Further developments in saga of YNH – William – bilbo – Milton C – PollyO – and “Tom Johnson.”
“Tom Johnson” was also another alias, although his story was loosely based on things I had heard other general students say. The conference context or whatever was, as already mentioned, obviously false. When Chris contacted me, I made up a story about being a grad. student as an explanation about where the story came from because I didn’t want the Tom character to get exposed as false.
Chris Mooney commented on that confession. He said he was shocked and appalled.
However, he has not bothered to apologize to, for instance, me. He or he and Sheril Kirshenbaum banned me from commenting at The Intersection soon after I began trying to get them to do a better job of justifying their claims and to criticize their energetic and often inaccurate bashing of new atheists. Commenters who agreed with them were not banned or even moderated, no matter how abusive their comments were. One “bilbo” repeatedly called me a liar after I posted a list of questions for M and K. Note what William just said:
I posted most often as “milton c.” and “bilbo.” I also appeared as “seminatrix” and “philip jr.,” and I believe I posted as “petra” on the value of science blogs thread. My posting under multiple names on the intersection was much like YNH: out-of-context sniping and trying to make a chorus of agreement when I was challenged.
Yet Mooney and Kirshenbaum found that perfectly acceptable, while I was banned. The ban is still in effect, despite what they have just learned. These are not honest people. We knew that, but boy does this underline it. These are shockingly dishonest people.
Comments
126 responses to “Exposed”
I’ll keep on Mooney’s back about unbanning you until he
1) Makes a solid case.
2) Unbans you.
3) Bans me.
In light of recent events, (1) doesn’t seem tenable, so…
Why does William’s trail of lies and defunct sock-puppets keep trickling out, apologies coming only after someone else does the work of exposing them? It’s a gross oversight to have not thought initially to mention the Tom Johnson affair in his apology considering the ruckus it raised across many blogs.
gillt,
I have a suspicion that when William claims to not remember all of his socks, he is telling the truth. The “Tom Johnson affair” seems to have been an even greater oversight than the entire YNH fiasco. I can’t think of anything he could have done to top <i>that</i>.
Nevertheless, there are countless past threads which have been rendered worse than worthless once the subset of known socks are considered. There are probably many other socks we’ll never know of, and once specific cases are brought up by commenters who were at the receiving end, he might remember several more.
This sort of peripheral damage, in sum, for what it has done to perceptions alone, is likely much worse than the YNH affair and the Tom Johnson affair combined.
And of course, Mooney or Sheril, if they had been critical, could have preempted this entire William affair. However, their treatment of comments has been partisan in the worst sense of the word.
Earlier in the Buddha thread, when this thing first broke, I expressed my interest at what the fallout would be for the bloggers who uncritically accepted YNH’s claims. I should have been more broad, it appears.
You’re right, Gillt, William also didn’t own up to Milton C until others “reminded” him of the similarities. I wonder what’s happening next. Who knows, maybe it turns out to be one of the Colgate twins? I’m usually not one for conspiracy theories, but this whole story is getting beyond ridiculous, and Mooney’s behavior is more evasive than ever.
Well, you no doubt saw what I wrote there. It can’t be just an apology and then business as usual. It’s not just that Mooney pushed lies, that he can claim he didn’t know were lies. He used them to push a particular line, to stoke a fire that he should now have the decency to extinguish. All this stuff about the rifts among atheists – what was that “schism” piece called? – it may not all be made up – the Paul Kurtz thing seems real, but also has other motivations involved – but there was a certain very visible part of it which was just that – made up, but believed and pushed into the limelight. We are not the ones who have to do anything now, the ball is very much in the M&K court, but the thing we have to do is be as shrill and strident as only New Atheists can be in our insistence that the edifice built on these lies, or at least those parts of it that can be shown to be, may no longer be lived in by the accomodationists. This is their “rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian” moment, so they may as well give up.
Ophelia,
He didn’t let me appeal on your behalf.
http://zachvoch.blogspot.com/2010/07/mooney-must-really-hate-ophelia.html
I didn’t think Mooney could make himself look worse, but I guess you just proved me wrong there, Zach. Looking back at the interminable Oedipus thread, I see I wrote there on June 26th (two days before the first notpology from Will):
” I fear Mooney probably knows more than he would like to admit, because he seems to be the idol of the guy fabricating the sock blog and, if that’s the case, wouldn’t the fan want the idol somehow to know what a service was being done for him?”
