Response to Cindy Gallop

Apparently Cindy Gallop herself has responded to yesterday's blog post Not Nina again. Her comment was in response to my snarking about her Make Love Not Porn:

...although I like the concept of Cindy Gallop's Make Love Not Porn, I just don't have any desire to watch pudgy balding middle-aged men having sex.

In the comments section of the Nina blog post she wrote: 

Cindy Gallop11:24 PM 

At MakeLoveNotPorn our fabulous MakeLoveNotPornstars come (heh) in all shapes, sizes, genders, sexualities and ages. You might like to check out this edition? :)
http://talkabout.makelovenotporn.tv/2015/01/29/make-20something-love-not-porn/

Well OK, Cindy. I guess I have to take it back about "balding middle-aged men" - your latest edition shows 20-somethings. You don't only have middle-aged men.

However,  I also said that a big problem I had with commercial porn is the lack of aesthetic appeal of the men. And I'm afraid your videos feature men who are no better looking than the men in commercial porn. Although as in commercial porn your videos feature women more than men, and lots of lesbian scenes, and the women are more attractive than the men. 

Let us review the evidence of the link you provided:

• UPDATE - GOOGLE BANNED MY TEXT DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PORN CONTENT BECAUSE GOOGLE IS RUN BY IDIOTS

Now I have not been the most sexually active person of all time since my last long-term relationship ended. I'm picky, it's true, but also I'm over 40. But even I have managed to get it on with guys who were much better looking than the men in these videos. Except of course the gay porn professionals. 

The problem, dear Cindy, is the collision between your business model and the Patriarchy. The people who volunteer to make these videos live in a world where women spend hours every day on hair, makeup and cute outfits, plus yoga and/or the gym, while most straight men think they can just shower and shave (or more likely these days, not even shave) and then throw on some baggy t-shirt and jeans they found on the floor, along with ugly sneakers. And if they have a beer belly, well so what? They dress for comfort, not to look good for other people.

So the people making your videos look exactly like you would expect - the women look good while the men are, at best, blah. That's male privilege and you aren't going to escape it with your average jane and joe volunteers. You are going to get a reflection of the same exact values that drive commercial porn in the first place - it's all about the male gaze. Only in a culture that goes against that tradition, where men are meant to be looked at too, will you have truly attractive men - as in the gay porn world. 

Now obviously some people are enjoying these videos, erotically, and good for them. But if you want to cater to my desires, you're going to have to make an effort to transcend the inevitable strictures of male privilege. Like most women, I can get sex with random unattractive strangers any time I want. Which is never - I never want to have sex with random unattractive strangers. Why do I want to watch videos of random unattractive strangers having sex?

And then there's the aesthetic failure of much of the videography. I certainly don't like porno videography with its ironclad conventions and tropes, but on the other hand, just because you are making a non-commercial video, do you have to throw all artistic value out the window? The lighting, the angles, the sound quality are crap in most of these videos. (The gay man video, again, is the exception. Whoever shot those videos may not have had a big budget, but they have a sense of style.)

Now you may say, well this is what real sex really looks like. Yeah, OK. Real sex feels great, but it's actually not much to look at. The dialog is boring and the bodies are not beautiful and the pacing is awful.

And the sex I have actually is better looking (from my perspective) because the men are better looking than the ones in your videos. And I guarantee you I could make a sexier video (sexier to me anyway) using just my iPhone and simulated sex, than any of the straight videos you have here. Because I would use handsome male actors and have some sense of style and a decent script and do some creative editing. But of course I wouldn't expect the actors to volunteer - I would pay them. You get what you pay for.

And that would be art. And you are not making art, you are making "love." Which I'd rather experience first-hand than watch half-assed videos of.

Unless there's an incredibly hot guy involved. But as with the gay professional porn actor, they don't come cheap.

Not Nina again

Well for the third time I've been told I look like Nina Hartley - this is really getting to be annoying. It's not that much of a compliment to look like a porn star who is older than me.

