I’m just not sure that Wolf should be the one to tell it, given her track record.
It certainly would be if it was true. The facts are that Turing was not actively persecuted; he drew the attention of the police to himself by reporting he had been burgled by an associate of his boyfriend.
His death occurred more than two years after the prosecution, when he appeared to be in good heart and planning a holiday. Turing had been experimenting with gold plating, which uses cyanide, and it seems more likely than not that his death was accidental.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Personal_life
None of which diminishes the fact that the treatment of gay people at the time was horrific.
That’s still active persecution.
No, it is forcing the issue - no different than Oscar Wilde.
Wilde filed suit against Queensbury for saying Wilde was gay. Queensbury defended himself by showing that Wilde was, in fact gay, and thus it was not defamatory but true.
Whether you disagree with the law or not (and I quite vehemently do) the law as it stood listed homosexuality as a crime and its commission had been proven in open court. There was no choice but to prosecute at that point.
England knew that Wilde was gay before that, hell illiterate Chinese peasants in the backwoods of Shindon knew it, but nobody made an issue of it until they were made to. That is not “active persecution” that is “reluctant prosecution.”
Just when you think you’ve gotten out, the bullshit pulls you back in.
Oh, he’s a hysterical guy, good for laughs when he says “measles is not really that deadly a disease” (the 100,000 or so annual fatalities from it around the world are no biggie), “I would never get the swine flu vaccine or any vaccine”, “there are no long-term studies done on vaccinated vs. unvaccinated” (false) and other classic antivax horseshit, repeated over the years on multiple shows.
Yeah, except for a long stream of “blips”, he’s just a regular guy. :dubious:
Oooh, the shill gambit yet again. You’ve got something in common with Maher there - he wants us to distrust vaccines because, y’know, Pharma is Bad.
When he had RFK Jr.(Mr. Vaccination-Is-Like-The-Holocaust) on his show, Junior was flogging lies about Dr. Paul Offit (inventor of a lifesaving rotavirus, staunch immunization advocate and loathed by antivaxers). Maher played up the same theme.
Maher: "It astounds me that liberals, who are always suspicious of corporations…and defending minorities, somehow when it comes to this minority that’s hurt, it’s like, “You know what? Shut the fuck up and let me take every vaccine that Merck wants to shove down my throat.”
“Maher even concludes the interview by saying, “I applaud you for championing this, because we need to talk about this more,” to which RFK, Jr. responded by praising Maher for his “bravery” and complaining how the networks won’t let him on.”
r/inceltears
The Beauty Myth Stat was actually quoted from a source she used.
Matthew Sweet, the bbc guy, actually said (twice) that he got the death recorded phrase (not a legal term) from the obo website, yet there is no definition there. He later said Thomas Silver (the person referenced as the 14 year old) raped a 6 year old. However, there is no mention of this rape anywhere in the obo. He backpeddled in a later tweet and said he got the def from the digitalpanopticon, the site linked to the obo without admitting he erred on air. Interestingly, he went on in the interview to lecture her that the obo was not a good resource, as it only contained names, dates and verdicts…yet this is counter to the definition given on the obo itself as being the most complete and largest most detailed dB of archives … ever. Almost like he had never actually been to the site prior to the interview and was reading a script. On a later tweet he was hailing the obo as “excellent.” So I tweeted him and asked why he changed his mind a day later and he muted me. I asked the obo (via twitter) where I could find this definition and they told me clearly that there was no definition of death recorded and never was. Then they blocked me!?
So then I went to the digital Panopticon website and found a definition, written by Richard Ward. Big problem here right away: he’s never once used nor mentioned “death recorded” in his entire academic career! I based this on a Boolean enhanced google search but, I also downloaded all of his publicly available research on the UK justice system, and executions, including two large books from Google Play…indeed, no death recorded. So I went to Wikipedia on the 23 of May, no death recorded. Went again on the 24th, and to my surprise…it was there. Went to page history on death recorded, it had just been put up on the 24th of May (interview was the 21st). Strangely it was quoting Richard Ward’s definition but mainly cited the interview as references?? The next day someone added a reference to an old fairy tale and fable dictionary and a reference to a 1906 dictionary. Problem here is the dictionary did have “death recorded” but made no mention of a pardon or anything remotely close to a pardon. The dictionary itself is not even an official legal or professional dictionary.
So I went back to the digital Panopticon and found the sources for the page on “sentencing”. Not one of those books had “death recorded.”
So then I saw people saying she should have gone to the digital Panopticon, but that’s another problem: it was added to the obo as a link in August of 2018. So unless she was still researching after 2018, which based on publication schedules I highly doubt, then she would not have been able to. It also does not appear in any of the dictionaries of 1798, 1811, or 1835 (is link it but you can do your own research) hint: TE Tomlins. Now there is an entry for “sentence of death”, and strangely this is the definition that seems closest to the post 21May now popular definition being thrown about by twitteristotians, but there is nary a mention of pardon or that they were not eventually executed…more like a delay, or a commutation of the sentence to transportation or hard labor.