Now I’m really starting to wonder. Well, no, I’m not. If Mooney removed your question about Ophelia (the other option being what? he has software in place to do it automatically?), then we know more about his character than we ever wanted to. Talk about singlehandedly destroying your own cause…
So far, what do we know? We know from “Will” that he was “Tom Johnson” and that he offered “proof” of Tom’s reality to Mooney, who has said he’s seen evidence of same. I’m less than 100% convinced that Mooney really thought Tom was real. I don’t suppose any of that exchange has been archived anywhere, huh?
Jeezis. They simply deleted your comment. Unfuckingbelievable.
How can they still think I’m the bad guy here?!
As Ophelia and Zach already know, I’ve resubmitted the question there, clearly stating that I did a grab in case they want to censor.
Stewart: ” I don’t suppose any of that exchange has been archived anywhere, huh?”
TB’s claiming he was involved in the exchange between Mooney and Tom Johnson.
I’ve updated my post. They did it again when I tried to direct another commenter there.
They’ve seemed to be working under ‘conclusions first, then find supporting evidence’ for a while now. I thought as much back when the accommodation wars started, and Tom Johnson pretty much confirms it.
Saw what TB claimed. Didn’t see him offering more than an assertion. We had tons of those from all of William’s socks for months. In other words: so what?
Stewart,
If your comment doesn’t go through, let me know and I can add it to my post.
My comment at the Intersection, still awaiting moderation, just jumped from 40 to 41. Something got inserted before me, but I don’t know what.
Zach, I e-mailed the grab to you 17 minutes ago.
Mooney just came on to thank “TB, and others who are waiting to know all the facts.”
Which he has? Or doesn’t have? Or needs long deliberations about before presenting?
On the Tom Johnson thing, I’m willing to hold out until Chris finally tells us everything that lead him to believe it was authentic. There are some very basic steps here which should have been beyond William’s ability to avoid in fact-checking… but nevertheless.
With the censorship thrown in, my patience is wearing, however.
Ophelia, I just noticed your comment at PZ’s site.
What seems underappreciated is that William admitted to Tom Johnson only after the evidence came out. Most of it starts here. Later I showed two similar Milton C. and Tom Johnson quotes, and after that I say that Tom Johnson “sounds” like YNH. This all came out before the latest confession.
So there is enough there to link William to Tom without the confession, in my view. But the confession does put a solid end to it.
Based on past history, “which he’s waiting for other people to forget about or get tired of calling him on”. Mooney’s history is fraught with assertions whose evidence is alluded to but simply never materializes.
Seriously, I’m waiting for him to write an ebook about the situation and go back to the good old stock response “Buy my book!” when met with criticism or questioning. And then once you do, the issue will have lost momentum and he’ll simply ignore your insightful questions of the actual content of said book.
Why bother with the banning / unbanning ?(except on matters of principle !). Its clear that Mooney is not listening whether you post or not. And that for all of his claims of better communication , he doesn’t seem to understand how important *listening* is.
Besides it looks like his blog supports trackbacks. You could post on your blog and send a trackback ping.
William: “When Chris contacted me, I made up a story about being a grad. student as an explanation about where the story came from because I didn’t want the Tom character to get exposed as false.”
Both Mooney and William are not telling the whole story and for the life of me I can’t imagine why they’re withholding any detail at this point.
Mooney has also added comments to the original “My Thanks to ‘Tom Johnson’” thread, for those who want to keep tabs.
Gillt’s last point must have a very interesting explanation, which we may never get.
So Zach made it through with an acrostic. Autofilter? I’m still in moderation, over an hour and a half later.
Haha yeah. I avoided using ruder words :P
Excuse me – bananas?
I noticed that through association, I was thinking of fruit.
I also worried that random words would give too much insight into my psychology. haha
You should definitely be pondering the implications of ‘hobgoblins’ then, Zach :) Nice end-around.
They are really, gobsmackingly unbelievable, those two. Every time I think I couldn’t possibly lose any more respect for them, they go and demonstrate that the current depth of my disdain <i>just isn’t enough</i>. Crikey. Ophelia, you deserve so much better.
