Nicole Smalkowski, the young woman discriminated against because she is an atheist, was in the news again on Friday. She was interviewed by John Stossel (who is a colossal douche) for 20/20 and a story about disbelief in America. Stossel makes much of the fact that atheists are a minority and that this is a "Christian nation", but no matter how smarmy he gets, the sincerity of the Smalkowski family and the injustice of Nicole's situation comes through loud and clear.
If you missed the broadcast like I did, have no fear, Norm comes through: it's available at onegoodmove.
We usually called places like Hardesty, Oklahoma "small town America", but I think we have to rephrase that to "small mind America." What Nicole really needs to do is hang tough for a little longer and get away to an open-minded university—they're everywhere, and there she'll find a community of people who think unbelief is just fine (one reason going to college erodes faith isn't just that students get smarter—finding out that you don't have to believe in nonsense to be a good person and that you can be accepted socially if you don't go to church every Sunday can be very liberating). I can vouch for Minnesota's Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists organization as a very welcoming group — I'll be their faculty advisor in the coming year, and we're planning to start a chapter here at my campus this fall (and my campus has an American Indian tuition waver, by the way, encourages participation in sports, has a lively music program, has excellent academic standards, and is set in a very low stress small town environment. Hint, hint. I'd love to see more rural Americans getting enlightened at universities and returning to their communities to open those tight and puckered minds.)
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Campus Atheists, Skeptics, and Humanists
That makes for an exellent acronym.
It was probably a good thing you didnt catch it live. The show was 2 hours of vomit inducing "MAGIC IS FUN! YAY!", but I really wanted to catch the Smalkowski segment.
I LOVED the interview with the pastor and his wife! Paraphrased: "Nobody attacked Nicole! Our students are Good Christians!....... But if they did, they were in the right, proudly defending our faith!"
Its shit like this that really gets me infuriated with our good friends Liberal Christian and Appeaser Atheist.
No, he doesn't.
For a good time, read the comments on the ABC story website.
My favorite: "If we are just flesh machines then why would she feel bad and cry, It is because we have a soul."
I may have to change my nickname here to 'Flesh Machine'. Or maybe 'Meaterialist'. 'Meaterialist Flesh Machine'?
It would be beyond amazing if there wasn't a porn site called 'Flesh Machine', Caledonian.
Another example of people's ignorance of which country they're living in. This is a public school! This SHOULD NOT be happening in America.
They need to have the constitution read to them, then perhaps some of the parts of the bible where Jesus tells them not to be such pricks!
They should also lose the lawsuit and be sentenced to life up their own ass(oh wait, too late)
Small town(mind) Oklahoma doesn't seem like a lot of fun ... but it doesn't strike me as that different from small town(mind) Arizona. In fact I find the Mormon brand of "invisible man in the sky" even more looney tunes. I've had a number of them try to convince me (perhaps convert me?) and I had to ask them, because my minor was anthro/arch emphasizing Native American cultures, where are the great cities they refer to? What about the fact that Native Americans are about as close to genetic opposites of Middle Eastern Jews as you can get? Why does Hebrew have no ties to Native American linguistic groups? Etc. etc. etc.
Can you do a post on why you think/feel that Stossel is a "colossal douche"? He is making the rounds at college campuses promoting his new book. Could be a good time to post about him. Gracias.
Stossel: You could have just bowed your head and keep silent.
Why is it that whenever something like this happens, someone recommends hypocrisy as a solution?
(I made the same comment at Friendly Atheist.)
"They should also lose the lawsuit and be sentenced to life up their own ass"
That's actually one of the funnier things I've read recently. I'll have to remember it . . .
ERV says "Its shit like this that really gets me infuriated with our good friends Liberal Christian and Appeaser Atheist."
Well, and in some instances rightly so, but how about when your good friends L. C. and A.A. are card-carrying ACLU members, or in some other ways strong supporters of the kind of free and secular country that - as dotdog points out - the christian nationalists completely oppose (or entirely fail grasp, except when they're in trouble).
But of course, who needs allies, right?
And . . .great . . . now whenever I read a comment by Caledonian, I'm going to have this little movie in my head of (what I imagine them to look like) singing 'Flesh Machine' (to the tune of 'Sex Machine' by James Brown, of course . . .)
I may have to write lyrics to this hypothetical song.
Why is it that whenever something like this happens, someone recommends hypocrisy as a solution?
(I made the same comment at Friendly Atheist.)
And I'll respond here the same way I responded to your statement at Friendly Atheist:
Because hypocrisy is the norm for Christianity.
He's not recommending it. He's acting as people in the audience will react so that the interviewee will have an opportunity to refute the arguments that the viewers will raise in their own minds.
Providing leading questions in an interview is hardly unusual journalistic practice.
"Stossel makes much of the fact that atheists are a minority"
So...Stossel thinks minorities are supposed to be treated badly or unequally or prejudicially? Has he not noticed that that idea has been somewhat discredited over the past few decades?
Which, I guess, just makes us 'soul machines' ;^)
It seems they just can't see that even if there is a 'ghost in the machine' it is still a machine.
Well, you certainly have a point and yet I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have posed this question to a Jewish kid for instance (or some other religious minority).
Here she is in all her Glory:
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friend…
In other news, Kristine (the witch) has been chatting with Richard Dawkins in the Galapogos!
GrRRrrrrrr
FleshBots sounds like a great name for a rock group.
Hint, hint. I'd love to see more rural Americans getting enlightened at universities and returning to their communities to open those tight and puckered minds.)
