Did someone declare this National Flaming Racist Idiot week, and I just didn’t notice until now? You have got to read Michael Medved’s latest foray into pseudoscience: he has declared American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA. Because our ancestors were immigrants, who were risk-takers, who were selected for their energy and aggressiveness. Oh, except for those who are descended from slaves.
The idea of a distinctive, unifying, risk-taking American DNA might also help to explain our most persistent and painful racial divide - between the progeny of every immigrant nationality that chose to come here, and the one significant group that exercised no choice in making their journey to the U.S. Nothing in the horrific ordeal of African slaves, seized from their homes against their will, reflected a genetic predisposition to risk-taking, or any sort of self-selection based on personality traits.
But, he hastens to add, modern African-American genetics have been leavened with the genes of recent, self-selected immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa, so their unfortunate stay-at-home genes have a “less decisive influence”.
Okay, I realize that being a conservative pundit means never having to say anything factual, but how can anyone be so unafraid to show his utterly bigoted ignorance? Does any brave soul want to listen to his program and get a list of sponsors so we can ask them if this is the kind of idiocy that they want their businesses associated with?
No Trackbacks To “Michael Medved Plays To The Lowest Denominator. Again.“
First!
Seriously? Whats this guy smoking ? I want some
Who is Michael Medved and why the f*ck should I care what that douchebag has to say?
Send ol’ Mikey out to review Prince Caspian so he can gush about the Christian overtones in the narrative, then tell him to shut up.
PZ Myers and his commenters did a bang-up job mocking Medved’s foolishness a couple of days ago.
Speaking of flaming idiots, Chris Bowers, the self-described “highly educated” “progressive” pundit, wrote an article entitled, “Wow, We Nominated The Black Guy” about a week ago.
Lowest common denominators are converging like greased lightening.
Oh crap, I just reposted the same link as Nicole B. Sorry.
Medved didn’t grow that facial adornment under his nose to attract nesting cockroaches ——– but he should have. Then they could mate with the ones in his head and get better DNA.
Unbelievable… what a dangerous man.
Even for that sniveling Medved, this is mind-boggling. I can only laugh at such unbelievable boobery.
I suppose we can discount the vast numbers of immigrants that resulted from the emptying of prisons and the religious sects driven from their homes. Of course it might go a long way to explaining our propensity for genocide and brutality
Jared Diamond he ain’t.
So the “huddled masses”, that were obviously not the top of the heap, that emigrated had superior genes. So the ones fleeing religious and social persecution were the cream of the crop?
That is so stupid on so many levels.
“You can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs”.
In the words of Carl Carlson, “What. A tool.”
Wow! Is he related to O’reilly or Malkin?
Seeing as how Medved is the result of too much swimming on the shallow end of the gene pool, you would think that he would be an authority on the subject.
Sadly, all of his personal experience is for naught.
Oh … my … gawd. One hoped that this sort of melange of eugenics-prejudice-pseudoscientific bafflegab and sophistry had been so thoroughly discredited in the twentieth century that we would never see it again.
Another hope dashed.
American superiority to be genetic, encoded in our good old American DNA.
Wow, how Nazi-ish of him.
And of course, this “genetic superiority” doesn’t apply to any Hispanic or, say, Arabic “risk-takers” who want to come to the USA *now*….
I guess Medved’s genetic window is closed.
(And by the way, based solely on his surname, I’d wager that *his* relatives came here because of their let’s-avoid-dying-in-the-pogrom “genes,” rather than anything more noble.)
Yeah, by “risk takers” he also meant, “tired, poor, and huddled masses.”
See, it’s also not a problem that people are poor because that’s ordained in their DNA as well.
I don’t think this schmuck would earn a passing grade in biochemistry.
WHAT an ass-wipe.
Hopefully this will destroy media attention for this nut-case. He is clearly delusional.
*
Michael Medved: every bit as good a scientist as he is a film critic.
I am a high school history teacher, and I think Mr. Medved would do well to attend a few of my - or anyone else’s - American history classes. He obviously lacks even the most cursory knowledge of the subject. Not to mention Introduction to Life Science, which we normally start teaching in grade 8.
More menacing, this comment of his is little more than the old discredited social Darwinist argument redressed in fancier and less gaudy fashion. And tipping one’s hat to the “horrific” days of slavery before launching into one of these pseudo-scientific screeds is, at this point, a little like our Deep Southern habit of saying “bless your heart” before or after “slamming” someone. But even we down here - one hopes - abandoned these impoverished arguments decades ago. And as a southerner, especially, it makes me sick to hear such veiled slurs directed against my students, my friends, and my neighbors, any one of which is worth twenty Michael Medveds.