But that’s all in the weeds…I read the book and if you live in the US, you did not (it was published in the UK, not in the US). The premise of the book has very little to do with executions, it’s about the increased criminalization of homosexuality (and other personal/private lifestyle preferences), and about censorship. (It says it right there on the cover).
But here is the most interesting thing. Matthew Sweet wrote a book called “Inventing the Victorians.” I’m not a historian (I’m actually a coder and an online librarian), but I know enough about that period (being touted as the UK’s Victorious Age in most school learning) and his book would be undermined by her book. According to Sweet, all that bad stuff we hear about The Victorian Age was invented…things were great! There was no vice, no graft, no suffering…apparently history was unfair to the Victorians and we should “love them.” Most disturbing about this book is a chapter titled “Presumed Innocent” in which he talks about the acceptability at that time for adult men to “intimately court” young women down to the age of 10!
So again, hate Wolf, hail Sweet, or question anyone’s findings…but do some research and thinking on your own so we can have an informed discussion or debate. I only read Outrages as she was being praised here up until May 19, by the same papers that then attacked her and who also never really looked beyond Sweet’s proclamations.
Here are some points to ponder as I close:
-BBC is state controlled here. Every tv buyer must purchase a bbc license, meaning we are forced to have it on our tells.
-Matthew Sweet has a DPhil (a doctorate) in the impact of fiction on 19th century England, it’s focus is entirely on Wilkie Collins, a prominent fiction author at the time…not quite “historian” material. (His prior job was as a “Dr Who” critic and self proclaimed film historian.
-Wolf has a DPhil in literature and her book was fact checked, among many others, by Baroness Helena Kennedy of Shaw (she’s a member or former member of the House of Lords) and a prominent lawyer/legal scholar and former Ward (dean) of Manchester at Oxford. Another is Sir STEPHEN Sedley, a former highest court in England Chief Magistrate. But we are taking the Dr Who expert’s word as historical fact?
-The digital Panopticon is funded by private investors, one of which is JISc, who, alongside Houghton Mifflin & Pearson, we’re named as key elements by your President Obama for new education initiatives in 2012. Essentially these companies are writing all curriculum for the US and UK public education systems online.
-Matthew Sweet posted a 44 minute version of the interview, but the interview I heard was 55 minutes in total. Almost 5 minutes of commentary during the Wolf segment is missing…and it may be my imagination, but her voice sounds lower and slower on Sweet’s posted version (I noticed the producer of his show has an expertise in “final cut” and Adobe Premier Pro” according to linked in).
-The Wikipedia page for death recorded was added on May 24 by Xavierltzm, a Wikipedia editor that has been flagged numerous times on Wikipedia for manipulating definitions to fit various political leanings (he’s softened criticism of the bbc on multiple occasions). (Just go to the “page history” on wiki and follow the “breadcrumbs”. He also, more recently, has been making changes and trying to undo positive mentions on the Naomi Wolf wiki page…again, it’s all in the page histories.
Finally, and the big question, why won’t her USA publisher specify which “additional questions” delayed the book’s release? They were asked in a June 21 article by the Guardian this specific question and declined to comment. They also delayed the book two days after it made the American social celebrity Oprah Winfrey’s “Best Books of Summer list, a list on which it remains…a publisher delaying at a point like this is unprecedented!
As my heroes of detective novels would say: there’s something amidst here!
Okay then.
Seems like misdirection upon the discovery of a legitimate, yet not crucial, mistake.Every writer makes mistakes hence multiple additions. (For example: Pluto turns out to be an asteroid, and Hal didn’t come alone till 2013 vis 2010,) Also there is no agreed upon definition for this death recorded phrase as defined by Richard Ward via Matthew Sweet (who, btw, used to be a Dr Who critic and has a doctorate about fiction in the 19th century). Per my last post I did my own research, and I read his book: they are counter-views of the same period and opposing social critiques. Regardless of the mistake (which is not the premise of her book per Amazon, Houghton, Verago, and Other sites) it seems pretty aggressive for him to attack like that (on live air) and go on to ensure it goes viral by tweeting his cut video to a guy who seems to be a bit on the 24th. Check out all of the tweets for (at) thymetikon he has tweeted once since and only tweeted gibberish up till the time he tweeted out that 44 minute version of a 55 minute video. (Scroll back to one of his earliest tweets August 2018, look at the chart he mapped out, very spooky). She admitted her mistake and I thought showed dignity and class despite the lack thereof on the part of Sweet. So why such a disproportionate backlash? What’s really going on here, I’ve never seen anything like it. Did she stumble upon the Queen being an Alien in the book? It’s really strange!
Liar, ignorant b&tch, disingenuous? Wow…who hurt you? Your unbridled hatred of this person just made me order three of her books…cause now I’m curious and I wonder where such aggression can stem from. So, um, thank you?