Matt Taibbi fellates Glenn Greenwald, and: Thiel time? (with some ass-whup for Matt, Glenn and Max Blumenthal)

So, in case you've been away from Twitter for 24 hours? 

Glenn Greenwald quit the Intercept Thursday after senior editor Betsy Reed refused to let Greenwald run a piece about the New York Post/Hunter Biden story  — you know, the one where the Post reporter initially involved thought it was SO bad he refused to let his name on it, and then he or somebody leaked to the New York Times.

(Pictured at left: The face of Glenn Greenwald resigning from The Intercept. Sorry, Larry Bird fans, but I just realized the resemblance. And the beet-red, or tomato-red, color befits the petulant anger of Greenwald even more than the general equinamity of Hoosier Jeesus.)

Or, you know — the story that Giuliani et al first tried to peddle to the wingnut-enough Wall Street Journal and it initially was leaning toward "no thanks," then emphatically said "no thanks" after Giuiliani made clear that the WSJ was EXPECTED to do a hit piece.

Or, and most relevant to our discussion, you know — the piece that drew MSM reaction so fierce that Greenwald's first reaction to that reaction was to go on racist Tucker Carlson's program to denounce the general levelheadedness lock, stock and barrel.

Greenwald claims he had planned nothing but a "modest proposal" piece, but, given his appearance on Tucker, I'm sure Betsy Reed saw "modest proposal" in its Swiftian sense.

Why wouldn't she want an editorial look-see?

So Glenn got in a funk and quit.

And went to Substack, drawing an increasing collection of misfits, including Taibbi of the header and Andrew Sullivan of racist pecadillos. (Did a black man refuse him bearback sex? What's the trigger here, Sully?)

Update, Nov. 14: Letter signer and Ezra Klein flunky (flunky of a flunky) Yglesias has joined the piety brothers swill at Substack. And of course, it's Conor Friedersdorf taking this with utmost seriousness at Atlantic. (Yglesias is also an  overpaid classist if he's buying $1.2M DC condos.)

And, Taibbi wrote a "Poor Glenn" piece in which he, like all the other Greenwald-stanners of the last 24 hours, discusses his "heroic" or whatever work with the Edward Snowden archive, all while failing to note that, approximately a year ago, Greenwald, saying that Omidyar was too broke to pay for more Snowden reporting, turned all the materials over to Omidyar, in conjunction with Jeremy Scahill.

Neither has apologized.

Nor has Glenn apologized for pulling punches in previous Snowden reporting, nor saying what edits or self-censorship he did.

Meanwhile, Taibbi gets the big issue wrong, as do his fellow ALLEGED outside the box pundit stenos.

And, that is that Russia DID meddle in 2016, and above all, of course Guccifer 2.0 hacked the DNC. 

That said, Russia did NOT collude, shown first and foremost by Guccifer 2.0 (or other operatives) ALSO hacking the RNC.

So, both the stenos AND #TheResistance types, including such self puffers as Marcy Wheeler, the Glenn Greenwald of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, are BOTH wrong.

And, Taibbi is off to suck Greenwald's dick instead of Tulsi Gabbard's.

This is the latest in a line of idiotic screeds by Taibbi, starting just after he went to Substack, as I noted. As part of this, even though he shockingly didn't sign the "boo cancel culture" letter in Harper's, which I thoroughly deconstructed, he totally agrees with its ideology. 

Taibbi also deliberately overlooks other black marks of Greenwald, like his supporting the Iraq War. And, it's more than that. Greenwald has never admitted he was wrong, because he continues to this day to claim (lyingly) that he did NOT support the Iraq War.

Speaking of lies?

This whole Greenwald claim of "but my contractual rights say no editing" is another lie. The Intercept, per this great NY Mag story, says that was ONLY true of his columns. His news stories were, are and always have been subject to editing, and mentioned previous examples. Details of that in re the proposed Hunter Biden story.

Greenwald’s main editor on the nonpolitical pieces was Peter Maass, a veteran journalist who joined The Intercept shortly after its founding in 2014. In light of the high-profile, controversial nature of Greenwald’s planned column on Hunter Biden, Reed told Greenwald that Maass would edit the column. 

