Gee where have we seen this before? Chris Mooney issues a press release on his upcoming publication, then he wonders why people aren’t accepting it because the real publication isn’t done yet and all we have is a cover and some fluff.
It’s BEST practice.
Apparently, given his defense, it was not the reaction he was looking for.
Here’s his defense over at the paid PR shill website DeSmog blog.
On Monday I announced my new book The Republican Brain, which will be due out next spring. And I provided a brief description, as well as layering on plenty of nuance, like a good liberal, to make sure it wouldn’t be misinterpreted.
So much for that!
Beginning with Roger Pielke, Jr. (not technically a conservative, but, well…), and then spreading to climate “skeptic” blogs like Watts Up With That and Marc Morano’s Climate Depot, conservatives are claiming that the book is a form of “new eugenics” and that it describes them as “genetically/mentally/psychologically inferior,” and so on.
All of this is completely without foundation, and in fact, contradicted by my own book announcement, which discusses the many strengths (as well as weaknesses) of the conservative psychology, and describes the left-right difference as a kind of necessary yin and yang.
And none of the people saying these things (including over 100 commenters at Watts’ site) have read the book because it isn’t out yet, and won’t be for 6 months. In fact, it is still being edited.
So, pre-release, “with nuance “…to make sure it wouldn’t be misinterpreted.“? Heh. Even worse than Muller’s PR mess.
I loved the comment from Hank there:
Hank_ – Thu, 2011-11-10 11:20Maybe you should consider delaying the release even longer, or maybe change the title? Doesn’t look like the reception is what you expected.
ShrNfr says:
November 10, 2011 at 3:00 pm
No, that’s an error at the top of this post. I assume you’re referring to clicking on the parody cover Anthony created. That goes to the (wrong) link
http://www.desmogblog.com/republican-brain-science-why-they-don-t-believe-science-or-many-other-inconvenient-truthsjpg
It shouldn’t have the “jpg” on the end (“.jpg” is wrong too), so it should just be
http://www.desmogblog.com/republican-brain-science-why-they-don-t-believe-science-or-many-other-inconvenient-truths
Mods, I don’t have the power to to fix it or else I would.
reply: fixed
Anthony,
It appears that Hank’s comment that you note (at the end of the post) HAS BEEN DELETED ! ! ! (I decided to take quick look at the Mooney article and the comments, though I almost lost my dinner reading the crap by Mooney . . . ).
But there is no comment from Hank there. I thought about posting a comment asking about it, but you have to register to do so. I WAS NOT going to do that.
WHAT A JOKE Mooney is . . .
I’m a life-long conservative, life-long member of the Republican party, I support my candidates and the party. Also a graduate of engineering and business schools. Life-long engineer, researcher, and technology entrepreneur. I own a technology company. Teach engineering and science. Practically every one I know in my profession (and I know plenty of people) are either Republican or conservatives whether members of the Democratic, Republican or avowed Independents.
What possible data does this English Major know-nothing have to prove that being conservative equates to being ignorant or dismissive of science? Absolutely nothing in my life experience has shown me that someone’s political affiliation, religious beliefs, or race or creed, had anything whatsoever to do with their proclivity for science.
Shame on Mooney.
Right.
If this academic president can suffer from that kind of cognitive-dissonance and groupthink disorder to apparently put out of his brain that perhaps one of their own colleagues might have taken indecent liberties with children…then what is to stop him from looking the other way in a recent university whitewash of another colleague, an arrogant scientist who committed blatant fraud??
But you know…it is rampant. I mean….look at this current U.S. Administration looking the other way when their Department of Energy [excuse me but since when should THEY be a bank??] guarantees billions of dollars of robbed taxpayer money into the hands of the greedy-greenies when foreknowledge already existed that these “companies” would go bankrupt???
I am not so sure we are evolving as a species. Actually….some of our species ARE. So there is hope…
But these IDIOT bureaucrats, academe-ocrats, corporo-crats, and bureaucra-scientists…have GOT TO GO.
