#605: Charlie Daniels

Ted Nugent is not alone. Indeed, Charlie Daniels has in many ways had an even more impressive career as a musician, and he promotes the same kind of inane wingnuttery, bigotry and denialism. Daniels’s views of life and politics, in all their erudition, are detailed for instance in his 2003 Open Letter to the Hollywood Bunch in defense of President George W. Bush’s Iraq policy against many other artists and celebrities, and his book (same year) Ain’t No Rag: Freedom, Family, and the Flag, which espouses more or less precisely the kinds of views, bigotry and fallacious reasoning you would expect from a book of that title. Around the same time, during the 2004 presidential election campaigns, Daniels was also a staunch promoter of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth manufactroversy strategy against John Kerry (the 2004 counterpart to birtherism).

Daniels is of course also a creationist, having predicted – on the basis of his expertise in the field – that “[i]n the future Darwinism will be looked upon as we now look upon the flat earth theory.” To elaborate: “Darwin’s theory is just that, an unproven idea written by a very fallible human being. Now I don’t expect these learned scholars to give any credence to what someone like me says [oh, how humble of you], but now there are imminent [sic] scientists who say that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is fatally flawed and should not be taught in our schools as fact [no names provided]. This world was created by Almighty God and no amount of theories or college professors can change that fact [damn all you elitists who know stuff]. The truth of the matter is that evolution cannot be proven. It never has and it never will because you can’t prove a lie.” Good to hear it from an ol’ common sense Southern guy whose musicianship has awarded him with great scientific insights. In 2008 Daniels was also nominated for a Creamy Baileys Nobel Peace Prize for Science for his work on global warming, which Daniels dismissed as “a yankee conspiracy.”

The WND, being predictably interested in Daniels’s informed opinions on matters politics and science, could report his characteristic positions on society and politics as “[t]here’s a move afoot to change life in America into a totally European – I’ve heard that so much I’m getting sick of it: ‘European’ – socialist thing; but it’s the dag-blamed truth [sic], and it don’t work, it never has worked, and if America goes that way, America will never be America again.” There is a certain disconnect between the strands in that observation, but Daniels or the WND would of course never notice.

Diagnosis: Stupid and proud of it, and standard denialist, but Daniels does admittedly have a way of rejecting truth that is intermittently fascinating.

#145: Mel Gibson

Ok, this one should be familiar. Mel Gibson is the well-known producer of “The Passion of the Christ”, the famous Guinea Pig ripoff that presented itself as a true story. Originally Australian, Gibson once starred such epic movies as Mad Max. These days he is an anti-Semite and all-around racist, homophobe, abusive boyfriend, misogynist (here; here), and founder of his own little bizarre Catholic sect (with his father, the clinically insane holocaust denier Hutton Gibson).

As for the anti-semitism, the main incident (apart from the repulsive Passion movie and comments in that respect) occurred when Gibson was arrested for DUI while speeding in his vehicle with an open container of alcohol in 2006. He remarked to the arresting officer James Mee, who is Jewish, saying "Fucking Jews...the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." More here.

As Scottish comedian Frankie Boyle said of Gibson: "When they were making Braveheart, everyone said, 'Oh it's ridiculous, Mel Gibson playing a Scottish guy, that's not gonna be very convincing.' And look at him now: an alcoholic racist."

He has threatened to cut funding to his church if its members don't stop talking about his decision to leave his wife for his mistress (see here).

He is also a creationist, mostly because of the rock-solid “if humans descended from monkeys then why are there still monkeys” argument.

According to rumor, at least, he is rather left-oriented when it comes to politics (apart from issues related to the rights of minorities, obviously). It is important to remember that, despite a statistical correlation, Godbotting bigotry or even theocracy doesn’t immediately imply being a Republican.

Diagnosis: Deranged, unhinged, malevolent moron and nefarious nutjob. Despite attracting some 70 people to his sect, he probably wields relatively minor influence.

#90: Tom Cruise

All right – does this one really need an explanation? Rationalwiki calls him “an outspoken critic of sanity”. Cruise is, according to Miscavige (head of the Church of Scientology) comparable to Jesus Christ, and will spread the word of Hubbard around the world. According to some, he is the church’s second most powerful member. Short biography here.

Diagnosis: Utterly out of touch with reason, sanity and reality. It’s hard to determine how dangerous he is, but his church has clearly done a lot of stupid over the years.

#82: Billy Corgan

Erstwhile leader of the band Smashing Pumkins and dangerously medically ignorant. Anti-vaccinationist, new-ager and conspiracy theorist educated by confirmation bias and the University of Google, discussed here.

It goes without saying, but celebrities are not medical authorities.

Diagnosis: Noob

#58: Jim Carrey

I am sure this will disappoint a lot of people, but the famous actor Jim Carrey is unfortunately a first-class loon, who demands an entry in our Encyclopedia under the densely populated category “celebrities who should have remain modestly ...silent about issues they have absolutely no knowledge of understanding of”. Well, I guess people should be excused for letting blithering idiocy fall out of their mouths on certain occasions. Carrey, however, has swallowed the anti-vaccinationist lunacy hook and sinker (through his relationship with the abysmally ignorant loon Jenny McCarthy), and emerged as an ardent opponent of science, reason and rationality. Sorry, Jim, you’re a crackpot.

What else but crackpottery can get anyone to concoct this string of logical fallacies and poorly disguised conspiracy theories of the worst Roswellian kind from the depths of confirmation bias.

It is properly and even-handedly evaluated here and here.

To twist the knife around, have a look at the following.

In other words: A typical example of what happens when people who are already convinced of a certain claim on the basis of intuition or nothing obtain their biology or medical degrees from google and fellow actors. A disgrace. A first-class village conspiracy theorist.

Who knew “Dumb & Dumber” was a biographical documentary?

Diagnosis: Clueless moron with an incoherent cause and lots of ardour. His influence should not be underestimated, however.

On the other hand, he recently broke up with McCarthy and was subsequently thrown out of Generation Rescue – maybe he’ll take a Bailey-Shermer-Easterbrook and come to his senses? In Carrey’s disfavor, however, he doesn’t – unlike B-S-E – come across as particularly bright.

(for a definition of a B-S-E)

#50: Kirk Cameron

Formerly beloved former child star Kirk Cameron is currently a dysfunctional apologist for the ever moronic Ray Comfort (to be covered later). He claims to have been an atheist who later found Jesus (yes, that one again). Since “Growing Pains”, his most prominent roles have been in the “Left Behind” movies and “Fireproof”. So, yes – he is currently a religious fundamentalist touring with Ray Comfort, possibly the most ignorantly inane road show ever, prominently featuring Comfort’s banana argument and the crocoduck argument.

Vigorously opposed to evolution, and has – together with Comfort – designed a board game (here and here). His project to hand out copies of his and Comfort’s annotated version of “The origin of species” generated this response (among many others).

And of course there is a conspiracy theory here. Cameron is worried that we are currently experiencing a whole generation “brainwashed by atheistic evolution” (I don’t think “brainwashed” means what Cameron thinks it means).

Diagnosis: Among the most breathtakingly moronic bozos alive, Cameron manages to make Mel Gibson look moderately intelligent. The Comfort/Cameron superteam is, I suppose, not taken seriously as anything who could even begin to pose a threat. I suspect their popularity is more due to their breathtaking inanity.