Sick and tired of what he views as an unacceptable liberal bias in Wikipedia, conservative Andy Schlafly has created a competing site, apparently out of sheer spite, called Conservapedia. It’s a supposedly “fair and balanced” alternative. Which really means it’s the opposite of that, and every entry is saturated with enough conservative bias to choke Rush Limbaugh.Schlafly believes Wikipedia has been hijacked by insane liberal editors which he compares to crucifying, America-hating organized criminals when he says, "if anyone tries to put in facts that are friendly to Christianity or American history, those facts are likely to be diluted or censored by the mob."
Here’s a full list of the “Bias in Wikipedia,” but I thought I’d give you a few highlights.
1. Dates – “Wikipedia allows the use of B.C.E.* instead of B.C. and C.E.* instead of A.D. The dates are based on the birth of Jesus, so why pretend otherwise?”
2. Wikipedia’s article on Jesus puts forth the theory that he might not have existed.
3.Wikipedia’s editors, through some dodgy math, are supposedly 6 times more liberal than the American public, whatever that means.
4. Wikipedia is anti-American – “Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English-speaking users are American…Conservapedia favors American spellings of words.” Seriously? This is actually a complaint?
5. Wikipedia is a gossip – “Many hundreds of thousands of Wikipedia articles -- perhaps over half its website -- are about music, Hollywood, and other topics beneath a regular encyclopedia…zero educational value.”
I suppose it should go without saying, since the thing was created to have a conservative interpretation of reality, but it still annoys me when the whole reason behind creating something purporting to be explanative and educational is really just to further an opinion. Naturally some encyclopedia entries can’t be entirely free of bias, but to not only fail to try and make them that way, and indeed saturate as much as you can into the text just seems irresponsible at the least and downright petty and dangerous at worst.
I get that you dudes believe in God an all, but you don’t have to put AD after every fucking date in your article, like some kind of impotent “fuck you” to your nemesis. I think we’re all aware that the Great Depression started 78 years ago in 1929 AD[1], and that you’re not referring to 1929 years before Christ was born, you loony fuck. Oh, and if you want to find out what the definition of “uninformative and idiotically short” is, go actually read their entry on The Great Depression. It won’t take you long; it’s one paragraph. I guess when they say they are “clean and concise,” they really mean they’re keeping you safe from all that dangerous and boring “information” most encyclopedias have. Here are a few other entries:
Sex
“This page has been deleted, and protected to prevent re-creation.”
Apparently we’ve adopted the fingers-in-ears, eyes-closed policy to human procreation and banging.
President Bush
First of all, I was shocked that this entry is only about 500 words long. To put that into perspective, this blog is about 900 words. So…yeah. You’d think that at least this article would be a shining jewel in the Conservapedia crown, but I guess they just didn’t have the time. Their article on kangaroos (more on that later!) is longer.
There are three, count ‘em, three sentences on the war in Iraq. One of those is a quote from Bush himself, another says he is “working tirelessly to end the insurgency in Iraq,” and the last one (in which Afghanistan has to share it’s one and only mention) says, “As part of the fight against terrorism, he has instituted regime changes in the countries of Afghanistan and Iraq.”
In the section on economic issues there are roughly seven clever little “subliminal” jabs specifically designed to make you realize what a radically leftist society is oppressing them. I can forgive the fact they apparently don’t have spellchecker (“single” is spelled “signle”) but this is just unnecessary:
Though the liberal media continues to disparage Bush's handling of the economy,
they often neglect to report the many aspects of the economy that Bush has
improved.
They go on to say that the facts that Exxon Mobile posted the highest profit ever, and executive salaries are at staggering levels are evidence that the economy is doing well. That’s sort of like saying that the fact the kid of the guy who donates millions to a private school is on the honor roll is evidence that education is A-OK in this country. I’m not even going to touch on how they claim Bush had the economy “recovering from the Clinton years.”
Kangaroos
The best part about this entry is the “origins” section, which is entirely composed of the idea that all kangaroos are decedents of the two original specimens put aboard Noah’s Ark. Well, there are two sentences on “other theories,” including evolution and the fact that Aborigines believe kangaroos were “sung into existence” during the Dreamtime. Oh, and one theory that kangaroos got to Australia “rafted on mats of vegetation torn up by the receding flood waters.”
As I’ve said about many things in the past, Conservapedia is perfectly entitled to its dumb-ass opinion.
*CE stands for “Common Era,” and is used in place of AD, “Anno Domini,” which means “the year of our Lord” in Latin. BCE stands for “Before Common Era,” whereas BC means “Before Christ.”
[1] From the economic section in the George W. Bush entry.
Hear the NPR story on Conservapedia here.
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