Let’s throw in the international bank-ocrats, and the bloody Federal Excrete, too for good measure.
All of them…the GROUPTHINK-O-CRATS. They are ruling the world. Second-handers all, they have no right or no place to exert their idiocy on us.
Time to light the torches. Okay….rant off.
Cheers.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
If you publish a book explaining a supposed fact – such as that conservatives are stupid or mean or anti-science – then people who see that book and read it will infer that the supposed fact must have been established already as a fact. After all, no one would be stupid or mendacious enough to provide a lengthy explanation for a fact without having established it as a fact before hand, would he?
It’s hoodwinkery.
The cover Mooney has chosen proves beyond a doubt he is not smarter than the average person.
It proves that he is, in fact, an idiot.
Any intelligent person can see that. No intelligent person would use such an offensive cover.
I am usually not so blunt but I thought this would make the point more clear.
The Guardian has put up a new piece. Apparently based on a warning from the International Energy Agency (IEA), it warns we must change our fossil fuel-based infrastructure now, since any fossil fuel-burning power plants, inefficient buildings, etc that are built now will “lock in” elevated carbon emissions for decades.
It regurgitates chunks from the IPCC that are discredited, highlights holding the global warming to below the pulled-from-their-freckle 2°C rise where many catastrophic things will be triggered, which involves keeping the atmospheric CO2 concentrations below 450ppm. Sample:
Has graphs, which always makes Climate Science™ more authoritative and even more truer. And there’s also the required statement from a Greenpeace “climate expert.”
They prop up this stuff, we tear it down, they throw it up again without admitting there was ever anything wrong with it at all and wait for new converts to join them. It’s like going to the temple of a primitive village and knocking over their heathen idol, and as soon as you leave they put it back upright and resume worshiping. Frequently with a quick human sacrifice so their village god won’t punish them for being disturbed.
We’re smart enough not to fall for this crud, they accept it unquestioningly, and Mooney thinks we are the ones with a problem?
“Say, hon, it says here there’s a new book claiming political conservatives are stupid.”
“Another one? (Yawn) Pass the ketchup.”
This child, Chris Mooney, should immediately order his book recalled because of the typographic error in the subtitle …
… as in The Day After Tomorrow. Apparently it has never crossed his immature mind that the core problem for his cabal is the utter foolishness of their pseudo-scientific religious cult.
We have seen this before. Erich Von Daniken and other similar authors pushed pseudo-science into the headlines and into the mainstream also by wrapping little morsels of Science with many layers of alarmist propaganda. Those authors of the late 1960’s into the 1970’s, just like today, also roped in a lot of shallow thinkers, people that are tantalized by teasing bits of info but whom cannot complete a logical thought progression and are ultimately unable to admit they have been had.
Mooney would have been quite at home scribbling for Omni Magazine, and they would have been happy to have him.
I prefer Andrex. It’s cheaper, softer and more absorbent.
So Mr. Mooney, you have a degree in English and teach expressive writing to scientists. Their knowledge does not rub off so your book can be seen as it is– a political examination of a party to which you do not belong NOT a scientific treatise.
Hitler was left wing. He was a socialist. The myth that he was right wing came from Stalin. The falling out the 2 had was that Stalin believed in International Socialism, while Hitler was more into National Socialism. However, the operative word for both is socialism.
Somewhat OT, I was browsing through Amazon and I spotted a book called ‘Eaarth’ by Weepy Bill. I was amused to note that ‘customers who bought this also bought The Encyclopedia of Natural Magic’.
Why doesn’t that surprise me?
Evidently Amazon is on the act.
amazon.com/Republican-Brain-Science-They-Believe/dp/1118094514/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321030192&sr=1-1
Dig it.
First you read this:
then you read this:
Looks like we caught Amazon in a bold faced lie which is a bigger story than Mooney’s book.
Oh never mind about the Amazon deal. Pre-ordering is the same as buying. Mibad.
Bill Illis says:
November 10, 2011 at 8:51 pm
“Any intelligent person can see that. No intelligent person would use such an offensive cover.”