One wonders if Mooney hasn’t included some of “Tom Johnson”‘s comments in a piece he intends to publish professionally. Or already has.
Deepak – oh, because of the principle, obviously.
Drumroll – from Mooney:
“I have now figured out what is going on here and will post more shortly.”
Mooney is bottomlessly amazing. At comment 49 (long after my comment was posted, so that confirms that I’m still banned) he says “Thanks, TB, and others who are waiting to know all the facts.” The one commenter he dignifies with a name is the one who is still kissing his bum in spite of all the malicious crap he’s been revealed to have done.
How can you start off a post with “bottomlessly” and finish with the assertion it’s still being kissed?
I like “bottomlessly.” It’s something I picked up from a review or essay by Martin Amis, years ago – he and Salman Rushdie went to see Four Weddings and a Funeral and when it was over Mart said to Salman, “Well that was bottomlessly horrible.”
I have nothing against the word… it was just the, er, juxtaposition.
That Mooney thread is a real train wreck, really hard to look away.
That is what is called ‘framing’ (on TB’s side) and being attentive to ‘tone’ (on Mooney’s). Very effective, no?
A good penance, I think, for Mooney, now that he has taken holy orders in Cambridge, and drunk deep at the Templeton spring, would be to refund the money people paid for his book. Obviously, it’s a bunch of crap.
Fortunately, I got mine free – Mooney sent it to me!
That’s both funny and sad.
The Intersection was always off my radar because I find that stuff uninteresting even in principle. It’s like the “I have people skills!” guy in Office Space.
At the same time I found it odd that people disliked M&K so much, but not odd enough for me to care. So from a previously disinterested party let me say: I now see why.
FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU!!!
I cannot be a grown-up about this. It’s delicious delicious delicious delicious delicious. Yeah, I’m rightfully gobsmacked at Mooney’s incredible continued Ophelia ban, but the pasting he’s taking – it makes me shiver.
Ditto to what Oedipus said. Ok, I knew they were opposed to my line of thinking, but there’s a difference between being an opponent and being a trasher of the rules of decency and a below-the-belt fighter who tries to make it seem the other way round.
The following comment from me is “awaiting moderation” at Kirshenooneykwokenbaumland:
Use acronyms haha
Sudden talk of hobgoblins might be a good attention getter on this issue.
Is this telling, or what. The Intersection commenter Jon says:
“Anyway, again, this is a time suck. I think this is enough for me.”
… and then no new comments appear at all… for 13 minutes.
@Stewart
Well, due to the moderation comments come in waves. Whenever they have a dustup like this, eventually it hits a point where everything goes into moderation (there’s probably a setting to crank up filters when people post multiple times, or possibly just based on the absolute volume of comments being posted — that’s my theory, anyway).
Yeah, Jon’s a real piece of work. He doesn’t seem to have cared whether or not the Tom story was true, so long as it taught a good moral lesson.
Wait a second….
Paul,
I think it catches words like “moderation,” things with links, “ophelia,” and “new atheist”
and Bar Mitzvah?
Ophelia’s new code name for The Intersection: Hip Aloe. Or Halo Pie? There’s also Hoe Pail and Oil Heap, but those don’t sound very flattering.
Having hung around with biology professors for 30 years now, I just knew the “Tom Johnson” story was wrong from the beginning and I made some comments at the time. That Chris could read criticisms of the story and respond by saying the source was reliable is beyond belief. I gave up on the Intersection some time ago assuming I couldn’t think any less of Chris, but now I see I was wrong.
The posts are going up one by one, more than an hour after they were submitted (lots of people doing creative circumlocutions on The Benson Question).
I can just see Kirshenooneybaum sitting there at the keyboard, picking out the lucky winners Madeline Kahn-style.
“Yes, yes, no, no, no, no, yes, yes, yes, no, yeeessssssssssssssssssss!”
Oedipus, if you didn’t limit it to her first name, we could get much more appropriate to Mooney’s attitude by calling her Abolish One Pen.
Seeing this malignancy in full flower so many months back reminds me of the reports that they traced the AIDS virus in humans back to 1930 or 1931, and makes me wonder when it really did start.
I recall seeing an interview with Gene Wilder, I think around about the time “The World’s Greatest Lover” came out, in which he told how Mel Brooks had predicted he would get into directing, because he would start writing the material he needed as a performer and would then have to direct, too, in order to protect that material from the insensitive hands of others.