On Tuesday, Maass sent a lengthy memo to Greenwald, outlining what he said were the draft’s strengths and weaknesses and suggesting that he adopt a sharper focus on media criticism rather than litigate questionable evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption based on purported documents from his son Hunter that had been published by the New York Post.

Shock me.

And, at least one person I know of who knows better is in a new phase of Greenwald re-enchantment. You know who you are. But, just as I can't force antimaskers to stop being pseudoscience mongers.

As for the issue at hand? Hellz yes, if I were Betsy Reed, I'd want to red-pencil Greenwald. Per Jay Rosen recently and my take on him, I'd look at both Greenwald's and Taibbi's twosiderism as part of this.

And? Also unmentioned by Taibbi? Greenwald himself, comfortable with gutting other writers at the Intercept.

But Greenwald?

Jacob Silverman NAILS IT at The New Republic:

Greenwald seems to think he is beyond editing or critique. As he wrote to an editor, “Recall that under my contract, and the practice of The Intercept over the last seven years, none of my articles is edited unless it presents the possibility of legal liability or complex original reporting.”

And, that's the bottom line.

I would have said, if some reasonable conservative outlet had tackled it ... But we know the WSJ has refused to touch it with a 10-foot pole since the original. Reason? Robby Soave has proved himself to be his usual unreasonable self, misframing the WSJ handling. The rest of Reason seems unable to write a single non-duopoly story in the last two weeks. Where's Jo Jorgensen? (Well, they ARE reporting on her officially being an antivaxxer. Nother story.)

National Review? I don't see a non-wingnut tackling it. Wingnut de luxe Kevin D. Williamson scolded the MSM for not taking more of a look — 10 days before the NYT reported on the WSJ's hard pass. Since then? Crickets. Otherwise, NR, in reporting on Glenn, notes his comment that most of the Intercept staff lives in New York. Gee, so does Glenn! Got his name as a libertarian tenant shyster lawyer there. As does the official physical location of ... The National Review!

Per/contra Taibbi, an intelligence non-Resistance lefist would never listen to Adam Schiff anyway. And, serious reporting like Ben Smith's has never claimed this was Russian disinformation, since Giuliani showed it was Trump disinformation.

So, Taibbi's in the land of gaslighting there.

Also in the land of gaslighting? Max Blumenthal, shock me.

Contra this gotcha bullshit, even by his standards, from Max:

The Intercept’s Betsy Reed, who earns $427,419 a year & produces zero journalism of her own, mocks independent journalists who rely on Substack & Patreon to get by. Not everyone has a reclusive billionaire to pay them huge sums to edit stuff no one reads. https://t.co/TdnjrDdinw pic.twitter.com/83FMDhpRgQ

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) October 30, 2020

My response, which included Max, Reed, and the person who retweeted:

Sully has said he expects to get more on Substack than at New Yorker & what he made there was more than Betsy does.
2nd, in traditional media as well as Gnu Media, editors make more than many of the reporters they supervise.
This is "gotcha" even from you Max. More #twosiderism

— Flim Flam 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) October 31, 2020

Beyond that, conveniently omitted by Max, the retweeting Aaron Maté and the re-retweeting Mona Holland, is that Reed is not just editor, but editor-in-chief. And had 16 years of various editorial experience at The Nation before that. 

In addition, Max's salary schedule screengrab carefully, CAREFULLY, does not include Glenn's salary. If Scahill is pulling in more than 300 large, Glenn may make as much as Betsy. In 2015, he made more. And, Glenn said as late as last year that his salary hadn't changed. So, he was STILL making more than Reed.

Finally, why is Xi Jinping Thought stanner Max Blumenthal blubbering like a baby capitalist over "poor Glenn Greenwald" possibly taking a pay cut?

As for lands of gaslighting? Silverman at TNR goes on to look at what Substack might be, if there's a nuttier Omidyar willing to pay the freight beyond what Omidyar did:

An informed media observer, or someone who spends too much time on Twitter, could come up with a list of who might be called to join such a publication: Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Andrew Sullivan, Zaid Jilani, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Michael Tracey, perhaps some podcasters notorious for straddling the left-right divide, and anyone else who thinks that threats to speech emanate from a censorious, liberal-dominated culture and not from Donald Trump, corporate power, or police brutalizing protesters in the streets. 