So spin away Michael! I await with bated okra and cornbread breath what will doubtless be the most weasley rhetoric since Watergate as you try to grease-pig your way out of THIS gaffe!
“It is better to keep one’s mouth shut and be thought a fool than open it and remove all doubt.” - Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), att. (para.)
Did someone declare this National Flaming Racist Idiot week, and I just didn’t notice until now?
Geez. I guess, since every week in the USA is ‘National Flaming Racist Idiot Week.’ Just more so for the doltish Medved.
Here’s a news flash: Americans are not superior to anyone. Unless it’s a contest to see who can be the fattest, dumbest, or sloppiest.
Fascist= Extreme nationalism+ racism= Medved
That’s right America, keep stroking yourself while the rest of the world passes you by.
miss_kitty @ 23:
Medved. What a tool. Continuing the celebration of Flaming Idiot Week, Huckabee joked about some one shooting Obama while giving a speach to the NRA
Oh yeah, but what about those damned IRISH!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071230/
BTW, the grandfather of one of my best friends, Moshe Menuhin, one of the early anti-Zionists, once wrote “Jews should be Jews—not Nazis.” He was speaking of the Israeli oppression of Palestinians, but Medved should check his shit next time he goes to temple.
Wow, this is right out of old Soviet Lysenkoism. It doesn’t surprise me that a neo-con would be so ignorant as to not see that connection. Hell, he probably wouldn’t have a clue who Trofim Lysenko was. I could make another comparison to someone who believed in genetic superiority but I don’t want to Godwin the thread so early.
Who exactly is his audience? Only those who agree with him would give him the time of day so I assume he is preaching to his own choir.
I’m guessing Jimmy the Greek was one of is heroes.
Hasn’t Medved heard that “Social Darwinism” was discredited in the early part of the last century?
What’s he gonna do next, read the bumps on our heads?
Isn’t Medved a f*cking Creationist?
correction. I’m guessing Jimmy the Greek was one of his heroes.
Ranger Jay @ 28:
Or these guys.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/
Every week is flaming racist idiot week in the good ol’ US of A. That’s the beauty of the First Amendment. They are entitled to be flaming racist idiots. What is not entitled is the network platform from which to spew their flaming racist idiocy.
The danger that would result from taking their platform away is on display at
PNAC
What? The neo-cons website is suspended?!??!?!?!?
Rut O Rorge….
They’re retreating to the underground bunker!
This can’t be good…
Anyway, keep the loonies right up front. Let them skewer themselves with
their clever newspeak. Let them preach to their ever shrinking choir.
Let them think they still hold sway over thought and policy. When the time is right,
they’ll either join the human race or leave it.
For now they act as great compasses. If you’re uncertain which way we should go, just turn 180 degrees from their pointing fingers.
Michael Medved is the lowest common denominator.
Did something happen to the Bold on C&L or did C&L mess with the C&L themes/templates/CSS? Just asking. I don’t see an open thread, I guess I could have hit F3 and search for one but hey…I’m here already.
FYI - Everything is looking text-y-ish (like a 1996 BBS kind of.) without any bold or highlight for the Subject titles and or links. Very hard to find what the headlines are from the text of the whole story. The SUB Categories on the left are spilling over across the vertical grey line. Only colors I see are Orange (left block), Blue (links), Black (text), and white (background.) The banners on the right, look okay. The logo at the top-left is okay. The Blue Crooks and Liars text-link at the top-left is invisible nearly. The Message headlines are the same size as the message content.
Peace, just wanted to get this out.
Tried Opera v9.25 and Firefox 3.05b. Both have similar problems.
Site Monitor: We’re having some fairly serious server issues. It’s not known if it’s from an attack or not yet. We’re working on it.
Isn’t Medved an observant Jew and a staunch defender of Israel? Hasn’t he made a career out of how important his religious/ethnic identity is to him? Now he wants to talk about genetics and race in a manner startlingly reminiscent of Nazi theories of eugenics.
He is also, I believe, associated with the intelligent design movement, yet he postulates this theory that’s based on natural selection, which is part of classic evolutionary theory as proposed by Darwin and Wallace. One thinks that the intellectual limbo bar of conservatism cannot get any lower, only to be be surprised time and again. Medved’s resume begs the question, “Is it really possible to ride the short bus to Yale?”
