Troubling Trend in “Truthiness”
December 9, 2009
So, I have to admit that I am a pretty long-time fan of the Colbert Report. His biting satire is extremely funny and the guy has a great taste in music. In my life time I’ve never seen such a successful use of self-promotion as Stephen Colbert.
Last night through the Colbert Nation, I was introduced to a website http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page. Being curious I took a look and was, quite frankly, horrified by this site.
Supposedly this is supposed to help balance out the reportedly liberally biased wikipedia and conservapedia purports to be “The Trustworthy Encyclopedia.” Any halfway educated individual who begins to read through this conservapedia site would find that it is full of complete non-sense. Two articles in particular that raised my hackles (whatever a hackel is, I’m not sure just what part of my anatomy this is) were the articles on feminists and professor values. As both a feminist and a professor, I was completely insulted by the information that is supposedly ‘true.’ Evidently being a feminist means forgoing any sort of femininity (refusing to bake and preferring to wear pants) and being a relentless man-hater and professors are nothing but left-wing nuts who work to indoctrinate the fragile young minds of our country with our atheistic views – and no this is not an exaggeration from the articles, please take a look for yourself:
Feminism: http://www.conservapedia.com/Feminism
Professor Values: http://www.conservapedia.com/Professor_values
Now I know a lot of feminists and a lot of professors…sure a small minority might actually fit these stereotypes (and really this is all that these articles describe). But many feminists I know are quite feminine and embrace femininity (I have regular conversations about fabulous shoes and cute skirts) and certainly most professors are not criminals (as conservapedia might like you to believe).
Let me also point out that even though these articles appear to be well references, upon further investigation of most of the source materials, they consist of blogs and other non-vetted material. Certainly types of sources that are not highly credible and would likely result in a failing grade in a paper written for me. I can tolerate views that oppose mine as long as they are supported by valid evidence. Much of conservapedia is not using valid evidence!
Now I’m not sure that anyone would ever label me as a true liberal and in general I am not. I am a very moderately minded individual (probably too moderate for some folks), but evidently even this moderate view is too far left for this particular group of folks.
The final item that really upsets me about this site it that it claims to have ‘commandments’ – see: http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Commandments – or rules to follow whereas the articles are not to include opinion and only fact. Again, any decently educated individual would recognize that these so-called facts in the actual articles certainly do only portray opinion or are so skewed that they engage in something that we call accurately “confirmation bias.”
I’m not sure who is exactly in charge of the content, which is what Colbert was attempting to uncover through his interview, but I’m guessing this is not an open-site like wikipedia. Perhaps I’ll try to create an account to see if anything I change gets removed. Odds are as a liberal professor and femi-Nazi my account will be canceled (statement dripping with sarcasm).
So this site has gotten to me, yes, and I am guessing that it is then doing its job to tick off anyone who is not an extremely conservative individual. It takes quite a bit to get me riled up and I certainly am not the most politically engaged individual. But quite honestly, having information like this available on the Internet, is frightening and I can only hope that our students are able to see that this site is generally a bunch of bunk.
October 13th, 2010 at 4:27 am
Obviously I’m seeing this a year-plus late but I feel compelled to comment.
I had a conversation with a very ‘conservative’ friend/contact recently in which I advocated religious freedom at his pressing which eventually led to me observing that the Right is so viciously anti-investigation into absolutely anything that contradicts the ideas instilled in them throughout their lives and that their insistence on a Christian labeling of America aligns more with that which the Founding Fathers and Mothers sought to separate from in the tyranny of the majority.
He became so enraged and instantly labeled me a liberal-***** which I highly doubt he can even define (the first word haha). I’m most certainly a moderate but I also absolutely lean heavily progressive to be sure. His next shot was peculiar to me and I quote: ‘This is a gay game played by idiots in the “academic” community. You are just acting like any liberal professor in any university in America.’
He made it clear that anything even remotely resembling open mindedness or an interest in academia was instantly liberal and thus useless. If those are the terms of any definition, please do call me liberal. He further implied, and I’ve encountered this before, that those regarding themselves as conservative view all universities as liberal and to a sinister end. The direct correlation is “educated = liberal bias”. As it doesn’t compromise anonymity, the friend/contact I’m speaking of is a middle-highschool teacher and he’s entirely anti-university in every way (in his own words). THAT is a very scary concept to me in this day and age.
As for Conservopedia, yes that site is and has been absolutely atrocious and often quite inhumane. Look up ‘homosexuality’ and you will quickly see how they marginalize and demonize anything different or outside of the norms they champion. The clear reason they don’t effectively site most anything is because they know their demographic has no desire or self motivation to seek it. Anything that confirms their views is golden (hence Fox News) and any and all that contradicts is fluff (CNN, MSNBC, or even the neutral fact-check organization Media Matters).