Forget Persuasion or Quillette or whatever free speech absolutist publication is currently fermenting in a billionaire’s petri dish. This will be a Voltron of some of the most insufferable people in American media. … 

And who will fund such a publication, whose staff will likely expect to recuperate the hefty salaries they are accustomed to? The billionaire that puts libertarian iconoclasts, professional rageaholics, racist disaffected conservatives, and some members of the so-called Intellectual Dark Web on the same payroll will be far more malevolent than Intercept owner Pierre Omidyar, who has no shortage of his own peculiar investments and unacknowledged political commitments. Some possibilities come to mind—perhaps a Trump-friendly tech mogul notorious for killing a genuinely free-thinking publication—but one hesitates to summon the demon by naming it.

That, too is very true. And, the demon of Thiel behind a Substack on steroids? OUCH! I think I just threw up in the collective mouth of Sea Islands.

As for the possible reality of this? Who knows? I can't see Thiel being Taibbi's cup of tea, but I could totally see Greenwald and Sully lapping him up.

One more Silverman, with the last word on Glenn, which I've known, and the nameless person above knew even longer.

Bombast and ego have always been at the heart of Greenwald’s writing. But like many star journalists left to marinate in their own juices for too long, he’s become an asshole who equates being edited with the targeted suppression of his righteous beliefs.

That's the bottom line!

Twosiderism and the MSM vs alleged outside the box stenos

I've used that last phrase elsewhere about people like Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, Mark Ames, Jordan Chariton, Yasha Levine, Matt Taibbi, and others.

They're a loose cluster of people who claim to think outside the box of what I call the bipartisan foreign policy establishment here in the U.S.

However, they carry this to an extreme, and that's the twosiderism on their own. Especially on things like China's Uyghur detention camps, they're willing to drink Xi Jinping's bullshit or whatever just because the U.S. foreign policy establishment calls him out for this. (As does most the Western foreign policy establishment.)

Well, beyond two wrongs not making a right, this is not really outside-the-box thinking. Instead, it's creating your own new box.

On things like the New York Post's story about Hunter and Joe Biden, Glenn Greenwald has been a willing member. And, he too is wrong.

Yes, it's Vox, Ezra-land, but Jay Rosen, who is interviewed there by Sean Illing, isn't Ezra Klein.

Rosen just mentions the Post piece in passing as part of a larger issue. And that is that political journalists have for decades more and more treated political reporting as insider baseball. 

Arguably, some of the reactions to the Post piece are just about that. 

And, arguably, some of the stenos' reactions to the MSM reactions to the Post are themselves just about that.

The folks above are claiming to lift the lid off this insider baseball which they claim in the case of the MSM is tied to the bipartisan foreign policy establishment.

Well, on the Biden story, Greenwald was so incensed that not only did he write a story on it, he appeared on racist Tucker Carlson. And "conveniently" refused to mention that the story was SO bad the original Post reporter, Bruce Golding, insisted his byline not be on the piece, and that he or other Post staff — somebody! — leaked to the New York Times.

And, some of these people leave themselves open to credibility challenges otherwise.

Most of them have drunk the Evo Morales Kool-Aid, poured again last week, as documented by me here. And, Kool-Aid it is.

Maté, at least, supplies ever more indirect evidence that he's a Seth Rich conspiracy theorist. 

Most of the people above have drunk, and poured, at least bits of the Tulsi Gabbard Kool-Aid.

And, of course, Greenwald surrendered 90 percent of the Ed Snowden archive to his globalist (sic!) patron and founder of the Intercept.

Greenwald himself is an odd fit outside of attacking the bipartisan foreign policy establishment. He claims not to be a libertarian, but most the other stenos have no problem identifying him as such. Ames and Levine have even attacked him in the past on Exiled.

But, he's a good fit otherwise in peddling the same twosiderism they do.