I took a look at her web site at nina.com, which requires an age verification because it's basically just a bunch of pornos featuring Nina Hartley. I watched part of one of them, one of the very few featuring an attractive male. She has sex much more often with women, or with men who aren't very attractive. That's still a huge reason why so little porn does anything for me - most of the men in pornos are so damn average looking - not to mention the camera focuses on the women, unless it's gay porn.

What turns me on is being with a man I care about, and if it's a man I don't know, like in porn, he better  be damn good-looking or I just don't see the point. Until pornos are made with men who are as handsome as regular movie stars - or hell, even just some of the handsome men I know in real life, I have little use for it. Which is why, although I like the concept of Cindy Gallop's Make Love Not Porn, I just don't have any desire to watch pudgy balding middle-aged men having sex.

But back to Nina - not only are very few attractive men featured in her videos but the one I saw with an attractive man was presented in such an incredibly matter-of-fact manner it was about as erotic as watching her get her hair styled. No, not even that erotic.

 She makes some interesting non-sex videos though aimed at sex education. I found this one especially interesting because she is answering questions from the Bloggess, whom I have mentioned on this blog before.

Fool in the Rain - a Latin odyssey through the Dionysian and Apollonian modes

Origin of the Swan Song record label art

The quintessential Led Zeppelin song is Whole Lotta Love - and it is a great song. It's one of their two best songs in my opinion, the other being Fool in the Rain. The only other Zeppelin song that comes close is D'Yer Mak'er, which now that I read the title, is clearly British dialect for "did you have sex with her?" Apparently the pronunciation was meant to rhyme with "Jamaica" but the kids of South Jersey pronounced it DIE-er MAKE-er.

Whole Lotta Love was released in 1969 and I think was probably responsible for making the 1970s the Decade of the Zeppelin, when you could not listen to FM Rock radio for more than an hour before hearing another Zeppelin tune ("time to get the Led out" as the DJs used to say har har). If you want to get a feel for the 1970s check out Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused - although I don't think any Zeppelin songs appear in the movie, the title is of course a Led Zeppelin song.

Whole Lotta Love is a truly Dionysian song, all passion and power. At the opposite end of the Decade of Zeppelin, released in 1979, is Fool in the Rain which is a balance between the Dionysian and the Apollonian.

Fool stars out with a leisurely riff and it's romantic:

Well there's a light in your eyes that keeps shining
Like a star that can't wait for the night.
I hate to think I've been blinded baby,
Why can't I see you tonight?

It's quite a masterful piece of poetry there, with the star metaphor and the many references to sight.
(Full lyrics here.)

The verses go on to describe the singer being stood up by his beloved, and he is filled with self doubt.  The song builds in power until after the third verse it breaks into what might be called a "Latin odyssey" complete with marimbas and whistles, and which represents the singer's inner turmoil - that's the Dionysian bit. It finishes off with a blazing electric guitar solo by Jimmy Page.

The odyssey over, the singer suddenly realizes, in a return to the rational Apollonian :

And I'll run in the rain 'til I'm breathless
When I'm breathless I'll run 'til I drop, hey
And the thoughts of a fool's scattered careless
I'm just a fool waiting on the wrong block.

Oh the situational irony!

The Zep was more sophisticated than the casual listener might realize and they were also huge fans of both Joni Mitchell and the work of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Enjoy!

Mastrovito

The doctor listed on the psychiatric hospital charges for Mary Miller (aka Marilyn Monroe) is Mastrovito, which would have to be Rene C. Mastrovito as listed in the Payne Whitney annual report.

I wonder if he's one of the two doctors of whom Monroe wrote, in a letter to Lee and Paula Strasberg: "Dr. Kris has had me put into the New York Hospital—psychiatric division under the care of two idiot doctors—they both should not be my doctors."

I'm only using one doctor in the play.

It appears Mastrovito was very close to Monroe's age and he died in 1994.



It's interesting to see how her stay at the Payne Whitney was described by the NYTimes in this brief article.

