McLeroy says what?
Don't ask me why, but the other day I stopped by Don McLeroy's personal website. I hadn't been there in a long while. Maybe I just wanted to see what the Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education was up to in his spare time. And to my surprise, I noticed that McLeroy had since posted his Thoughts on Naturalism and Intelligent Design, the now infamous Sunday school lecture, as if it were something to be proud of. So today I went looking for a memorable howler that goes a little something like this:
That's how it appears in the transcript produced by the Texas Freedom Network, and what it sounds like on the audio recording exposed by the Texas Observer. But in his notes I found a line that instead reads as follows:
I'm not quite sure what to make of all this. Was it a Freudian slip? Did he innocently misspeak? Or could it be that he edited the text after the fact? Either way, I don't think it makes that much of a difference. They have no objective empirical evidence of their own to chip away with, just the objective empirical evidence they stubbornly attempt to chip away at, and to no avail. I'll leave the discovery of any other discrepancies as an exercise for the reader, at least for now.
"Remember keep chipping away at the objective empirical evidence." (my emphasis)
That's how it appears in the transcript produced by the Texas Freedom Network, and what it sounds like on the audio recording exposed by the Texas Observer. But in his notes I found a line that instead reads as follows:
"Remember, keep chipping away with objective empirical evidence." (my emphasis)
I'm not quite sure what to make of all this. Was it a Freudian slip? Did he innocently misspeak? Or could it be that he edited the text after the fact? Either way, I don't think it makes that much of a difference. They have no objective empirical evidence of their own to chip away with, just the objective empirical evidence they stubbornly attempt to chip away at, and to no avail. I'll leave the discovery of any other discrepancies as an exercise for the reader, at least for now.
10 comments:
Nice find!
Glad to see you're contributing to the BPSDB.org service.
That rocks.
Thanks. McLeroy is my target numero uno for pseudoscientific douchebaggery 'round these parts. I'll be sure to pick on him some more in the near future.
Hi there,
Thanks for signing up at BPSDB.org - good stuff. Its exactly the type of thing I had in mind with the concept. and thanks also for adding CBEB's to your blogroll. I've reciprocated - we Texans have to stick together, you know (I'm in Corpus Christi).
Glad to do my part. I'm in the process of moving deep behind enemy lines (East Texas, Bible Belt country).
What part of East Texas? As I child I used to spend summers in Montgomery County, and it was like going to another country.
You'll probably get a chance to come across some classic creationist stupidity in the Letters to the Editor of the local newspaper, so it won't be all bad...
I grew up Walker County, just north of Montgomery. Now I'm a bit northeast of that, but I'd rather not be more specific. I don't want to blow my cover.
Letters to the Editor are good for a laugh, but you should see some of the church signs out here. Yikes!
I know what you're saying. East Texas is a lot more like the Deep South than any other part of Texas. You don't even have to proclaim yourself an atheist; not going to church on Sunday mornings is reason enough to raise suspicion.
My great aunt who lived in Montgomery County married a Jew and they had to change their last name to something less Jewish-sounding. That was in the 1950s, but things haven't really changed much.
I'll chalk this one up to a Freudian slip. It's like when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (?), when talking about the 1968 DNC riots, said something to the effect that, "The policeman isn't there to create disorder. The policeman is there to preserve disorder."
Names and dates might be wrong, but the quote is word-for-word.
http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/
That's a good one. And I'm afraid you might be right. I still think it's funny. He'll never live this one down. I'll have to do a line by line comparison eventually. I can already tell he did some ad-libbing that didn't help.
"What part of East Texas? As I child I used to spend summers in Montgomery County, and it was like going to another country."
Hey! I grew up in Montgomery County! I resent that. :)
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