Besides, I figure it pisses both them and Greenwald off to lump them together.

Texas Progressives have last pre-election thoughts

Just five days left before Election day, and we face the following questions:

• Will Democrats regain the U.S. Senate? 

• Will Texas Dems flip the state House?

• Will Biden win Texas?

• Will M.J. Hegar beat John Cornyn?

• How well will third-party candidates Jo Jorgensen and Howie Hawkins do?

• If Hawkins is well behind Stein 2016, in part because lack of dues-paying membership put a crimp on state-by-state party ballot access, what will the Green Party do?

• Will the GP address rogue states Rhode Island (openly endorsing Biden and sending no presidential delegates to the GP 2020 convention) and Alaska (separately nominating Jesse Ventura) at its 2021 convention?

Maybe not all of America is facing these questions, but this person is. You may get tentative answers to the first three here; I'll tackle all, probably next Monday.

And with that, let's jump in!

Texas-elections

Yes, it started a week early, but comparing two weeks time with two weeks time, early voting was already equal to 2016, and the extra week means it should surge way past that. But? What will overall numbers be? Will total turnout be that much higher? OR, per Betomania, will they be that much higher for Dems than in 2018? Many experts say it will break 65 percent and threaten 70 percent, numbers not hit since 1992. Dan Solomon has more on the turnout and what it might hint at.

The battle over dropoff sites for absentee ballots continued, but Texas Supremes finally said "no" to plaintiffs and kept Abbott's rules in place. (It may be a form of vote suppression, but the legal ruling is correct.) Meanwhile, the battle over drive-through voting is firmly settled in favor of voters and against Steve Hotze. Well, change that. Hotze refuses to give up and yesterday was one of the plaintiffs in ANOTHER suit.

Justin Miller at the Observer ponders the latest on the battle to flip the Texas House. That said, Tom DeLay's mid-decade redistricting isn't totally unique. Michigan Republicans planned similar in the 1890s, but state House and state Senate disagreed within themselves on details. Read more here.

Off the Kuff (doing his best Beto impersonation?) tries to make sense of some recent polls that show Joe Biden with a slight lead in Texas.

However, the two newest of said polls, for various reasons, show The Donald with a 4-5 point lead. And, the NYT's poll, as discussed by yours truly in detail, shows that Texas is once again, among Hispanic voters .... wait for it, wait for it ... looking like a non-voting state. Shock me.

Reform Texas is amused by John Cornyn's delicate ears.

The Texas Signal notes that we're still a state that does its damnedest to make it hard to vote. 

Jim Henson and Joshua Blank look at how independent voters have shifted away from Republicans in recent Texas elections. 

Matt Mohn marvels at the extreme variance in polling preferences of Texas Latinos in this election. 

Sending the National Guard to Texas' largest cities on election day smacks of vote intimidation, Strangeabbott.

Texas-other politics

Kenny Boy Paxton is now supposed to get tried by a jury of his peers Collin County cronies, even as he seemingly violates state whistleblower laws by sacking AG employees.

Senfronia Thompson is officially in the ring for Texas Speaker. Could she pull off a nomination even if Dems don't flip the House side of the pink dome?

Texana

The Monthly has the first in a three-part series about how Texas  school history textbooks are teh suck. The first piece is good, but per not yet great. Per this hot take of mine, the review may be exchanging one form of privilege for another in one passage. If you asked around GOP Austin, Danny Goeb would say they're great, Strangeabbott would issue a Jesuitical hair-splitting statement while talking about his Mezzican wife, Kenny Boy would try to sell you stock in Pearson and Tim Dunn would pay $1 million to get the SBOE to approve a textbook even more wrong.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' refusal to officially exonerate Lydall Grant is its biggest black mark in many years on a ledger full of them.

Two Navajos have raised this year's death count at Fort Hood to 28, and suspicions surround both of them, with the usual Fort Hood lethargic and changing responses adding to that.

RIP Jerry Jeff Walker.

The Texas Living Waters Project tries to imagine what our state would be like without water.

