We Were Wrong About Expelled

It's soooo not about the evils of evolution:

Lots of people have reviewed Expelled. To some the movie has served to confirm their persecution complexes; to others the movie has demonstrated the utter dishonesty of the anti-evolution movement. But here comes Thomas Robb, national director of the KKK (and a Baptist minister), with a thoroughly unique take on the movie: it was made to encourage race mixing. No, I'm not making that up. He begins by pointing out that Ben Stein is a Jew and that he has "set a trap":

Is the person who puts out the cheese, carrot etc a friend or are these things being set out to entice and to trap a victim. So Ben Stein has set a trap in the form of a movie to catch Christians and destroy their resistance to race-mixing.

Wow, Mark Mathis et al were really clever buggers. They so had us fooled! Good thing we have Thomas Robb, the original Sharp Tack, to reveal the true aim of Expelled! [/sarcasm]

You've gotta go read the whole post over at Dispatches. It's hysterical.

Not only were we wrong about Expelled being about icky Darwinism and stuff, we've been wrong about ID all this time, too. Wow. Here we thought it was a tarted-up version of creationism, and Expelled was out there to topple Big Science and stuff, but it's really something else entirely:

Now it seems that it may be politics. According to the attorney representing the producers of Expelled in the Yoko Ono suit seeking to remove John Lennon's song "Imagine" from the film:

[Anthony T. Falzone] said an adverse ruling by [U.S. District Judge Sidney] Stein would mean "you have muzzled the speech of my clients" because they would have to replace the song with other images, losing the chance to make the issue important enough that it could even influence the U.S. presidential campaign.

"If you issue that injunction, you trample on these free speech rights and you put a muzzle on them and you do it in a way that stops them from speaking on this political issue leading
up to the election," Falzone said.

It's science! No, wait, it's religion! No, wait, it's about academic freedom! No, wait, it's a political issue! No, wait, it's... what'll it be next? Here's a thought: let's morph it into mime!

I think my favorite part of Falzone's snivelling was the idea that losing 25 seconds of a pilfered song would mean the difference between Expelled dying a quiet death and Expelled becoming the vehicle propelling ID front and center in the presidential campaign. Who'da thunk John Lennon had such power?

In the meantime, the injunction goes on, and PZ's out of luck:

Apparently, a New York judge has upheld the injunction against the movie, so there will be no new showings, and DVD rights are in limbo.

The movie is dead anyway, so it doesn't seem to be a significant decision. It's not as if theater distributors are lined up clamoring for more copies of this stinker. Although, to be honest, I would like the rights cleared up, because the only way I'm ever going to see it is if I can rent the DVD from my local store.

Does anyone else get the sense that this movie's only got life left in it because there's still a few drops of entertainment at its expense left to be squeezed?