And all the more reason why those of us living in red-state America need to be out, visible atheists, openly rejecting the often unspoken but very clesr assumption that the communities we live in are homogeneously Christian. (Not that many people at this site need this advice)
I dont consider someone who enables this kind of behavior an 'ally' just because they pay $20 a year in ACLU dues.
btw-- ACLU didnt help the Smalkowskis. American Atheists did. I dont even particularly like AA, but actions are what make me consider someone an ally. Not money and lip service.
Stossel: You could have just bowed your head and keep silent.
Works well for women in Muslim countries too.
Caledonian is right, he doesn't say that (at least not in the clip).
I've heard other people make the "Christian Nation" claim. I have to wonder why those same people making the "this is a Christian nation" claim don't also say, "This is a White nation" and say that ethnic minorities should just "sit down and shut up". Civil Rights? Bah!
Let's see how this name works out.
The "Christian Nation" thing isn't in the written story, although it's a statement by one of the victimizers that's quoted within it.
There's much I don't like about Stossel, but this assertion against him just doesn't seem to be true.
Stossel is a douche, but i don't think he's in the fundie camp; I', not even sure if he's a christian. I did see a special of his years ago where he took on the social conservative notion that homosexuality was a choice and could be changed with therapy and prayer.
I hadn't seen any coverage on this story but Stossel is usually "a douche" so I'm not surprised.
I am a liberal Christian minister, and while at present, I am not a member of the ACLU, when I was serving a congregation in suburban Indianapolis, I was the only minister in town who stood by the young woman who sued the school district to keep a prayer out of her graduation ceremony. Eventually, my rabble-rousin' got me run out of town. But the woman is now a junior at IU in Bloomington, and loving it. So I hope Nicole hangs in there, as hard as it is.
I remember growing up in an extremely homophobic social environment when I lived in Montgomery Alabama during the late 70's and early/mid 80's. Most of my grade school and junior high peers often remarked how homosexuality was a sin against God and how they were deliberately perverse, etc. Other bigoted remarks against virtually any minority or atavistic race (African American, Mexican, Latin, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian) were reinforced and encouraged by adult teachers, preachers and certain parents. I was baptized Roman Catholic but attended a private Presbyterian school because my parents wanted me to get a "world class" education. The students at this school were, primarily, the sons and daughters of doctors, lawyers, and judges (ancestrally descending from the lineage of the confederacy). Many considered Montgomery to be the center of the cosmos. One could say they practiced a self-congratulatory, conservative, racist, homophobic, self-aggrandizing, and obnoxious form of ignorant snobbery. The intolerant "cosmogony" that was entertained reinforced a value system that was about as creative and liberal as Mein Kampf or the Aryan Nation owner's manual for human rights. I was so fortunate to have left that environment and subsequently learned that all primates evolved from a common ancestor--regardless of how many glasses of bourbon separated their ego. A copious dose of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, history, and science illustrated the commonalities of human beings and my education acted as an enormous influence for cognitive liberation. Today I embrace humans as cousins from the same ancestral source and continue to understand how biogeography sustains traditions, culture, and diversity. Homosexuality and mental illness are not a curse from an invisible deity and having pigment in one's skin is not a stigma caused by Cain's mark as retribution for "the fall of man."
There was one part of the interview that really made me tense up. It could be that they just edited it a certain way, but it's a terrible way to present atheism. When she was asked why she was an atheist, her answer was something along the lines of 'because my parents are.'
Granted, it's a question that can be difficult to answer succinctly. I just wish it had been a different answer given.
But it's a very honest answer. Young people typically adopt the beliefs of their parents, and that's true for theists and atheists.
She says "I was born an atheist." I think that's an excellent answer. It's the clueless interviewer that goes off on a tangent about her parents. "Nicole may be an atheist because her parents are atheists." Colossal douche indeed.
cm, here's an example of John Stossel's doucheworthiness. Where to even begin with this one, and he's even plugging his book here too.
She could have (or even might have) said, "I was born an atheist.... just like everyone else." In either case her answer was completely honest.
In my case, I never did figure out what religion I was supposed to be, though there was certainly a lot of pressure at different points in my life to identify myself with one. My parents are atheists but allowed us kids to attend Sunday school, join the choir, say prayers, etc... But we got all that religious stuff from school and the families of our friends. Our parents never pushed it.
At one school I went to (not in the USA) we said the lords prayer every morning at assembly. No matter how many times I said it out loud it never stuck mainly because it seemed to me to be hypocritical.
-DU-
Hrrmmmmph!
Just a couple days ago, I was talking with my wife and daughter about the use of the word douche as an idiomatic insult (don't ask how it came up; that's just the sort of language-geek family we are). I averred -- insisted, really -- that douchebag was the correct form, and that I'd never seen douche used alone in anything other than its literal sense.
Now y'all have spent an entire thread proving me wrong. Thanks a whole freakin' lot! ;^)
Has it been demonstrated somewhere or somehow that the school was lying about the allegations of her stealing and threatening another student?
When I saw the mention of "Disbelief in America" I thought for a moment the story was about deny that the USA actually exists.
It goes to show how stupid some denialists can be that I did not immediatly reject that thought as being nonsense.
When I saw the mention of "Disbelief in America" I thought for a moment the story was about deny that the USA actually exists.
It goes to show how stupid some denialists can be that I did not immediatly reject that thought as being nonsense.
Maybe it's just me, but I got the same impression Caledonian did:
"He's not recommending it. He's acting as people in the audience will react so that the interviewee will have an opportunity to refute the arguments that the viewers will raise in their own minds."
He was purposely asking these questions not because *he* thought such things, but because he knew the audience would think them.
And as for the article linked (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/how_about_economic_pr…) as evidence of his "douchebaggery", he has more correct points than you would think. He goes a little too far in a place or two perhaps, but still...