Mary, not Faye

Also a photo of Arthur Miller and Monroe on bikes

I stumbled on a treasure trove of primary sources for the life of Marilyn Monroe, a web site called Curium Perficio. It is written by someone whose native language is French and so the English version of the site (there's also a French version)  reads strangely in many places, but that doesn't matter much because every page includes photos and documentation, some of it that I've never seen before.

For instance, a letter to Monroe from  Ana Lower, described by Monroe as "the greatest influence in my life" makes it clear how devout a Christian Scientist she was. Interesting because although Lower was so important in Monroe's life, as far as I am aware Monroe was not at all religious and never mentioned "god" at all - she would ask people to "hold a good thought" for her, rather than ask them to pray for her.

Lower was so religious she suggests Monroe's motion sickness is somehow a negation of God. In the letter below it says:

Now stop this nonsense about car sickness. God does not cease to be because you board a train, nor do you cease to be His perfect child because you take a car ride or a ship ride. You just forgot to put your armor on. 

The next page includes quotes from the Bible. What an odd, and probably uniquely Christian Scientist, approach to someone complaining about car sickness.

What really mattered to Monroe was Lower's maternal care of her. As described in "Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words":

One of the many reasons I loved her so much was her philosophy, her understanding of what really mattered in life. You know, like the time when I was going to Emerson Junior High and one of the girls in my class made fun of a dress I was wearing. I don't know why kids do things like that. It really hurts so. Well, I ran home crying as though my heart would break.
My loving aunt Ana was so comforting. She just held me in her arms and rocked me to and fro like a baby and said, "It doesn't make any difference if other children make fun of you, dear - it's what you really are that counts. Just keep being yourself honey. That's all that really matters." She was quite a person. She didn't believe in sickness, disease, or death. She didn't believe in a person being a failure, either. She did believe the mind could achieve anything it wished to achieve.
 

But most exciting about this web site from my perspective is the hospital invoice from Monroe's stay at the Payne Whitney(!) I read that she called herself Faye Miller, but the hospital invoice indicates she was called Mary Miller. I can't imagine why it was believed she called herself Faye, but all her biographers so far said it was Faye. It's just a tiny thing, but a big deal to me for this play. Not that my play refrains from taking artistic liberties, but I like to get the details right whenever possible.

The base rate of her stay was $61 per day. And Dr. Rene Mastrovito is mentioned in the Payne Whitney annual report for 1961, which I found here.

Great Scott! October 21, 2015 is almost here!

The future is almost here!

I've been tracking the relentless march towards the future since at least 2013 when I blogged about the Back to the Future countdown page.

Well my actor buddy Nick Fondulis, who does a spot-on Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly impersonation will be performing in The Usual Rejects production of Back to the Future II - it doesn't specify, but I assume this is a staged reading of the movie script. I am naturally planning to be at the October 21st performance at the Chain Theater which is conveniently right around the corner from my office. Yay!
Get your tickets here.

The script will include these immortal words (I hope!):

Matt vs. gun nuts

Well another month, another horrific school massacre. Which always brings out the gun nuts to defend our country's insane gun laws - or as Rolling Stone has it: 4 Pro-Gun Arguments We're Sick of Hearing.

As usual I got into screaming fights (or what passes for screaming on Facebook) with pro-gun friends of friends. Which is like screaming at a brick wall. I need to stop doing that and instead do what my actor buddy Matt did today - contacted every senator that voted against the Manchin-Toomey Amendment. Which, in case you don't know is legislation that would require a background check for most gun sales.

So few actors I know are involved in politics so it's always heartening to see one that is, and who takes actually effective action. Go Matt!

1. Matthew DeCapua ‏@mdecapua1  11h11 hours ago

   In the wake of the #UCCShooting I'm tweeting every senator that voted against the Manchin-Toomey Amendment. It's a long list. :(

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2. N. G. McClernan ‏@ngmcclernan  8h8 hours ago

   @mdecapua1 - but a worthy cause!

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Scotch-Irish?

I always figured the McClernan side of my family was straight-up pure Irish. The first time this idea was shaken was when I spent a week in Ireland in September 2000 (15 years ago already!) and had a peek at the Dublin phone book in the hotel - back when phone books were all the rage - and could not find a single McClernan mentioned therein.