MEDVED’s ratings must be dropping.
The fact is that most of the Europeans that emigrated to America or North And South America ( they did go to South America) were desparate and had no options. The ecomonies in their countries collapsed . There were risk takers but those risk takers also went to S. America ( they came from the same countries , but took a different boat) , Mexico and Canada.
Medved: “…and Australia the most genetically inferior! A bunch of lazy people who never risked leaving their country and a bunch of criminals who got caught. It’s all in their genes!”
I think the only way we are going to be rid of fascist media and freaks like Savage (Weiner), Medved, O Reily, Rush is to clean out the FCC by controlling the Executive, by filling up their public file with complaints that they do not serve the public interest, and petitioning for NON renewal of their frequency and station licenses.
oh.
my.
god.
did these guys just regress back into the 1850s?
He forgot about the American Indians, the Chinese that were bought and then shipped here, the Irish that only came because they were starving, the Mayflower refugees that were driven out of England because of their religious beliefs, the Jewish people that fled Germany prior to WW2, the Cubanos that fled a repressive regime, and finally the Mexicans and South Americans that came here because staying home meant starving.
What a bunch of lazy MFers.
Then don’t you also have to include all the people that stayed on the East Coast prior to the Westward Ho movement. I think all those people that stayed in their comfy New York slums were just more stupid and lazy people.
Snark.
By the way black white and blue for the them works pretty good. Although the LOGO and the banners are missing now. ;o)
Peace.
whoopsie, them = theme in #44
I’m happy to see this post from Medved for two reasons. First, it explains his Adolf/porn moustache a little better, and two, blatant racism is so much easier to call out than when it’s subtly woven in. More, Medved!!!
This argument is only about 1 step removed from something I’ve heard Dennis Prager say many times. He says Jews are naturally more intelligent because rabbis, whom he just assumes are the most intelligent people in Jewish society, are encouraged to have many children while Priests and other religious leaders are not.
Therefore, over the centuries, non-Jews have bred themselves to be less intelligent, and Jews have bred themselves to be more intelligent.
Then he’ll segue right into how evolution is a lie. Hmm.
Mr. Medved didn’t have the balls to put his real name to his first book, cowritten with his brother. I really enjoyed “The Golden Turkey Awards”,one of the first books I bought when I first came to this country in 1977.
Unfortunately the guy has really become a shit-for-brains in the past decade.
From the theme to ‘American Dad’:
“The sun in the sky has a smile on its face, and it’s shining a salute to the American Race…”
As a resident of Hawai’i I have always been moved by the smooth interplay between the races here. The East is West of here and the West is East. The culture of South America mixes with the Pacific islanders, and the Asian’s, and the Europeans, etc. It works here. Obama is a result of black and white genes, Christian and Muslim exposure. He is a product of the Hawai’ian cultural melange. I see little mention of this in the Us/Them arguments because Modern Hawai’ian culture is so little understood by those that have not lived it. Obama represents a more sane approach to life on this planet at this time, and it’s where humanity is headed. The old media dinosaurs can wail a shreak all they want, but this climate change is coming (and I’m not talking about global warming).
All this lock-step marching to the mock-outrage at false issues called out by right-wing talk radio is killing the republican party. By forbidding critical thought, they shut off the oxygen of fresh ideas and lose the ability to respond to real issues like failed foreign policy, hurricanes, and mis-guided wars gone awry. They are literally dying of suffocation in a hot-house of manufactured anger. Good riddance.
All human beings alive today are the same species. Race is not a biological, but rather a social construct.
What you observe as cosmetic differences, the amount of dermal melanin, facial features etc are a minute portion of the genome.
Historical they have been taken to mean something, maybe a lot, but they mean very little.
There is far greater difference in the human genome (85%) in a local group than there is between what this person is attempting to identify as outmoded ‘racial’ groups, 3% to 8% within those groups and 6% to 10% between the groups.
You have as much difference in genetic makeup with your neighbor who looks just like you as you do with anyone in Kenya or Katmandu.
If fact, you may have more difference with your next door neighbor.
Here by R.C. Lewontin, Professor Emeritus of Zoology at Harvard University clears up confusion about ‘race’, this is an excerpt:
Over the last thirty five years a major change has taken place in our biological understanding of the concept of human “race,” largely as a consequence of an immense increase in our knowledge of human genetics. As a biological rather than a social construct, “race” has ceased to be seen as a fundamental reality characterizing the human species.…
Michael Medved needs to read s