 |
| "The Moral Arc"? That's some extreme narcissist bollocks. |
Scraping the bottom of the barrel there.
But what else do persons connected to trutherism have left but the fringe of the fringe? Ventura isn't alone in using dubious associations to promote trutherism.
Manny Badillo was many "truthers" Facebook and Twitter friend in spite of his sex offender status
Manny at Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009794138066
[For the record, when I first heard of these charges, it took repeated questions before people finally said, "Yeah, okay, he's probably guilty.". To which my response was, "WTF? Then why is he still around?"
No good answers were forthcoming... ]
For instance, Bursill has Manny among his fwiends:
https://www.facebook.com/johnbursill/friends
As does
Cindy Sheehan:
https://www.facebook.com/cindyleesheehan/friends
[Historical note: Bursill registered to Craig Lazo's defunct forum a couple days before it was deleted to promote an Aussy truth tour, months
after starting a thread at truthaction.org claiming to be concerned about Lazo's 'Killtown' disinfo. Evidence like that I don't publish,
but I do keep to give to authorities the next time these sleazeballs push a con.]
Sex Offenders aren't just popular with two faced scammers or
people taking photo ops with racists.
Richard Gage roped a guy called DiNatale into pushing his non profit AETruther scam, and either is so far gone he really doesn't see the problem or believes even the worst publicity is good publicity.
So it's not too much of a shock Ventura doesn't see interviewing a man strongly suspected of sexual predation in the skeptic community as a problem.
What is slightly more surprising is a well known "skeptic" blog run by two fools found it newsworthy:
http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2015/12/jesse-ventura-and-michael-shermer.html
'Fools' might sound harsh, but they are either
fools or
scammers and opportunists if their activities over the years are any indication. They stopped credible debunking ages ago, really by early-mid 2007. There after the blog was little more than copy pasta of other, credible debunkers, with the main course being an amplifier for "truther" gossip.
The latest blog post is much in the same vein though not as irresponsible as some. JamesB logs in to write it, linking to a video:
"Jesse Ventura and Michael Shermer"
Only
a bit on 9/11, but skeptic Michael Shermer and conspiracy theorist
extraordinaire Jesse Ventura have what actually is a relatively amiable
conversation.
Why this is even slightly newsworthy for skeptics is baffling to me. As it was blogged 3 days after the interview, it clearly wasn't topical or urgent to anyone. A search of
"Jesse Ventura and Michael Shermer"
show literally no English language blog besides SLC covered it, not even the usual conspiracy outlets(at least not with that title):
And why is Shermer still relevant anyway? On Skeptics forum itself are threads detailing
Shermer's suspicious relationship with conartist
David Cole-stien, as well as the rape allegations.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=263429&page=118
https://skepchick.org/2015/08/ben-radford-has-threatened-to-sue-me/
What's even more baffling is the SLC bloggers had no problem calling out DiNatalie when
cjnewson pointed out Gage/AETruth's involvement with a sex predator. They even
blogged it. But Shermer gets a pass.
Hmmm.
It might be because both DiNatale and Badillo were legally convicted as opposed to being convicted in the court of public opinion, which admittedly is very YMMV. In Shermer's case one could say, well, he's not convicted so he's innocent. But
reading the history this is very unlikely. Normal, non predatory people do not have a history going back years of predatory behavior. So even if I don't expect SLC to denounce Shermer, I do expect ethical, responsible people to
not give Shermer a platform or publicity.
And while the rape accusations may not be proved in court, Shermer's overly friendly association with Holocaust Denier David Cole is unquestionable thanks to photographic evidence. Shermer has yet to explain their chumminess TTBOMK.
[This is all aside from another serious issue regarding the SLC blog: like Mr. Lazo they log into their blog regularly, so, like Mr. Lazo, they have no reason not to clean their blog up.]
Whatever the SLC fools intentions claim to be, giving either Shermer or Ventura publicity isn't helping anyone...except the conspiracy industry they both profit from.
So, unless SLC has a dog in that race, it's an odd choice for an alleged debunking blog. At this point there is no point to discussing trutherism except to expose it--and report its frontmen--as a scam.