It turns out my heritage on that side, at least, is more Scotch-Irish. According to the Ancestry.com web site there were a bunch of McClernans in Scotland according to the 1840s Scottish census.

There are also McClernans noted in Northern Ireland, that hotbed of Protesetantism. Also listed among the "Ulster Scots" here.

Now the Scotch-Irish were known as Presbyterians, but my family is straight up Catholic as far as I know. Of course there were Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland, which is one of the reasons for "The Troubles." Although if Wikipedia is to be believed, things have been pretty quite for the past 13 years or so.

Ultimately I don't actually care about where my family comes from. If you go back far enough we are all out of Africa anyway.

Pro-appropriation

There's a nasty notion, popular now, so popular there is a NYTimes editorial about it, on "appropriation."

The author, Parul Sehgal doesn't come out strongly against appropriation, but it's pretty clear by how she frames the issue that she thinks that appropriation is only something white people do - white people stealing from people of color:

We sometimes describe this mingling as ‘‘cross-pollination’’ or ‘‘cross-fertilization’’ — benign, bucolic metaphors that obscure the force of these encounters. When we wish to speak more plainly, we talk of ‘‘appropriation’’ — a word now associated with the white Western world’s co-opting of minority cultures. And this year — these past several months alone — there has been plenty of talk. In film, there was the outcry over the casting of the blonde Emma Stone as the part-Chinese Hawaiian heroine of Cameron Crowe’s ‘‘Aloha.’’ In music, Miley Cyrus wore dreadlock extensions while hosting the V.M.A.s and drew accusations of essentially performing in blackface — and not for the first time. In literature, there was the discovery that Michael Derrick Hudson, a white poet, had been published in this year’s Best American Poetry anthology under a Chinese pseudonym. In fashion, there was the odd attempt to rebrand cornrows as a Caucasian style — a ‘‘favorite resort hair look,’’ according to Elle. And floating above it all has been Rachel Dolezal, the presiding spirit of the phenomenon, the white former N.A.A.C.P. chapter president who remains serenely and implacably convinced of her blackness.

Culture is fluid and ethnicity is fluid and anybody who is anti-appropriation must explain why it's a horror for some white girl to wear cornrows but jazz is OK. Jazz was created when African Americans "appropriated" European marching band instruments.

The anti-appropriation view is anti-art and anti-cosmopolitan for the sake of cultural and ethnic purity. 

Apparently some people have forgotten what happens when a nation becomes obsessed with ethnic purity.

"The Fade" is a hideous haircut and there should be a law against it

The Fade must be stopped.

I've hated the fade for a while but didn't know what it was called. This is an amazing haircut with the power to make any man ugly, even Brad Pitt.

I guess it's supposed to be the opposite of the much-hated mullet, but it's actually even more ugly, and I didn't think that was possible.

This abomination must be stopped.

Rocky Horror 40th Anniversary show

Quinn, Campbell, Bostwick, plus some other actor who played Janet.

Barry Bostwick (Brad), "Little" Nell Campbell (Columbia) and Patricia Quinn (Magenta) were on hand.

As were me, my friend Valerie, and thousands of people in Rocky Horror themed costumes.

Skyline from the west side

The view from the fundraiser I attended on the 50th floor Penthouse in midtown West

Nutty psycho stalker Eron Gjoni is still obsessed with his ex-girlfriend

I've been thinking about Gamergate more than usual because Feminist Frequency on Facebook posted info about  Zoe Quinn and Anita Sarkeesian, two women targeted for a campaign of harassment and threats from nutty obsessive fans of Eron Gjoni, as well as garden variety misogynists, speaking at the UN.

Here are some of the threats and abuse Sarkeesian got in one single day.

There was a damning article about Gjoni's obsessive/stalker/defamatory activities on Boston Magazine earlier this year. 

