Wheat-dogg’s world
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The attempts of the movie Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed to blame the Holocaust on the Darwin and his theory of evolution “is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry,” the Anti-Defamation League said yesterday.

In a press release, the civil right organization accuses the makers of the anti-evolution film of misappropriating the Holocaust and its imagery to support its attempts to discredit evolution, Darwin and biologists that accept the theory.

The movie, which was released April 18, claims that Adolf Hitler used Darwinism as an excuse to murder millions of Jews, gypsies and homosexuals during the Nazi regime. Images of Nazi Germany and the concentration camps appear in the film.

The ADL’s press release says, however, “Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.” Anti-semitism was prevalent in Germany and in Europe generally for centuries before Darwin’s The Origin of Species was published in 1859.

Meanwhile, the “star” of the movie, Ben Stein, who is himself a Jew, had the chutzpah in a recent interview on the Christian Trinity Broadcasting Network to accuse scientists of leading victims of the Holocaust to the gas chambers. Here are some excerpts, courtesy of someone with a stronger stomach than mine to tolerate such shit.

Hot on the heels of the national Day of Silence, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has notified the Memphis public schools that one of their principals violated the rights of two of her students by revealing publicly they were gay.

Daphne Beasley, the principal of Hollis F. Price Middle College High School, in September asked her staff over the school intercom to provide her the names of all “hetero and homo” couples in the school, so she could monitor public displays of affection.

She then posted the names of the students for all to see. In the process, she outed a gay couple to students, teachers and their parents. The two had just started a discreet relationship.

In the letter mailed yesterday, the ACLU charged that Beasley had violated the students’ constitutional rights to equal protection, freedom of expression and association, due process and privacy. The letter demands a response by May 9 to five demands, or the ACLU will pursue legal action.

The demands are (1) that policies be implemented to prevent similar acts in the future, (2) that the boys in question be compensated for the harm they suffered by being outed, (3) that Beasley be reprimanded, (4) that any records pertaining to the outed couple be removed from school districts records, and (5) that apologies be made to all the students on the couples list.

From Eyewitness News Channel 24 in Memphis:

Academics that teach theories contradicting evolution are harassed, lose their jobs and reputations or are refused tenure, according to Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. It offers four examples of the so-called Darwinist conspiracy to silence “anti-evolutionists.”

All of which are pitiful examples, since none of them lost their jobs because of their Intelligent Design beliefs. There were other reasons they lost their jobs.

For perhaps obvious reasons, the movie fails to discuss the number of academics subjected to harassment by the creationist/Intelligent Design “hegemony” — y’know, the “good guys.” Blogger Blake Stacey has found at least 12 examples of creationists interfering with the careers of science instructors. You need to read his post in case any Expelled fans rail at you about the Darwinist conspiracy.

Two sites now report Expelled:No Intelligence Allowed is showing at 1,041 theaters, a drop of 11 from its opening April 18.

Box Office Mojo and The-Numbers.com both report the anti-evolution movie has slipped from the top 10 recent releases in gross receipts, and have it showing at fewer theaters. Total gross receipts to date is above $5 million, which is not too bad considering what a dog of a movie it is.

Friday’s totals mean the movie is bringing in only $485 per theater is gross receipts. Saturday’s figures might show a spike up from Friday, but I predict the overall trend for this flick can only decline. As receipts fall, so will the number of theaters carrying it.

I figure the DVD release can only be a couple of weeks away.

For the benefit of all interested parties, I have posted a text version of the complaint John Lennon’s heirs filed against Premise Media, et al., in US District Court in Manhattan earlier this week. A PDF version is available from www.scribd.com, or you can view it here.

Law expert Timothy Sandefur has some thoughts about whether Yoko has a case. She might, and Premise Media, et alia, should be worried.

John Lennon’s 1971 song, “Imagine,” is the theme song of neo-Darwinists, according to Walt Ruloff, CEO of Premise Media, and was thus used appropriately in his company’s movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.

In an interview with the conservative news site, World Net Daily, Ruloff insisted the use of the song fit the theme of the movie.

“If you really listen to the lyrics of ‘Imagine’ then you realize that it represents everything that the Neo-Darwinists want. ‘Imagine there’s no Heaven … No hell below us … Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too…’ That’s exactly what the Darwinist establishment wants to do: get rid of religion,” said Walt Ruloff, CEO of Premise Media. “And that’s what we point out when we play less than 15 seconds of the song and show some of the lyrics on screen.”

Rrrright … John Lennon channeled Charles Darwin, who wrote a biological theory proposing that we do away with religion. I don’t understand how I missed that connection before.

Expelled alleges that a “neo-Darwinist” conspiracy seeks to quash any debate about the theory of evolution and that evolution — Darwinism — is directly responsible for racism, the Holocaust, abortion and euthanasia. The movie opened April 18 and has grossed just over $3.4 million so far.

Part of the movie includes a short excerpt of “Imagine,” in an attempt to make a connection between the sentiments expressed in the lyrics and the movie’s allegations of this neo-Darwinist (in the old days, it was called secular humanist) conspiracy.

Updated 4/30/08 to include weekend tallies.

From Box Office Mojo: Weekend receipts for Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed doubled weekday per-day sales, but in general receipts are less than half what they were for the opening weekend. Looks like Expelled has lost its momentum.

Total gross receipts are now about $5,455,000, and the movie has fallen to 12th in gross receipts.

Mount Vernon teacher John Freshwater is in hot water because he teaches religion a little bit too much in his eighth grade science classes. A former colleague says his superiors knew of Freshwater’s religious agenda, but have done little about it until recently.

Freshwater first hit the news several days ago when school officials told him to remove his Bible from clear view of his students. The teacher refused, prompting both a student rally supporting him and an advisory notice from the American Civil Liberties Union supporting school administrators. The religious Right seized the controversy as another attack on religion.

Then other details about Freshwater’s classroom behavior came to light. He keeps a stack of Bibles in his room to loan out to students. He passes out pro-creationist literature to counter scientific explanations of the Big Bang and evolution. He allegedly burned a cross on at least one student’s arm as part of a demonstration of electricity. He taught his classes the meaning of Good Friday and Easter.

Freshwater has had a religious agenda for some time. Quoting a former colleague, Retired middle school science teacher Jeff George, the Mount Vernon News reported yesterday:

George said there may be substance to other allegations that Freshwater used the classroom to advance his own personal beliefs. “The school administration has known for a long time that Freshwater was crossing the line, and he should have been fired a long time ago.”

It had to happen. John Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, and sons, Sean and Julian Lennon, have sued the producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed for using the song “Imagine” without permission.

Joining in the suit, filed today in U.S. District Music Inc. in Manhattan, is music publisher EMI Blackwood Music Inc. The complainants seek to bar the film’s makers and their distributors from continuing to use “Imagine” in the movie, which opened last Friday. The suit also seeks unspecified damages.

Expelled includes a 25-second excerpt from the 1971 song. The producers, Premise Media, claim their use of the song is legitimate.

The fair use doctrine is a well established copyright principle based on the belief that the public is entitled to freely use portions of copyrighted materials for purposes of commentary and criticism.

We are disappointed therefore that Yoko Ono and others have decided to challenge our free speech right to comment on the song Imagine in our documentary film.

Based on the fair use doctrine, news commentators and film documentarians regularly use material in the same way we do in EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed .

Premise Media acknowledges that Ms. Yoko Ono did not license the song for use in the Film. Instead, a very small portion of the song was used under the fair use doctrine.