Al Stefanelli has posted (or “rage blogged,” as the saying goes) a characteristically vulgar and belligerent response to PZ’s post.
On 08 August 2013, Paul Zachary Myers posted about being handed a ‘grenade‘ with the pin pulled out. Basically, he wrote that a woman told him she was raped by Michael Shermer at a conference a while ago.
That Myers chose to ‘reprint‘ this shows not only a complete lack of common sense, but is also indicative of the incredibly spurious depths to which he will sink to garner a few blog hits.
That’s the first two paragraphs, and there’s not much need to read more, is there. What a fucking stupid thing to say. For one thing, Stefanelli was part of this network for a year or so, which means he had access to the stats, which means he must know perfectly well that PZ doesn’t need to “sink” to anything to get a few blog hits. For a second thing, it’s very obvious that PZ didn’t enjoy holding that grenade with the pin pulled out. For a third thing, that “they do it for the blog hits!!1″ is just a trashy lie that trashy people tell each other ninety million times a day no matter what we post.
This is not ‘bringing to light‘ a problem in the skeptic community. It is not an attempt to reveal some sort of dark underbelly of rampant sexual abuse that permeates the skeptic conference circuit. It is yellow journalism, if I even dare to use the word ‘journalism‘ in connection to anything that has come out of Pharyngula for quite some time.
He knows that how? He doesn’t say. Of course not, because he doesn’t know that, and it’s not true.
If Mr. Shermer is guilty of sexual assault, then Mr. Shermer should be made to answer for it. This is a given for anyone. However, these are issues for the courts to decide, and there are protocols in place that address these issues. Are there problems with the system? Yeah, no doubt. Does that have anything to do with the drek that Myers posted? No.
“Yeah, no doubt” – his concern is touching. Does he know what he says in the last two sentences? No. He doesn’t know that and it’s not true.
We have all come to expect little more from these sources than libelous, slimy pieces consisting of sensationalist bullshit, devoid of any modicum of integrity, value or credibility that serve no other purpose than to advance the agenda of the collective purveyors we know as attention whores.
No further comment necessary.