What is the relevance? I’m getting an image of someone getting a kick out of being opinionated as a blog commenter, then realising he can protect himself with sock puppet bodyguards, who grow in number, until he realises he’s ripe for his own blog, where he writes all the posts and all the comments except the ones made by innocents who stumble in unawares and are toyed with by the sock army, as a cat might toy with a mouse. Tailor-made virtual reality.
This is bloody hilarious. Sorry, but this cracks me up. My opinion of Mooney hasn’t changed, but it is funny to watch him scrapping the fecal matter off the bottom of the barrel and pretending he doesn’t know what it is.
Free Ophelia!
I must say OB was quite prescient in the don’t believe everything you are told post over 8 months ago. I am still shaking my head over the response by Chris at the time, but he can’t say he wasn’t warned.
Halo Pie, that’s quite a good fit.
Mooney dawdles. Meanwhile, Ophelia is still banned, and this Jon toady has moved on to accusing Paul of being my sockpuppet because, apparently, we both disagree with Mooney and have the same first name. This is something any competent blogger could nip in the bud very quickly, but not Chris Mooney, the cautious, thorough journalist.
That guy. Quite a piece of work.
Oh, don’t worry PZ. He’s decided that the internet fight is beneath him now. He’s high-mindedly scuttling off.
*When danger reared its ugly head he turned his tail and bravely fled*
My larger response to him is still in moderation. I imagine that a lot of stuff is at this point.
Thanks, Michael! I must say, I’m quite pleased to be vindicated. On the other hand I’m so disgusted by Mooney that I can’t really enjoy the gloat. That’s so saaaaaaaaaaaad.
Yes, I’ve seen it linked at The Intersection as well, Michael. It was directed towards Greg Laden’s rather… well, interesting comment.
When I read it, I was thinking…. “almost word for freaking word my thoughts.” Just like the reception for YNH, this anecdote should have been treated a lot differently.
I read through the two “Tom Johnson” threads yesterday – probably a bad idea, because I was annoyed all over again by the slimy, oleaginous fawning and atheist-bashing courtesy of these brave heroes of <i>The Intersection</i> (or should that now be <i>The Inter<b>sock</b>tion</i>?) – I wonder if we’ll see Anthony McCarthy or J*hn Kw*k display some character by recognising that they were duped and apologising for their behaviour?
Thank you Michael for linking to the archive. That was not only prescient on Ophelia’s part; it was incredibly detailed, and expressed concerns about sloppy journalism and the inherent improbability of the claimed boorish behaviour of the ‘New Atheists’. Now Ophelia’s concerns are coming home to roost, but I suspect that Mooney is so self-absorbed — as he has shown every sign of being — that he won’t take note of the fact that, not only did he misrepresent atheist manners at the Intersection, but also at the LA Times, Newsweek, etc., all chiefly on the strength of a palpably unreliable story. He’s clearly an irresponsible journalist. Of course, there are doubtless lots of them, but he’s gone out of his way to claim special expertise, and has chided people far and wide for their failures to frame their views appropriately. Quite a dork.
I wonder if William also used the alias “Anna K.” On the original thread where he made up his little persecution story, “Tom Johnson” had a lengthy dialogue with “Anna K.” about it. In fact, they seemed to be the only ones who took any notice of the story in that thread.
Hansen,
It’s quite likely. His MO is to use common first names, as he stated.
Heh, I just used “Halo Pie” as an epithet (in my latest Intersection comment). The schadenfreude…so delicious…
Yes, I see it has appeared on The Intersection, but since I seem to be in permanent Limbo/Moderation there, I posted it directly to Greg’s blog, because he ought to look at it, even if he won’t glance at the original threads.
It is admirable thinking on Ophelia’s part, but the whole point here is that one didn’t have to be psychic in the slightest to see that she was making sense, and still so many pooh-poohed it all.
And the really big problem now is going to be… that when you’re so right, people are going to hate you for it.
So, no change there.
@Ophelia
Yes I know. Its just that at this point talking to folks at the intersection feels futile.
