Protecting Expert Bloggers

David Appell thinks the blogosphere sucks because sometimes bloggers have opinions about which they are not complete experts. Horrors! While there is no substitute for experience, this is probably a pretty common lament of those self-described "experts" who are horrified that the rabble is thinking on their own rather than feeding on expert information like birds. Chris Bowers deals with this nicely, but I would add that there are plenty of bloggers who ARE experts in their respective fields, be it the numbers of politics, the environment, health care, foreign policy, Iraq, what have you, and who do offer insight that you would only find in obscure academic journals, and they can make it accessible and edifying, and help those of us dilettantes with working out these issues. For instance, without someone like Pam Spaulding, who gets a nice profile from her local newspaper in Raleigh, I would lose a crucial perspective on LGBT issues and would find it more difficult to work out my own opinions on that subject, which is virtually uncovered in major media.

Another one of these experts is the science blogger PZ Myers, who has roiled professional outrage specialist William Donohue of the Catholic League by calling a Eucharist a cracker. No, really.

Here's a story that will destroy your hopes for a reasonable humanity.

"Webster Cook says he smuggled a Eucharist, a small bread wafer that to Catholics symbolic of the Body of Christ after a priest blesses it, out of mass, didn't eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it."

This isn't the stupid part yet. He walked off with a cracker that was put in his mouth, and people in the church fought with him to get it back. It is just a cracker! [...]

Would you believe this isn't hyperbole? People around the world are actually extremely angry about this — Webster Cook has been sent death threats over his cracker.

He then asked his readers to send him a Eucharist wafer so he could do rude things with it on YouTube, which I think is where Donohue's head exploded. They're now trying to bully Myers and are demanding that he be fired. He needs some help:

So far today, I have received 39 pieces of personal hate mail of varying degrees of literacy, all because I was rude to a cracker. Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because — in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness — apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.

Oh, and of course, the university president's office has also received lots of mail demanding my immediate ouster (keep in mind, though…Catholics are no threat to anyone at all.) I don't know how much, but since Donohue published the president's email address and not mine, I imagine it's much greater than what I've seen. Those lovely Dark Age fanatics at the Catholic League have started a write-in campaign to start up an inquisition.

So no poll-crashing today. Instead, I would appreciate it if you would write a short note to President Robert Bruininks in support (he's going to hate me for this). I have to ask for a few constraints, though: only do so if you are willing to sign a real name to it — most of the complaint mail I'm getting uses fake names, making it much less persuasive — and that, unlike the religious screeds I'm seeing, you take the time to proofread and send him something that at least looks like a high school graduate wrote it, which will put you way above the level of the hate mail. Be polite and rational, too!

You can email him at: bruin001-at-umn-dot-edu. Myers is a really good science blogger who has the gift of lucidity, and he doesn't deserve this kind of harassment.