The first thing Eron Gjoni said after sitting down across from me at Veggie Galaxy in December was that he would probably violate his gag order if he talked to me. Then he talked for the next three hours, and again and again over the next three months.
Gjoni can be relentless that way. And in others. He maintains incessant eye contact from behind a tangle of dark, wavy hair. He is intensely focused. Just ask Zoe Quinn, the object of his unwanted obsession. 

In September 2014, Quinn, 27, appeared in Boston Municipal Court to ask Judge Jonathan Tynes for a restraining order against Gjoni, her ex-boyfriend. In a handwritten affidavit to the court, Quinn tried to explain what had happened over the past month. After their brief romance ended, she noted, Gjoni “wrote and published a long post about my sex life and private dealings to several websites that he knew had a history of harassing me.” Quinn is a video-game designer and, like many women in the business, routinely receives misogynistic threats from strangers. Gjoni, Quinn contended, was aware that his blog post would result in her being harassed and stalked, and she claimed he had published it in order “to damage my professional reputation as an independent artist.” What’s more, she told the judge, the results had been particularly severe: Since Gjoni’s initial blog post, “I have received numerous death and rape threats from an anonymous mob that [Gjoni] had given details to,” she wrote. “My personal info like my home address, phone number, emails, passwords, and those of my family has been widely distributed, alongside nude photos of me, and several of my professional accounts and those of my colleagues have been hacked.” 

Quinn understated the facts. The thousands of threats, which she continues to receive daily, terrified her. Tweets such as “Im not only a pedophile, ive raped countless teens, this zoe bitch is my next victim, im coming slut” spoke for themselves. Messages such as “could kill yourself. We don’t need cunts like you in this world” preyed on the common knowledge that Quinn struggled with depression; she’d won acclaim for creating an impressionistic video game called Depression Quest. Forced to flee her Dorchester apartment, she spent more than six months hiding in friends’ homes. In her affidavit, Quinn struggled to explain to the judge who was behind these threats: They were anonymous, faceless, and they could be anywhere. “Eron has coached this mob multiple times, made multiple social media accounts to smear my name publicly, and has stoked the fire of this on many occasions and doesn’t seem to be stopping,” Quinn told the court. “I am in fear of him.”

There is something seriously wrong with this guy and the fact that he has pretty much gotten away with his jihad against this woman is clearly only encouraging him.

 He posted this four days ago:

Hey Guys, Eron here with a legal update. (self.KotakuInAction)submitted 4 days ago * by qriosEron Gjoni | Attractive like Khan or SpockAlright, so first things first -- as of a few weeks ago, I am no longer under a gag. Apologies for not notifying everyone the instant it happened, but, it seemed best to get advice and think through the best course of action before opening a potential can of worms. I think I've decided on what that course should be, but more on that later.
First (second?), I can now safely tell you about the secret stretch goal:
Back when I filed my appeal and served the plaintiff with my Statement of Issues on Appeal, she responded by trying to take out a back-up order in a new state. She plainly listed my appeal of the MA order as one of the reasons she was requesting a new order.
The just-fill-out-this-form-and-we'll-give-you-an-ex-parte order granted by that state was even more restrictive than the Massachusetts order, but only for about two days, until my attorney intervened and the judge agreed there were serious first amendment issues with the original wording, and modified the order to something more reasonable until the hearing.

You'll get a true sense of the hardcore misogyny if you read the comments. These people are evil freaks.

It's just a matter of time before obsessive psycho Eron Gjoni ends up in jail.

Oddly, Gjoni recently tweeted this:

But of course this episode of Last Week Tonight is much more relevant to Gjoni:

Tragically Fragile

I try not to think about Evan Marc Katz but I couldn't help but do so when I saw an article in Buzzfeed called 23 Gendered Products That Prove How Truly Fragile Masculinity Is. (When I posted it on Facebook it reads as "tragically fragile" which is more fun to say in your mind.)