I dunno about that. It doesn’t hurt Ann Coulter’s book sales.
But I’d say to Chris “Sir, you are no Ann Coulter”.
Indifference doesn’t sell books. Love and hate both will. Howard Stern, for example, instinctively knew this. When Stern was working for KABC in NYC and management was dismayed at his offensiveness but weren’t blind to the radio show’s dominant rating they polled listeners and asked “Why do you listen to the Howard Stern show?” Of those that liked Stern the answer was “I can’t wait to hear what outrageous thing he’s going to say next”. Of the those that disliked Stern the answer was “I can’t wait to hear what outrageous thing he’s going to say next”.
So the people who follow Mooney are those who love him and those who hate him. No one else has ever heard of him and probably never will. Chris is an acquired [dis]taste.
Rick Bradford says:
November 10, 2011 at 6:55 pm
“yet they are still being beaten hollow in the court of public opinion by a bunch of old fools who lounge around in bathrobes doing jigsaw puzzles”
Everyone wishes they could afford to lounge around in bathrobes doing jigsaw puzzles. The truth is most people aren’t clever enough to figure out how to acquire that level of freedom from other concerns.
I’ve heard Ann interviewed many times. She’s very bright, and I’m confident quite willing to admit (with a smile) that she could be wrong. She’s a commentator, and a very funny one, too. If you’re going to write humorous political commentary, you need to stick to your guns.
/Mr Lynn
“…and describes the left-right difference as a kind of necessary yin and yang.”
Oh, dude!
>>
John A says:
November 10, 2011 at 1:32 pm
Fabulous stuff from the same person who thinks that General Pinochet was a hero of freedom and that Hitler was left-wing. No really.
<<
There’s an old axiom: in discussions and debates–the one who mentions Hitler first loses. Since you started it, I quote from the inside book cover of Jonah Goldberg’s book “Liberal Fascism:”
“‘Liberal Fascism’ offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler’s National Socialism and Mussolini’s Fascism.
“Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term ‘National Socialism’). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities–where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.”
I don’t find much there that is right wing or conservative. Those are mainly liberal and left wing policies.
Jim
Hitler was a Leftist.
Maybe that cover would be appropriate for the “Open Mind” website?
I must propagate this! Sorry!
November 9, 2011 at 1:46 pm
Perhaps there is another parallel. Mr Mooney doesn’t realise it, his claims are something like Diedrik Stapel’s research! 😉
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diederik_Stapel
via Luboš
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/11/diederik-stapel-liberalism-codified-as.html
Wow, Okay so I am a Conservative. This man is quite offensive. I do not ‘believe’ in Global Warming, in other words catastrophe to follow an increase in Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere. I do not ‘doubt’ that the world is warming, nor that Carbon Dioxide is a contributing factor to it. I do not believe in ‘Death Panels’ in the Health Care bill, however I realize that a Government has NO contractual obligation enforceable by the law whereas that is always a viable option with private health insurance policies and that eventually when money gets tight the Government, in a single payer system, of necessity must tax more or cut services… What amazes me is that people like Mooney take a code word and make it seem like that is what Republicans are talking about explicitly… If a doctor says someone is “Circling the Drain” he does not mean they are having fun in the bath tub. When Republicans/Conservatives or Democrat/Conservative say things like Deregulate, they do not mean get rid of all rules, rather they mean chuck out the rules that are simply bureaucratic nightmares and make it easier to leverage competition into the business world or streamline innovation/production. But enough about trying to get into politics here. I am a Conservative and proud of the ideology that I follow. From the short blurb I read he does not even understand what Conservatives even believe.
I see that the American Congress is also not waiting for the peer review of the BEST Report to use its results for a Congressional Cliimate Briefing to “…Push The End of Climate-Change Skepticism”. http://democrats.naturalresources.house.gov/pr@id=0162.html
Can you imagine how a paper supporting an opposing or alternative view would be treated? In fact, we know, because those sorts of papers can’t even get accepted for the peer review process, let alone leapfrog over the results.