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Re: Mr. Hicks, mad-ons, and strategy
Sherwin P. Hicks (V935CF54@TEMPLEVM.BITNET)
Thu, 3 Nov 1994 10:46:53 EST
Dear Mr. Lieber,
It's possible I don't know how to ask for help, it's also possible I'm
full of anger regarding events of the past and it's possible I'll die an
early death due to a disease brought on by stress but, before I go should thank
Mr. Mike Lieber for his excellent insight. Mr. Mike Lieber......thank you!!!!!
When I grow up, I want to be just like you. Your strategy is
exactly what we need. It's obvious hostile replies don't work, and polite
politics serve to further the platform of the distortionist, so I hope your
ideas, as detailed below, are expanded and utilized in the event of a Rushton/
Murray PART II. I believe everyone on this list knows it will happen......it's
only a matter of time. My strategy for replies, concerning issues of falsity,
is to verbally whip the individual into submission. Now, I understand this has
the reverse effect of what is desired. I hope you and others like you
continue to expand your concept.....it's long overdue.
Again, thank you!!!!
P.S.
I'm not offended because the thread played itself out, I'm relieved but,
I am offended because you, or someone like you, didn't post this
earlier. If a similar strategy was posted earlier, please forgive the
oversight.....if so, contact Mike Lieber regarding this issue, please! Maybe
there's a book in the future of this subject. It would be very profitable.
On Wed, 2 Nov 1994 10:32:58 CST you said:
>Mr. Hicks is offended because the Rushton thread has played itself out,
>interpreting an understandable wearying of saying the same things over again
>with an equally understandable charge of acquiescence. There is only one
>answer to Mr. Hicks's charge--think strategy, because that's what El J. has
>been doing all along.
>
>The strategy of his colleagues in Canada, according to several Canadian
>scholars I talked with 2 weeks ago, has been silence--not acquiescence, but a
>refusal to provide him with a forum and media attention. It seems to have
>worked, because he turned his attention to the U.S. and, among other things,
>ANTHRO-L. We have kindly obliged him by providing him with a forum, implicit
>legitimacy (as I pointed out before), and lots of documents that he can
>download for future use. You want to provide him with more grist for his
>mill? Think strategy! What is the best strategy for countering the Rushtons
>and the Itzky's and the Murrays of this world?
>
>(1) Anthropologists know what El J.'s stuff is worth, so why beat it to death
>saying the same stuff over and over to one another? The ones who need to hear
>about bad science are the ones who pay taxes, who vote on educational funding,
>who make public policy, and who read newspapers and watch TV--the turf that
>El J. and Co. want most to control.
>
>(2) Go after the media and know what to say to them and HOW TO SAY IT. The
>first thing the media has to hear is (a) good science helps to make good public
>policy, and (b) bad science makes bad public policy. Next, (c) what El J. @ Co
>do is bad science, followed by (d) why it is bad science.
>
>(3) I circulated my own contribution, the Tribune article, on this Net and
>elsewhere as an example of what we need to do, stimulated and guided by John
>McCreery's posts on hooks. I had hoped that this would juice some of you into
>doing the same, and a couple people on the Net have told me that they've done
>precisely that in their local media. Ever hear of grass roots, Mr. Hicks?
>
>(4) I have contacted Ellen Goodman, a syndicated columnist who always has a
>unique, level-headed, and incisive way of approaching events around her. I
>have asked her to do a piece on this controversy, and if she does, it will
>reach tens of millions of people. Her piece on Derek Freeman's attack on
>Margaret Mead in the 1980s devastated Freeman's argument in a way that nothing
>else could have.
>
>(5) Dealing with TV is a special problem that anthropologists MUST learn to
>deal with. Anyone who saw Murray's bit on Prime Time should learn from it--
>this is the liberal media in its element, trivializing the most vital issues
>because it's easier ("better television") to have black students saying
>"bullshit" than to have a scientist telling how this is bad science. What we
>have to prepare ourselves to do for TV and radio appearances is to decide on
>the points we want to make--no more than 3. Next, each point has to be
>carefully worked out as a module that takes about 20 seconds (one sound byte)
>to deliver. The wording has to be clear, tightly connected, and MEMORIZED to
>the point of smooth delivery. What this does is to make it next to impossible
>to edit into pieces. If it's done right, the sound byte editors have to use
>the whole sound byte or nothing. The next step in preparation is to anticipate
>a reporter's questions about your point and be ready with succinct answers to
>each one. Do NOT expect that the questions will be fair. Reporters have their
>own agendas. For example, I attended a rally for school reform in Chicago in
>1986, and a reporter tried to bait one of the reform leaders by asking, "Isn't
>this whole thing a matter of social class?" [The implication was that the
>reformers are all white middle class folk trying to help their own kind.] The
>man being interviewed answered, "Hell yes it's about class. There's the class
>of downtown administrators who are sucking up most of the educational funding
>for their own pockets and then there's the other class--the rest of us who
>trying to educate our children."
>
>It's time to stop giving El J. & Co. Net time and and turn to the strategies
>and the turf on which the battle needs to be fought. This will go away after
>mid-term elections--and I still think that this is what this whole mischagoss
>has been about. But it will be back. Get ready and stay ready. It would
>also help, as I have pointed out before, to do some research that is good
>science--genetics and environment. Get that done, and the media will come.
>
> Mike Lieber
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