There isnt some regret or apology either from Mooney or from the regular commenters that they were misled or that their biases influenced them. Look at Mooney’s post – No Im sorry I did this — just its Williams fault – he duped me! Or the classic
Congratulations on your vindication, Ophelia, you deserve it. I’ve added an eleventh update to the blog post with that prescient link.
I don’t see any purpose to Greg’s comment other than “hey gais it’s me, just in case you forgot.”
He was irrelevant, missed the point of the comments, and started whining about post hoc standards. Then, incredibly, he claims no interest in reading the original threads when making his temporal judgment.
Icthyic seems to dislike Greg quite a bit. Is there a history of this sort of thing?
Just had a quick look at the link. That first comment makes me feel a little…erm.
Ophelia, I know you sent me some emails, but I never read them. I was all over the shop and took the cowards attack (ran away and hid). I think I mentioned that I don’t do confrontation well.
Anyway, I’m glad you’ve been vindicated. Mooney still seems rather, um, …..
Brian, the emails were just to say don’t leave! You didn’t do anything wrong.
Thanks Oedipus! Mind you, I’m certainly not totally prescient. I got Signal all wrong. “William” laid the groundwork, but there was no prescience to help me out.
Now if only I could remember where I said one YNH post sounded like “Tom”! But I can’t – dammit.
The Madeline Kahn video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6eTTaY1a6M
“…not only did he misrepresent atheist manners at the Intersection, but also at the LA Times, Newsweek.”
But Mooney never made allusions or reference to the Tom Johnson anecdote in any of his published work, did he?
Sockpuppetry aside, the original Tom Johnson bit was just utterly bizarre, unbelievable to anyone with any experience in the scientific community. Chris Mooney should have said to himself, “This just doesn’t sound credible.” Instead, he said to himself, “Oh, wow, I can’t believe that happened. This is great.”
Given the choice, Mooney went with defamation. It wasn’t that he was fooled. It’s that he wanted to do damage.
He couldn’t in the the LA Times piece; it was written before the “Tom Johnson” episode. From reading that piece, you can see how Chris was primed to accept a story like “Tom Johnson” and “Tom” played it perfectly.
Quite. I’ll link you, but I won’t blame you if you don’t want to wade in.
This is probably the best place to start. It sort of sparked up a blogwar between Pharyngula commenters and Greg Laden, with Greg becoming more and more unhinged, making crazy and quite rude comparisons, as well as actual physical threats (e.g. “I’d like to see you say that to my face” type stuff). As a result, many Pharyngula regulars (Icthyic definitely qualifies) see him as rather unstable.
HTH. Of course, now Greg will think I’m a creepy stalker, but I hate seeing people ask about context that’s not easy to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for.
You, the creepy stalker? I wouldn’t worry about that given Greg’s recent level of discourse. Greg seems to have revived his form of yore, if he ever lost it, tonight, substituting profane invective and defamation for rational argument. Here are some statements he directed at me today:
http://thebuddhaisnotserious.wordpress.com/2010/06/19/the-curious-case-of-the-youre-not-helping-blog/#comment-657
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2010/07/a_truly_wtf_moment_ynhb_poser.php#comment-2639916
He seems a tad obsessed with “dosage levels” today, and directed this at Ichthyic
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2010/07/07/appalling-revelations-about-tom-johnson/comment-page-6/#comment-63278
I think Chris Mooney has lost credibility as a science writer and a journalist. I think Greg Laden has lost credibility in general. It is one thing to be snark and profane in service of an actual well supported sound argument but quite another to use snark, profanity, falsehoods, defamation and general asshattery as in lieu of any reasoned argument, as I’d say Laden is doing above. Laden is often, IMO, a troll as bad as any other. I’m not sure he really still belongs at science blogs as a blogger, but that isn’t up to me, nor is it really any skin of my back.
Ah yes, the Times piece where Mooney craps on Dawkins for writing a science book. That irks all over again.
If the Tom Johnson story was such a sure thing, why didn’t he include it in any of his published work? I would say he knows better than to keep his smear campaigns and vendettas out of print, but U of A makes that not exactly true.
