Fat Hairy Tinkerbelles

PZ Myers writes a fabulous blog called "Pharyngula". One day, he wrote an enthusiastic critique of a rather stupid opinion piece in the Washington Post: "Uncritical journalism from the WaPo".
This isn't about that at all. This is entirely about an off-hand comment that he made in the piece:

Intelligent Design creationism is a fat hairy Tinkerbelle.

There's a sensible reason why he wrote that, but I won't spoil your fun in finding out what it was.
Nevertheless, the image was … provocative.
I was just distracted there for a little bit with the instant mental reaction that many of my friends (a longish disquisition on "bears" to follow someday) would be quite enchanted, if not positively driven into a rutting fever, by a "fat hairy Tinkerbelle". No real problem there.
The only bit of friction comes then from realizing that, since "Intelligent Design creationism" is a dintinctly unsavory thing to be avoided at all costs, that that apparently is what we're to think of a "fat hairy Tinkerbelle".
Now, I'm not going to start a bunch of pseudo-PC nonsense about the differently hirsute or anything. Plain speaking is fine with me and a good number of my objects of desire as well: I tend to be attracted to fat hairy men with beards, and some of them definitely fit into the "Tinkerbelle" category.
So even though I don't want to weaken the fanciful association that reinforces the notion that "Intelligent Design creationism" is definitely undesirable, I did want to put forward the idea that, in some cases, "fat hairy Tinkerbelles" can be on the desirable side of the scale, although most people will just have to trust me on this one.
Nevertheless, point taken. Now read his article.

Posted on March 23, 2005 at 20.24 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Common-Place Book

One Response

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  1. Written by Kristjan Wager
    on Thursday, 24 March 2005 at 10.53
    Permalink

    I followed the trackback from PZ's site, and I must admit this might be one of the most disturbing posts I've ever read.

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