I recently criticized Katz for the incredibly regressive advice he gives to women on bowing to traditional gender roles in order to catch a man. He advises women to be passive, and he lists some things that are unacceptably pro-active for a woman seeking a "masculine man." Two of the items just blow my mind - I thought I knew how bad American men who cling to traditional gender roles are, but if Katz is to be believed their concepts of unacceptable female aggressiveness wouldn't be out of place among the Taliban. The items are:

• You haven’t heard from him all weekend, you text him to make sure he’s doing okay.
• You want to see him next week, you tell him his favorite band is playing downtown and you can get tickets

That's right, even enquiring after his well-being or offering tickets to his favorite band are considered so horrifically domineering that they will, using Katz's own term, make the masculine man feel emasculated.

Yeah, I can just hear the manly man after he receives a text from the woman:

"she has two tickets to the Springsteen show next week and she asked me to go with her? THAT CASTRATING BITCH!"

In spite of the fact that masculinity is supposed to represent toughness, in fact it is one of the most fragile things on this planet, under constant threat - as Katz's examples of pro-activity demonstrate.

As does the Buzzfeed article:

20. “This food is only truly good for men. Women wouldn’t appreciate it.”

 

Ryan ▫️⬛️‏@mamma_earth

More in painfully fragile masculinity: fun fact (they're tomatoes)

27 more examples!

Robot: hysterically funny

My daughter-out-law introduced me to Flight of the Conchords, but I haven't watched them religiously or anything. But then I came across this - hysterical.

Hurray it's Autumn!

The most wonderful time of the year.

Countdown to the Robin DiAngelo lawsuit

UPDATE: My latest post about Robin DiAngelo: No Jamelle Bouie, Robin DiAngelo is not helping

Robin DiAngelo has written another bigoted offensive article and naturally it ends up in my Facebook newsfeed thanks to a friend of a friend. I've written before about DiAngelo. I would prefer not to have to think about Robin DiAngelo at all but idiots keep pointing to her as if she's some kind of voice of reason on the subject of race.

When I say "the Robin DiAngelo lawsuit" I don't necessarily mean she will personally be the defendant although she might.  But more likely her employer will be the defendant, because Robin DiAngelo conducts workplace events that discriminate on the basis of ethnicity. And it will be an open and shut case because DiAngelo makes no secret of the discrimination - she is so proud of it she wrote an article for "The Good Men Project" admitting to it:

When another police shooting of an unarmed black man occurred, my workplace called for an informal lunch gathering of people who wanted to connect and find support. Just before the gathering, a woman of color pulled me aside and told me that she wanted to attend but she was “in no mood for white women’s tears today.” I assured her that I would handle it. As the meeting started, I told my fellow white participants that if they felt moved to tears, to please leave the room. I would go with them for support, but asked that they not cry in the mixed group. After the discussion, I spent the next hour explaining to a very outraged white woman why she was asked not to cry in the presence of the people of color. 

So just to recap:

• An employer called for a gathering to be run by DiAngelo.
• One individual in the workplace told DiAngelo she had a problem with a specific group of people on the basis of their gender and ethnicity.
• DiAngelo then informed the members of that ethnicity only that if they cried during the discussion, they had to leave the room.
• At least one individual was very upset by being singled out that way.

DiAngelo then spends the rest of the article justifying the discrimination, which, when you boil it down, is something like: "all white women share the guilt of the death of Emmet Till because white men killed him because he whistled at a white woman."

I sure hope she tries to use that as a defense in this clear-cut case of ethnicity-based discrimination. She'll be laughed out of court.

If Robin DiAngelo continues to commit blatant discrimination in the workplace it is only a matter of time before somebody sues.

And because the reflex response of all Social Justice Warriors/Identitarians like Robin DiAngelo is to smear their critics as racist, here is a statement:

My Anti-Racist Bona Fides

Although I was smeared on Tumblr by infamous bully Mikki Kendall and identitarian extremist K. Tempest Bradford (and thanks to the cozy relationship between Tumblr and Google, the smears show up in my search results), in fact I have a long history of opposing racism, and the evidence for the past 10 years is on this blog. Unhinged extremists like Kendall and Bradford don't care to know anything about the strangers they randomly smear. That's why they and the people who promote them like Verso books are horrible and don't help solve the problem of racism in the United States.