National

Doing his Weird Al Yankovic schtick, SocraticGadfly taps his inner Blue Öyster Cult and offers up the lyrics for “Don’t Fear the Virus.” After all, “Donaldine and Melania ARE together in COVIDity.”

Reflecting Hume's younger thought on reason being the slave of the passions in the Treatise, rather than his (not totally warranted IMO) partial pullback in the Inquiry, wingnuts are burning $10 million to try to unseat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. If one-third of those contributors haven't maxed out to Trump, I'm sure, given his "poor me" on campaign financing, and refusal to extend himself more (of COURSE not cash) via a loan that wouldn't be repaid this time and would be even more griftier than four years ago, I'm sure he'd love some of that for ad buys in neighboring Pennsylvania.

Garrett Hardin wrote about, and popularized, "the tragedy of the commons." He did so not as an enlightened environmentalist, though, but as someone more xenophobic and racist than Ed Abbey. And, because of his motivated reasoning, he actually got some things wrong.

Paradise in Hell sampled reactions to the last debate.

Texas STILL a non-voting state

So says the NYT in its latest story about the presidential race.

Specifically, it says Texas is still a non-voting state in one specific way.

Stop me if you've heard this before  ...

Stop me ...

Stop ...

But the Old Gray Lady says Hispanic voter turnout still lags.

Related? It says Biden's support there isn't massive.

That second part doesn't surprise me.

An ever-higher number of Hispanic new immigrants to Texas, whether Ill Eagles or fully healthy, are evangelical Protestant and not Catholic. Those that are legal and eligible to vote probably tilt even higher non-Catholic. And higher Republican.

I was first writing about the religious demographics seven full years ago.

That said, if there's any silver lining for Sleepy Joe, it's that these Hispanics are most likely to stay home.

That said, I disagree with a University of Houston poll last week that, contra many other polls, showed independents breaking for Trump. Just don't see it. THAT then said, it had Trump in the lead by just 1 percentage point more than did the NYT.

(That said, per this battleground counties piece by the NYT, it looks like Puerto Ricans are undervoting in Florida, so not just a Texas Hispanics thing.)

Coronavirus boycott notes: Kroger, Walmart, Tom Thumb etc

My regional boycotts started two and one half months ago, when I stopped going to all Kroger locations in Denton, Texas, over Kroger Andy, the person who uses the name Danielle Muscato, and masking issues at a Kentucky store, and above all, Kroger's Kabuki theater PR.

Things picked up from there.

As a more local Walmart became more lax on enforcing masking, and so did a Dollar Tree in front of it, as described here, I minimized visits to both. Then, despite both being notified on Twitter and both being nonresponsive EVEN THOUGH Walmart corporate HAS BEEN responsive to me on other issues in the past year, the problem got worse, as documented in another local Walmart visit.

Then, Tom Thumb got in on the act. This time, corporate did respond to me. Said it would talk to local management. When the problem happened again, said local management would call me. However, that part did NOT happen. Full story here.

And now? We have a surge in cases and surge in COVIDIOTS in Cooke County.

So, the boycott score is?

Locally, all three stores are off for right now.

Kroger in Denton is selectively back on, but my shopping there stays reduced. It takes a back seat to Winco (thank doorknob it's in Denton) and Aldi.

It was also taking a back seat to Albertson's in Denton, but as Albertson's is Tom Thumb's parent? It's off for right now.

Dollar Tree in Denton may or may not get an occasional visit.

To the corporate parents, to their stanners? Do NOT NOT NOT tell ME to use pickup or delivery.

To you and to antimaskers? Do NOT NOT NOT tell me that the ADA requires stores to admit people without masks. That's a bald-faced lie. If you offer either pickup or delivery, you can REQUIRE people without a mask, whether they have a legit medical exemption, they're lying about one, or they simply refuse to wear a mask, to use those options instead. 

Period and end of story.

Coronavirus Week 30: A few brief thoughts

We're past 230,000 dead now. There's more and more indication that the economy will have a second "dip," especially if not enough Democrats win Senate seats via special election to outmuscle McConnell in any lame duck session this year to do more for stimulus issues.