Well, probably several reasons. One, the steady stream of published new atheist-othering was connected to the launch of UA – he’s done less of that (as far as I know) in the period after the “Tom Johnson” story, probably because he’s had fewer invitations to do it. Two, he’s been busy with his various fellowships. Three – it would be a difficult thing to use in a published article because it would take so much space to explain it. That last reason may not have much force with Mooney, since it wasn’t a reason not to smear PZ in the book; on the other hand, there is more room in a book than there is in an article. Four – well, as you hint, it may have seemed even to Mooney that what would convince his fans at the Intersection (his fans who turn out to be a lot fewer in number than a name-count would indicate) might not convince a wider reading public. It may have crossed even his warped mind that the story didn’t…really…cut it. In which case, of course, he should have said so publicly. But that wouldn’t be Chris Mooney.
Ophelia, is this the circumstance in which you were banned at the Intersection? Had I thought to google for it yesterday, I would have tried to slip in another Halo Pie link. Right now there is a kibosh on comments.
@Ophelia Benson
Another reason why Mooney might not have used the Tom Johnson post as evidence is that some magazines actually do fact checking before publication…
Oedipus – ah – yes, that was it. Thanks for doing the work for me! What with one thing and another, I had less than no time yesterday – I was way into negative time.
Yes, and that commenter I mention who kept saying I was lying – that was one of “William”‘s characters. And this post is almost certainly the one that prompted my former co-author to excommunicate me. The title, at least, is certainly offensive…but it’s now even clearer that it’s also deserved. This shit who was calling me a liar was the same as various other shits who adored Mooney and threw crap at his critics – yet M&K never managed to notice that they all had the same IP – yet they did manage to ban me for objecting to being called a liar when I wasn’t lying. Moral slime: Mooney; Mooney: moral slime; how do you do.
Scote – true – but I was giving reasons that would work even assuming Mooney wasn’t in on the fraud. He could have (for instance) dimly realized the facial implausibility without actually thinking the story was implausible himself. If that were the case the magazine fact-checking thing might not have been relevant.
No, I’m wrong, the commenter isn’t “William” (probably) – it’s TB, which is not one of the ones William has admitted to. Of course, we know that William doesn’t admit to everything all in one go, so that’s hardly conclusive, but TB seems to have a website (also not conclusive, but still something).
Understood. I don’t necessarily think that Mooney was a deliberate party to the fraud, but rather that even he knows better than to use the same low standards he typically uses in a magazine article that he knows will be professionally fact checked by magazine staff and that he might know better than to offer an un-vetted blog comment as the basis of such a magazine article. However, I have no certain knowledge that he has ever published a magazine article that was subject to fact checking. It would probably be a humbling experience for him, if he is capable of humility.
If William is TB then that would be another level of amazing, as TB is the only person Mooney responds to in the “Appalling Revelations” thread (“Thanks, TB…”). But yeah, I doubt William is TB.
In any case it doesn’t matter at all with regard to Mooney’s behavior.
TB isn’t William, unless things are a lot more complicated than they appear. TB’s older posts at The Intersection point to his personal site with his (I’m assuming) real name, which isn’t directly relevant so I’m not mentioning it here (if you really want to know, you can google old Intersection threads for TB). He does troll on Mooney’s behalf, but I see no reason to posit that he is William.
Awaiting moderation at the Intersection:
Hey Chris- feel free to use this as the headline for your next post;
Obsequious Publicists Host Enormous Lie Insulting Atheists. But Everyone Now Sees Only Noise.
And A big slice of Halo Pie, too.
And, also awaiting moderation on the “Housekeeping” thread:
So what’s the hold up? Where is all the evidence? Have you got to the “bottom” of things yet, or is there further for you to fall?
I’m not holding my breath.
I’ve talked to TB in comments. I have no suspicions that TB is William. I disagree with him, but when I have disagreed with him, I didn’t find myself arguing with a load of sockpuppets, for one. And for two, when he has made mistakes, he has admitted them and apologized, at least with regards to me.
Ha! That’s the best one I’ve seen so far.
Very kind, all these amusing word games; very flattering. :- )
I’ve created a monster! A giant, issue-forcing monster!
muahahahahaha!
Hmm…the “housekeeping” thread at Intersection still has criticism shields set to maxim and dissonance dampeners fully activated. Only three posts have passed muster, none of them mine… It looks like the twins are using their usual response to valid criticism, ignoring it as best they can and muting criticism in the forums. I guess Chris gave up on finding proof of why his credulous endorsement of a fake story (and attacking its critics) wasn’t his fault. He probably spent a long, fruitless night in the framing shop and now just wants to try and wait it out rather than consider his own culpability. :-P
Love the game you started, Zach. I am apparently perma-banned too, since I tried to submit a comment last night that didn’t mention Herself by name, and that was very “civil,” yet it never went through. About 50 comments after mine – in more direct terms than I used – did make it through.
