Bill Donohue reveals himself to be one of the Three Stooges, the dumb one

Bill Donohue‘s in the news again. And surprise, surprise. He’s OUTRAGED about something in the media. So what trite and meaningless target has he picked this time? It’s the new comedy film The Three Stooges, because it features a sexy nun character in a swimsuit and Larry David’s portrayal of a nun character. Whether David plays some sort of male nun or whether he’s supposed to be playing some hideous-looking female nun, I don’t know because I haven’t seen the movie due to its looking really stupid. Though now that I know Bill Donohue doesn’t like it, I might just buy a ticket after all.

So why do I bother to give this sickening pile of excrement more of that attention he desperately craves? Well, because it gives me another excuse to post my favorite audio clips of Donohue applying for the role of worst person in the world. In the following two clips, we hear Donohue on a radio show passionately defend nothing short of mass child rape.

Donohue tries every trick in the book and it all goes so horribly bad for him because he happens to be talking with someone who was themselves a victim of rape by a Catholic priest and who is incredibly well versed in the damning report of abuse in Ireland schools.

We hear Donohue deny the undeniable facts and make up a host of his own, followed by him being called out on his repulsive lies and truly despicable attempts to re-frame the whole scandal to paint the rapists as the true victims while painting the child victims of rape as greedy liars who made up their accusations. And when it’s pointed out to Donohue that even Catholic Church officials themselves have accepted more responsibility for these atrocities than Donohue is willing to allow, he actually insists that the Church is lying because they’ve been “beaten down” by some phantom media conspiracy to destroy the Catholic Church. If ever there were more proof that Donohue is a committed fanatic, that’s got to be it. To actually deny even the involvement that the Church itself has admitted to and suggesting the very people who would have the most to lose from admitting guilt are lying—that’s just bonkers!

The spokesman for Fox did an excellent job of responding to Donohue’s complaints about The Three Stooges film:

Fox disagreed that Three Stooges diverges from the original series. “The movie, in keeping with the spirit of the original TV show and its stars, is a broad, slapstick comedy,” a Fox spokesperson said.

“As the Stooges have proved over time, laughter is a universal medicine. The nuns that Mr. Donohue alludes to, are in fact, caring, heroic characters in the movie, albeit within the framework of a very broad comedy,” the spokesperson continued. “And as far as the nun attire, I think we did the audinece a favor by letting Kate Upton wear the nun-kini rather than Larry David — it could have gone either way. We invite you to see the movie and decide for yourselves.”

So let’s be clear here. Child rape is a-ok with Bill Donohue, but dressing a nun character in a sexy swimsuit is UNACCEPTABLE! Way to prioritize, Bill.

Related articles

• Catholic League pokes ‘Three Stooges’ for nun-sense (insidemovies.ew.com)
• ‘Three Stooges’: Catholic League Criticizes Comedy Movie’s Bikini-Wearing Nun (news.moviefone.com)
• Catholic League’s Donohue vows to fight rape victims ‘one by one’ (promoteliberty.wordpress.com)

The ‘This American Life’ retraction

Logo from the radio program This American Life (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is a bit of an old story but many people may not be familiar with it. Back in January, the NPR radio program and podcast, “The American Life” aired an episode where they allowed a spoken word artist named Mike Daisey to perform his stage piece about his visit to China and the shocking discovery he’d made while there about the worker conditions in the factories that manufacture Apple products. They did so with the understanding that the facts presented in the story met the journalistic standards for accuracy. Then earlier this past month, in an unprecedented move, This American Life broadcast an entire episode-long retraction.

I’d heard about the story but just got around to listening to both episodes for the first time. Both make for amazing listening, so I highly recommend them. But the most fascinating part of this is of course the retraction episode. Sadly, it’s a rare thing today to see professionals publicly admit they’d made major errors in judgment, own up to it, and apologize. And it just goes to show how much the crew at This American Life care about the truth.

But even more interesting about this show is that they were able to interview Mike Daisey about the inconsistencies in his story at length. That interview actually surprised me because Daisey doesn’t deny all the accusations as one would expect. Early into their interview, he seems to have an answer for everything.

Daisey reminded me of Stephen Glass, the young writer at The New Republic in the 1990s who was discovered to have fabricated most if not all of his articles partially if not entirely. Glass’ story was made into a great film a few years ago called “Shattered Glass.” In that film, we see Glass similarly having an answer for everything when confronted with inconsistencies in his work. It’s only after his Editor, Charles Lane, starts really digging and finds himself drowning in an ocean full of  excuses that when taken individually all sound plausible enough but together add up to an implausible whole. The real Charles Lane has an audio commentary on the DVD of the film, which itself provides  fascinating insight into the mind of a pathological liar. That’s not to say that Daisey is a pathological liar but his answers during the interview, especially in the beginning, feel much like Glass’ plausible lies that only crumble when presented in their totality.

But here, a completely different Glass, This American Life host Ira Glass, confronts Daisey and what we get is some very surprising confessions, often following some of the longest on-air silences I’ve ever heard as Daisey seems to slowly attempt to formulate the best lie only to give up and eventually cop to the truth, though he stops short of identifying his behavior as “lying.” Though he earlier rejected the notion of moral relativity, later on he attempts to distinguish standards of truth in journalism from standards of truth on stage, admitting to failing the former while still maintaining the same misrepresentation of facts is completely acceptable on stage knowing audiences are going to trust his first-hand accounts are not drastically altered for dramatic effect and accurately reflect events that really happened.

In a way, I’m actually glad this happened because this makes for a great teaching moment about critical thinking. Ira Glass flat-out states that once Daisey told him that he no longer had the contact information for the one person he says was with him on the entire journey, the one person would could verify some of his claims, that Glass should have pulled the story then and there. Ira Glass courageously takes full credit for the error in judgment, and I think the show is better for it. Now we know how committed This American Life is to being honest. And now millions of listeners will learn lessons in the importance of fact-checking and how to spot a phony.

Related articles

• Follow Up of the Day: Mike Daisey on This American Life’s Retraction Episode (geeks.thedailywh.at)
• Partially fabricated: ‘Mr. Daisey Goes to the Apple Factory (nextlevelofnews.com)
• Mike Daisey attacks critics, alters show (news.com.au)
• Full audio: Mike Daisey explains himself on new episode of ‘This American Life’ (theverge.com)
• Apple Factory Reporter Lied to Us, Says ‘This American Life’ (mashable.com)
• Worth a listen: This American Life’s emotional showdown with Mike Daisey over iPad factory conditions (venturebeat.com)
• Daisey Doozie (brucedwallace.wordpress.com)