• And, the new wave? It's a "red" wave. Not "red" states nearly as much as "red" counties. Counties of 10,000 and under are getting hammered. These are the places where the die-hardest Trumpers are likely to be. They're also the places with the most limited medical services, meaning that denialists, minimizers, plandemicers etc have all just signed themselves up for a good shot at Darwin Awards. Schadenfreude is a bitch. As the Times notes, many of these counties don't have hospitals, period. But, one thing they do have, as they're concentrated in the "Great White North"? Long, snowy winters. Rides to a hospital a county or two over are fraught with danger if on a back-area state highway not fully cleared of snow.

• Vaccines? The two currently leading candidates to get FDA's "safe and effective" imprimatur may be safe, effective — and unfeasible. Two-dose vaccines that need shots either 21 or 28 days apart won't help the general public. A vaccine that has to be frozen is bad enough, but one that needs to stay at dry ice temperatures may not even help health care people in rural areas.

• Here in Texas, in places like Denton County, Gov. Strangeabbott's ruling that masks aren't needed at voting places is being used by wingnut poll workers to try to sign up other poll workers for Darwin Awards.

• Also in Texas, ongoing COVID concerns have meant that urban school districts, far more than rural ones, have a high percentage of students in remote learning. Or, per the Trib, maybe allegedly in remote learning and actually playing hooky, one of several problems. And, the state has said that school districts can't force remote learners into in-person learning solely because they're failing classes remotely.

• Also here in Texas, DosCentavos is worried about COVID-19, so, he posted a good Q&A with COVID hunter, Dr. Varon from UMMC.

• I missed this, this summer. Churches that are members of major denominations got some rule-bending directed their way on PPP funds.

• Sadly, Dems like Pelosi, as well as our wingnut in chief, continue to talk about "crushing the virus." American exceptionalism as mouthed by BOTH duopoly parties continues to crumble in our semi-failed nation-state.

• Stop blaming lockdowns for harming the economy, wingnuts. It just ain't true.

• That paper claiming that hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved if more Merikans would just #WearADamnMask? Per Retraction Watch, the authors had underestimated mask wearing, and so, while we could save TENS of thousands of lives, which is not to be sneezed at, the HUNDREDS of thousands claim is just incorrect. (We FULLY practice scientific reporting at this blog.)

• On the third hand, if North Dakota is below 50 percent masking, maybe it's not so wrong after all.

Final thought?

• Per a Minnesota epidemiologist saying the rest of this year is going to be "the darkest days of the pandemic," due to a mix of "pandemic fatigue and pandemic anger," we'll be past the 300,000 mark when the calendar rolls over. It's like the old Fram commercial, and too much of America refused to pay a lesser amount early on. The story notes that in Minnesota, new case numbers are rising faster than testing. Remember, like six months ago, how Trump talked about all this testing? And Strangeabbott here in Texas?

Lies, lies and lies.

Yes, rates are rising again in Europe, too, but most European countries remain well below the US on death rates.

Sadly, Dr. Osterholm overlooked a third factor. "Pandemic denialism" is just as much a part of the mix, even now, as fatigue and anger.

James Randi is dead — and won't be totally missed here (and neither will his cult be missed)

So-called "movement skepticism" isn't in general missed in these corners, but, for the less informed, let me explain why the (Not so) Amazing Randi, aka, The Amazing (Deceiver) Randi, won't be missed here after his death at 92 last week. (Hat tip Kuff in his weekly roundup for noting this.) A better, but not perfect, NYT obit is here.

From lesser to greater?

There's his libertarianism that enabled the likes of Penn and Teller to be denialist about secondhand smoke as a carcinogen, and to still be denialist about things like climate change. That's too common in movement skepticism; Michael Shermer is yet another prominent member, at least partially influenced by Randi, who has conflated some version of modern movement (it's NOT "scientific," per the above, so I don't call it that) skepticism with philosophical and political libertarianism.

Next, there's his condoning of #MeToo related problems in movement skepticism. (And, allegedly, Shermer was part of those problems, too.)

