Doesn’t it seem like the Christian Radical Right is passionately interested in shooting themselves in the foot? I mean, isn’t that what Creationism is?
It’s like, they build up an increasing amount of political and social clout over a period of years, through a well-orchestrated grassroots campaign of taking over schoolboards and getting national candidates elected. Then, once they consolidate that power, they make themselves laughingstocks.
The latest example is, of course, Conservapedia.
Oh, sure, the left blogosphere is having a field day with it. It’s like that “You Want it When?” cartoon. But you have to figure that this is the sort of thing offending, not just the far left, but the vast majority of ordinary people who think that Jesus actually didn’t ride on dinosaurs. Aren’t they alienating the constituency they have so painstakingly developed? And isn’t this really nothing but arrogance? The belief that they have so much more power than they actually have, that they can say and do anything and get away with it? And isn’t this, indeed, what got the Republicans booted a mere four months ago?
Yes.
In fact, Pharyngula alludes to this when he titles a post I’m assuming many conservatives are embarrassed by Conservapedia. Because really, you’ve got to be boldly stupid to swallow this shit.
So let’s keep making fun of Conservapedia. It’s so easy!
Here’s my favorite quote:
Everyone is having their fun with Conservapedia, a rightward-tilting alternative to Wikipedia that aims to ensure that future generations of conservatives grow up really dumb.
Which, y’know, is a point.
Finally, here is the Conservapedia definition of Pagan (misspellings gloriously intact):
A pagan is someone who beleives in false gods. The First Commandment is, Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
Most pagans are ancient, like the Greeks and Romans, but there are also modern pagans like witches and Muslims, who do not beleive in Jesus.
Oddly, Conservapedia doesn’t have entries on Witches (despite the fact that the word is linked in the quoted text) or Wicca or heathen or any other Pagan tradition I could think of.
“Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English-speaking users are American.”
That line is taken from their page listing the examples of bias over at Wikipedia. And here I thought I had already seen the limits of how far conservatives would go to cry bias/persecution.
It’s so crazy. So so so SO crazy.
I don’t know if it was serious to begin with…. I’ve heard rumors that it was a parody site to begin with. But assuming it was seriuos since it’s been publicized there’s no way of knowing which entries were original and which have been added by humorously inclined “Liberals”…..
It appears to be the work of Arthur Schafly, so it’s serious, but of course parodies are going to slip in.
That’s kind of the point. These people are so risible that you can’t tell the parody from the real thing.
I would have thought this was a parody, but there already is one, Stephen Colbert’s Wiliality, The Truthiness Encyclopedia:
http://www.wikiality.com/Main_Page
As much as I love Stephen Colbert, I have to admit that Conservapedia is funnier. And I don’t think that many of the articles are plants by liberal invaders (though that will probably change. I’m sure that the parodists are flocking to it.) They have the pure nuttiness that only True Believers can come up with.
Well, Conservapedia was completely down for a few hours today, I assume it was overload because everyone wanted to gawk and point.
Wikiality isn’t, strictly speaking, Colbert’s…
“Wikiality.com is in no way affiliated with Comedy Central, The Colbert Report, or Stephen Colbert, but we’d like to be.”
Conservapedia would be funnier, it’s true, if it weren’t so scary.