• I helped prevent racist Razib Khan from getting a gig writing for the NYTime - thanks to documenting his racism for 10 years.
• I stood up to a woman at work who had a pattern of saying racist things.
• I'd like to see Juneteenth become a national holiday.
• I demonstrated that David Mamet's play RACE is most likely based on Mamet's racial hatred of Michelle Obama.
• I believe African Americans built the US.

Richard Dawkins - an even bigger douchebag than ever before

Well I haven't mentioned Richard Dawkins since mid-June. I wonder what he's up to these - oh my godlessness!

1. Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins  Sep 20

   . @smenor @MhaskarChief He didn't only claim to have built it. He claimed, on Youtube, that it was his INVENTION.

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2. Gut ohne Gott ‏@I_Love_Atheism  Sep 20

   @RichardDawkins @smenor @MhaskarChief What has this got to do with evolutionary biology or atheism? Why are you so annoyed about this kid?

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3. Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins  Sep 20

   @I_Love_Atheism Because he disassembled & reassembled a clock (which is fine) & then claimed it was his "invention" (which is fraud).

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4. Gut ohne Gott ‏@I_Love_Atheism  Sep 20

   @RichardDawkins He's just a kid!

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5. Haku ‏@Haku_81  Sep 20

   @I_Love_Atheism @RichardDawkins isn't he 14? And clearly a clever TEENAGER? He's not fucking stupid mate

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6. Gut ohne Gott ‏@I_Love_Atheism  Sep 20

   @Haku_81 @RichardDawkins Of course not, but a harmless kid being called a 'fraud'. He made a mistake, so what?

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7. Gut ohne Gott ‏@I_Love_Atheism  Sep 20

   @Haku_81 @RichardDawkins That's why I said Johnny Smith probably wouldn't have been arrested. But even this was questioned... Let's move on.

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8. Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins  Sep 20

   @I_Love_Atheism @Haku_81 True, Johnny Smith would not have been arrested & Ahmed should NOT have been. But his motives remain questionable.

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9. Harry Stopes ‏@HarryStopes  Sep 20

   Harry Stopes retweeted Richard Dawkins

   Really @richarddawkins what do you think Ahmed's motives were?

   Harry Stopes added,

   
   

   Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins
   

   @I_Love_Atheism @Haku_81 True, Johnny Smith would not have been arrested & Ahmed should NOT have been. But his motives remain questionable.

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Richard DawkinsVerified account‏@RichardDawkins

@HarryStopes I don't know. Possibly wanted to be arrested? Police played into his hands? Anyway, now invited to White House, crowdfunded etc

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6:11 AM - 20 Sep 2015

Dawkins got lots of negative publicity over this, which should have given him pause, but instead he doubled-down the next day.

 

Richard DawkinsVerified account‏@RichardDawkins

Heavy-handed police did what security officers are taught: zero tolerance. If "profiling" it's not obvious. Boy's motives remain mysterious.

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12:19 PM - 21 Sep 2015

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Reply to @RichardDawkins 

N. G. McClernan ‏@ngmcclernan  5h5 hours ago
@RichardDawkins clearly you won't be satisfied until every last person on social media thinks you're an obsessed paranoid bully.
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   Maryam ‏@maryam_xyz  9h9 hours ago
   @RichardDawkins He made a CLOCK! What is so mysterious about this? Good lord.
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   Richard Dawkins ‏@RichardDawkins  9h9 hours ago
   @maryam_xyz He didn't make a clock. He unscrewed a clock and put the innards, unaltered, into a box. Why would anyone do that? Mysterious.
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   Michael Merrifield ‏@ProfMike_M  8h8 hours ago
   @RichardDawkins because he's a kid who is interested in how things work, and likes showing off?
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   Michael Merrifield ‏@ProfMike_M  8h8 hours ago
   @RichardDawkins so, no, not mysterious to anyone who pauses to think before tweeting and has no agenda to pursue.
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If Dawkins has any friends left, they really need to take away his Twitter keys.

PZ Meyers has a great response.