Finally, Randi almost certainly knew that his long-time lover, Devyi Peña, was an identity thief. Hiring him at JREF, the nepotism wouldn't look good even without the above. That, of course, makes it worse. Even if Randi didn't know that Peña had engaged in willful criminality, the hiring made it look like he did know and was trying to protect him.

See update below for more wrongness by Randi, and more important, for how the cult doesn’t like any questioning of him.

All the information two paragraphs up, plus Shermer's history, is documented here. More on Shermer here. That documentation notes that this goes back to the time of Paul Kurtz as founder of CFI. (Randi as founder of JREF, as much as Kurtz at CFI, also fell willing victim to founders syndrome.)

Related? Randi started sniffing his own press clippings too much later in life. The claims that Peña magically (I see what I did there) skeptically enlightened most of Australia have been put paid to by many people, for example.

So, contra Penn Jillette, I won't love him forever. "Flim Flam," his first famous book? Might be a good title for his biography. (And, neither of the above obits included most of this. The NYT, at the second link, touched on a bit of the first issue, indirectly, and on the third issue, but only to claim that it was an accident by Peña, not willful identity theft, a claim which is, per Harry Frankfurt, "bullshit.) 

When I was a kid, I remember seeing Randi on the Tonight Show and being interested.

As a much younger adult, doing intellectual judo on my seminary education, he and other skeptics were of a bit of help, though not nearly as much as Messrs. Hume and Wittgenstein, followed by some atheistic (but not "Gnu") philosophers.

As I got older yet, though, and moved left politically, and developed my own skepticism, though, I took a look at Randi's movement more carefully. And, even before the MeToo antics, the more and more I saw, the less and less I liked.

And moved on.

Probably why I didn't hear of Randi's death until four days after it happened.

This all said, since an announcement of his death is one of just two announcements posted to JREF in the past six months, I may not be missing much anyway.

 

In addition, founders syndrome is semi-cultic, something that any good skeptic should steer clear of, of course.

 

Update: Via Orac, Mitch Horowitz at Boing Boing has a takedown obit at least as scathing as anything I've ever written. 

And, let's look at Horowitz.

That said, this is as close to true as he gets.

He was to skepticism what Senator Joseph McCarthy was to anticommunism — a showman, a bully, and, ultimately, the very thing he claimed to fight against: a fraud.

Half-true on some, less than half on others. A showman, yes. To the degree showmanship affected his skeptical claims, not so much. Less true of the bullying — except possibly inside his management of JREF. A fraud? Well, with Peña, take your choice of "fraud" or "hypocrite."

That said, Horowitz trying to cite Ray Hyman as supporting him shows how far off base he is. And, while Orac mentions that and more, I don't need Orac to know that. Ditto when Horowitz mentions the likes of Dean Radin.

 

Horowitz is himself a non-skeptic of the first rank on paranormal claims. And, thus, wrong!

 

That said, Orac, in savaging Horowitz?

 

I've commented at Orac, essentially summarizing my points here and, while not saying Horowitz is right, that Orac cut Randi a fairly big pass on several issues. 

Update, June 7, 2021, in light of the updates below and other things.

Having tangled with Orac twice now over issues related to St. Anthony of Fauci, and knowing that Movement Skeptics / Skeptics™ are their own set of tribalists, as Orac's fellow-travelers at Evidence Based Medicine have shown before in a back-and-forth with Massimo, I've decided to expand this.

First, I'm sure that Orac is more than a micro-celebrity, and certainly more than a nano-celebrity, within Skeptics™. Such modesty!

Second, to get to some meat? Orac ignores Peña. Flat-out ignores him. Never discusses him. Not just the ID theft, but the allegations of shammery in Australia. If that's not intellectual dishonesty?

Third, he doesn't tackle the issue of founder's syndrome. Since Paul Kurtz had shown it several years prior, and to some degree, like Randi, on #MeToo issues, this wasn't good, either. I mean, Orac even commented, as I blogged about, a non-MeToo problem with Kurtz.

