Bully Boy

There is a certain type of schoolyard bully whose stock in trade is standing around pointing out other people's actual or possible defects: "Mary Jane is Fat," "Bart is stupid," "Your Dad's a religious nut." I always picture him as Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons, complete with "Ha, Ha" laugh.

Perhaps it's just my bad memory, but I think I remember a time when PZ Myers wrote an interesting blog about evolution and development. Now, though, it seems to be all religion bashing, all the time.

Now I understand a bit about obsession - I personally have been driven into shrill unholy madness by Republican mendacity and criminality - but enough is enough. I will try to resist speculating on what childhood trauma or oedipal conflict pushed PZ into whackjobhood, but he got there somehow, and it's a nasty, mean-spirited whackjobhood at that.

It does seem successful as a blogging tactic though. Every bully seems to attract a crowd of likeminded thuggery, there for the schadenfreude. A classic example sticks in my mind. PZ bashes some witless television personality for being clueless as to religious history, and his sychophants jump in to pile on. One particularly nasty piece of work suggested mail bombing the target with the crudest and most vulgar possible sexual epithets.

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