And now, almost a day after Chris’ promise to “get to the bottom” of things and post more, L’Intersection is on total comment lockdown. Typical.
TB doesn’t have to be William, but I do wonder about his claim Mooney shared TJ’s “real” identity with him and why he’s just as tight-lipped as Mooney when it comes to saying more than that.
Yeh. I don’t think TB is William. I just wanted to say the evidence is incomplete, etc – wanted to put general agnosticism on the record.
Hey let’s do a thing where we set up factions between agnostics and awilliamists and awilliamist fundamentalists. We could set up blogs to argue amongst the factions, and –
Nothing more at The Intesection. But Chris said – he said – he’s figured out what’s going on and he’s going to tell us soon. He promised. You don’t think he’s going to not do it, do you? He promised.
If I can just get out targeting scanners to the right resonance, I may be able to match the frequencies of their comments shield. It appears to be on a rotating modulation – if I can get ship’s targeting to match their shield harmonics, we may be able to transport a comment through between cycles. But we’re only gonna get one shot at this, Captain Benson – I suggest you head to transporter room and wait for my signal.
I’m sure that Mooney will have a 10 page in detail ultra-careful super-awesome analysis that explains everything once he gets around to it.
It’s possible that William put a great one past him… but I can think of about 3 minutes of effort that should have verified that the “real” Tom Johnson was posting this stuff on his blog.
Of course, even if Tom Johnson had been real, I’m still not so fond of anecdotes.
For example:
“Ok, this one time, I was at a conservation event at my University, and I said that I was an atheist. Then some guy dressed as Jesus kicked me in the nuts and people threw holy water on me. Then Darwin was burned in effigy.
It was horrible!”
Now, if Ophelia wanted to check me out, she could find out that indeed I am a real person at a university, and even that my university has had events which could be vaguely described as “conservation events.” However, that would still do nothing to confirm my anecdote. That would take a serious effort, but if Ophelia wasn’t willing to undertake it, she wouldn’t be wise to post this as Exhibit B, with winks that I’m all legit and stuff.
YNNB @ 87—Brilliant!
Now have a comment in moderation at the Intersocktion containing the following:
“Chris and Sheril, as far as beefing up comment moderation stringency in general, whatever you’re doing to filter out posts by or referencing that scrumptious Halo Pie seems extremely effective. If you can apply that across the board you should be bullet-proof. HTH.”
I’d be surprised if “Halo Pie” isn’t already on their trigger list.
For the record, I’ve had a few exchanges with TB (aka Tim Broderick) over there as well, and don’t think he’s a William sock. But who the hell knows for sure anymore?
<blockquote>criticism shields set to maxim</blockquote>
Presumably this maxim is something along the lines of “New Atheists are always more wrong than I”
Doh! I should have bought a vowel…
Meanwhile, there is still no change over at Intersection, but it does seem as if I can almost hear a sound playing in the background, something like “lalalalalalalalalalalIcan’thearyoulalalalalalal….”–which, coincidentally, I believe is part of the official Intersection policy on criticism.
[…] and Comment Blog « Exposed […]
It’s hard not to be curious about what they really are thinking. Is it “oh shit we look like such assholes what are we going to dooooooooooo?” Or is it “do you believe those new atheists think all this stuff is somehow our fault?” Or is it something so whacked I can’t even dream it up?
Maybe it would be a good idea to archive the entire Intersection blog for future reference. It would not surprise me if they decided to retroactively delete most of the evidence.
I’ll take choice B*. This assessment is bolstered by the increasingly unhinged comments from Greg Laden, who keeps chiming in to remind everyone that “William” is the one and only bad guy here, and all the lunatic pitchfork-brandishing we’re doing at the Intersection and elsewhere is just p’isen mean and beside the point. Laden has also (on his blog, which I can’t bear to link to because it sucks ass) hinted at some special, mitigating knowledge that we pitchfork-weilders are not privy to…but if we were, we’d see things a bunch differently, he assures us.