Fourth, he (and fellow travelers at NECSS) have evidenced tribalism and twosiderism before! I forgot about John Horgan calling him out, and them, five years ago, and that I blogged about that. What Orac in his insolence really hated was getting called out by someone at his pay and fame grade. (I also wonder how much both Orac and Steve Novella, per that link, disliked Horgan's comments not on skepticism, but on fee-for-service medicine. Orac strikes me as a mainstream neolib Democrat type who at a minimum isn't highly favorable to single-payer national health care.)

Fourth, part 2: Per Horgan, and contra Orac, the asshole wasn't Horgan. Besides Orac and Novella, it was first Jamy Ian Swiss. That said, for not having a single word of praise, Orac and Novella are assholes themselves. I might wind up writing something just about Orac at some point!

Fourth, part 3: The likes of Orac, though not a lot himself personally (rather, Shermer, Randi, philosophy-hating Barbara Drescher and philosophy-minimalizing mild Daniel Loxton) are part of why I don't call myself a skeptic any more, and haven't for five years, like Massimo — at least not without the word "philosophy" or "philosophical" attached. (I suspect that Orac's probably not big on philosophy, either.)

==

Update, Dec. 22. So, Randi was also a Jesus mythicist, at least buying into the bullshit that Nazareth didn't exist 2,000 years ago?

 

 

Oh, he's wrong, by the way. Exist it did indeed, so shut up mythicists.

==

Update, March 27, 2021: Per the header, I DID say "won't be totally missed." I did NOT say, "won't be missed at all." But, per a Hucksterman discussion to which I won't link ... too many people are still too ardent of Randi fans to consider that.

Sadly (and this particular person isn't THAT bad), but, beyond Randi sniffing his own press clippings too much in later life, on #MeToo, and on Peña I think, and on founder's syndrome in general, he had too many enablers. He should have been nudged out of leading JREF at least half a decade before he actually was.

Yeah, the opening graf may have been a bit harsh for the particular person's taste. But, for many acolytes of his (cultists?) it was just right, if not too soft.

Note to Phil Stilwell: Susan Gerbic's original post was about a person. If I disagreed, as I did, then wouldn't I be focusing on a person in response?

Note to Susan: If you don't like critical comments, then don't post to "public."

And, it's "funny" (insert other word here) for a skeptic to be deleting comments from a thread.

XXXXX in case you are wondering I removed that hateful thread. That person can buzz off and keep their nasty crap to themselves.

And, no, it wasn't hateful. Labeling something you don't like as "hateful" is facile, but often not true. But, if you've won awards from Randi, as she has, you've got an investment in promotional materials.

(I have since gotten into a Hucksterman argument with a Phil Stilwell, who arguably, even if my original first comment below my post "thank god for screenshots" was a bit convoluted, came off as gaslighting me. He would have remembered commenting on Gerbic's post less than 24 hours previously, and telling me not to focus on the personal. As Gerbic was trying to glorify the effects of Randi as a person, dude, how could I NOT comment on Randi as a person? Put that and your gaslighting in your pipe and puff it. Seeing as how you've gotten lucky enough to get played up by the likes of Jonathan M.S. Pearce, for whom I have less and less respect, as a deconversion success story, and you've been a regular commenter on the major skeptatheism sites, I'm sure of what you said, even if it's now gone. Pearce being an apparent Islamophobe only makes matters worse. Further update to this, June 7: Looking back at Orac's piece, I see Gerbic mentioned. )

I think that, per discussion on one social media site, "fossilized" is a good word to describe JREF, and other orgs, whether "movement skepticism" or Gnu Atheism like the Freedom from Religion Foundation, aka the folks who once tried to claim that Abraham Lincoln was an atheist. 

I don't know as much about their fundraising psychology as I do, say, major environmental organizations, but I suspect there's a certain amount of crisis-mongering, which mingles with a certain amount of tar-babying off the Religious Right.

Re movement skepticism, I've long said that it could stand to learn some philosophical Skepticism. Re the Gnu Atheist orgs, since the "nones" are growing fast — but aren't really atheist, contra Gnus — there's definite tar-babyism as far as how American religious demographics are changing. On the secular humanist world, per said friend, it should be focusing on things like the dehumanization factors of the "always on" world, or the future of the precariat (the word I first heard from the late Leo Lincourt) and other socio-economic issues.