“Even more upsetting was the fact that Brian Dunning of Skeptoid thought it hilarious to replace the photo of a Russian cosmonaut in his presentation with a more attractive woman because the Russian was too ugly. Right.”

I’d like to know if misogyny and sexist attitudes like ‘we need sexy skeptic women and we’ll only pay attention to sexy babes in our presentations’ is seen as ‘getting people into skepticism’. I find it more of a turn-off than the antics of some UK twat.

Message from Michael Shermer on Twitter:

Ah, Brian Dunning just got a note from the producer of the Marc Wootton show saying that the point is to make psychics look like idiots……and that in fact the producers are skeptics in support of our work. Shirley Ghostman is punking psychics, not skeptics. Good to know……but now I’m mad at myself for not realizing who was punking whom. Alas, I think I need to apply my own philosophy of using humor here.So, Wootton/Little Duke Productions, if you’re all skeptics making fun of TV psychics…GO FOR IT because if anyone needs punking it’s them!

If Michael Shermer protests this, it just gives them more footage. They have more power to spin it as they like.

What people could do is talk after the fact. Get the media to do a ‘how far is too far’ story, much like this blog post.

Barraging around trying to ‘one-upmanship’ with pranks is silly. In the end, the winner is the one who is getting published, getting credentials, rather than falling around being the clown.

But trashing a theatre? Throwing chairs? Okay, that kind of thing should at least have been cleared by the venue well ahead of time and certainly not making someone who (at least I thought) came across as a comedian-who-made-fun-of-their-psychic-character look like a good model.

Borat is so over anyway. If the skeptics start taking it on too, then it’s just making an old joke carry on and become even older. At least Chris French had some dignity when he was being clearly made fun of. I enjoyed watching that more.