Ted Baehr Hypocrisy Shock

Back in 2004 (see here), Ted Baehr of the Christian conservative “Movieguide” and of WorldNetDaily thundered against the film Kinsey, which he alleged whitewashed a monstrous figure responsible for corrupting American society. Beahr urged us to consider the evidence provided by his friend Judith Reisman, who had proven that the historical Kinsey had had a strange sex life and therefore that all his data was worthless. Baehr also claimed that Reisman had been deliberately excluded from previews of Kinsey, and he found this particularly reprehensible.

In 2008, however, Baehr is more than happy to endorse the idea of selective pre-screenings for a film more to his liking. Over to his latest column at WorldNetDaily:

Atheists are enraged. The politically correct academic nomenclature is upset. A reporter in Florida even posed as a minister to sneak into a church screening to stop actor, pundit and financial guru Ben Stein’s new movie about the totalitarian attempts by Darwinian scientists to suppress dissent, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.”

Baehr is referring to the case of Roger Moore (no, not that one), film critic for the Orlando Sentinel. Moore received an invitation to a screening, but when the invitation was revoked he decided to attend anyway – and avoided signing a non-disclosure agreement. He did nothing to attempt “stop” the film, and he did not “pose as a minister” (that embellishment appeared after the review was published). He did, though, write a harsh review – details can be seen on his blog. Presumably Baehr, who raged against Fox over its alleged treatment of Reisman, approves of Stein’s strategy of controlling who gets to see the film before its general release, and of holding soft-ball press conferences.

This is far from being Baehr’s first dip into the waters of hypocrisy – last year he denounced violent films for inspiring the Virginia Tech massacre not long after presenting an award to Chuck Norris.

4 Responses

  1. For those of you reading this blog who think that Ben Stein was in any way the motivating force behind “Expelled”, please reconsider.
    From the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention Texan interview with Logan Craft (executive producer of Expelled):

    http://www.sbtexan.com/default.asp?action=article&aid=5533&issue=2/4/2008

    TEXAN: How did Ben Stein come to be involved in the film?

    CRAFT: Well, John (Sullivan, producer of Expelled) had a real insight, we believe, into the necessity to have a person, first of all, who wasn’t overtly Christian or overtly religious…

    Ben Stein is a hack!

    This film is a manufactured argument, cleverly crafted to advance a conservative Christian agenda. Intelligent design at this point, after almost 20 years and millions of dollars tossed at it by the Discovery Institute, is still merely conjecture. It has not yet even been fleshed out into a valid scientific hypothesis, and certainly hasn’t developed into a viable or testable theory.

    So at this point, the ID/creationist movement is merely a well-funded public relations effort trying to rally public support by falsely decrying “There is no Freedom of Speech!”, and promoting “science/evolution = atheists = Nazism”, rather than offering any positive evidence for why ID should even be considered as science.

    To see what people who have seen the movie are saying, go to

    http://www.expelledexposed.com

    “Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual arguments for or even against evolution, march in the army of the night with their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force, impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.” —Isaac Asimov

  2. […] the theory, just as a poor review of the movie is an attempt to “stop” it (as I blogged here, this was alleged by Christian film critic Ted Baehr). Possibly related posts: (automatically […]

  3. […] pronouncements on the evils of Hollywood is a subject I’ve visited more than once (e.g. here and […]

  4. […] around 100 speakers: familiar faces include Alan Sears (of the Alliance Defense Fund); Ted Baehr (of “Movieguide“); Richard Cohen (who has addressed the Polish parliament on the need […]

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