*with the option to take C as well if it comes to pass. Nothing would surprise me at this point.
De-lurking to make my guess as to what they’re doing: nothing, and waiting for the issue to die down. As bad as this looks on the internet, they’re (media) savvy enough to know that it superficially looks like silly internet srs bsns to an outsider, and should disappear quickly. The promise of future information, the request to withhold judgment, and the comment lock-down all fit that, in my opinion.
Hopefully, that doesn’t happen this time around. It’s not like this is the first bad sign; they’ve (or at least Mooney) has been going downhill for awhile now. He’s either a sloppy thinker or a callous, calculating jerk. The former is fine, but it means he shouldn’t be as respected or famous as he is. The latter is obviously a problem, but hopefully it’s silly conspiracy-mongering on my part.
For people who want to continue asking Mooney questions, there’s a thread on the CFI Forums asking him to do a Point Of Inquiry podcast about this. Of course, he’s ignored similar requests in the past. Furthermore, PoI is bad enough these days …
So, TB should be moved to the “not William” part of <a href=”http://www.skepticfriends.org/forum/uploaded/825/ynhnamelist.html”>the list</a>, yes?
Stupid HTML. What’d I do wrong?
Thanks Joe. Here’s that thread.
I said I’d be happy to. :- )
I’d think so, Dave. I don’t think we should be incautious in our accusations.
If you see HTML tags, my guess is that you didn’t click the “HTML” button right above the box in which you type. By default you are in “Visual” mode.
<blockquote>”If you see HTML tags, my guess is that you didn’t click the “HTML” button right above the box in which you type. By default you are in “Visual” mode.”</blockquote>
Ha, good to know! I didn’t even know there was an editor. I use NoScript by default and there was no error message suggesting that there were any features available but missing by having java script and java turned off. I just saw a standard text box.
Thanks for the info on HTML here. Let me try again.
Okay, I’ve moved TB and (thanks to an email) four other people to the “not William” part of the list. Anyone else have any other suggestions?
Dave W., are you sending this list to William for confirmation?
A random, one-time poster at The Intersection nymed Amy is a puppet possibility. Here’s the albeit thin evidence I have. (Paul did all the digging and gets the credit.)
William” Consider anything from “milton” and the other common first-name puppets from YNH anywhere in the blogosphere to be what they are: worthless.
I haven’t checked whether Amy appeared at YNH.
Amy: “I’m sure that those in the world who have literally been “fucked with a broomstick” and lived to tell about, like my uncle, just find it gut-bustingly funny when you people use his few moments of life-altering, hellish torture as a light-hearted jab for your own juvenile amusement. Keep trying to legitimize it, and make yourselves look subhuman. Keep it up. You’re doing such a wonderful job.”
Amy sounds a lot like our William, daring you to be heartless if you don’t believe the tale of suffering, like Milton C.’s wife had to be an abuse victim to minimise anything Ophelia had to say.
So not only did William fake being a woman to diminish something Ophelia said, but again using the wife of a puppet? Someone is sounding more and more like a sociopath.
I won’t paste it in here (why should Ophelia have to see it again), but here’s the link, so you can believe your eyes:
http://www.elsewhere.org/tmp/ynh/2010/06/21/another-conspiracy-oozes-from-the-bunker/#comments
gillt wrote:
Not other than posting it publicly here and at Oedipus’ place. Did “William” leave an email address laying around somewhere?
From PollyO!: “I shouldn’t even be saying this because siding with YNH on this one makes me cease being a real, independent human entity.”
I guess that could be seen as William taunting everyone.
This is my comment in moderation at The Intersection:
So apparently Chris, you took the initiative–after listening to the skeptics of Tom’s story–to confirm his identity.
So why did you write a followup post calling those very skeptics the “New Atheist Comment Machine,” and stating that Tom was being attacked by them?
Did I miss something?
Oh, how that brings it all back. The post all about how stark raving mad I am – for having spotted that YNH and most of its commenters were fake. [I was (I think) wrong about Kees/BR, but then it was only a suggestion anyway.] The comments taunting me for disliking the YNH misogyny. All cranking out of that twisted little shit.
MiltonC:
Fuck you, William.
Polly-O
Fuck you, William.
Fuck him indeed. Nasty, nasty stuff.
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