Damek.

It’s a simple article, kinda dumb itself, but it yields up a couple of gems, like this, about writing characters he disagrees with:

One of the few truly unlikable characters in [Forty Signs Of Rain] is the science adviser to the president; Robinson’s task, and it’s not an easy one, is to make readers understand how he thinks, why he believes what he does.

“People like that are often connected with very conservative think tanks,” he said. “If you can articulate a position defending the status quo, you can make a damn good living. . . . They convince themselves.

“They see themselves in a rebel role — ‘I’m such a skeptic.’ They also get hung up on the ‘purity’ of science: Unless you can reproduce something in the laboratory, they reject it. But anyone so concerned with purity — well, it’s amazingly revealing of insecurity.”

Maybe it’s tinfoil-hat time. Or maybe it’s just entertainment. In any case, here’s a hint of just some of the content of “Patriot Act”, the production I mentioned in the previous entry, in the form of a Salon article:

Quirky millionaire Howard Ahmanson Jr. is on a mission from God to stop gay marriage, fight evolution, defeat “liberal” churches — and reelect George W. Bush. [...] His money has made possible some of the most pivotal conservative movements in America’s recent history, including the 1994 GOP takeover of the California Assembly, a ban on gay marriage and affirmative action in California, and the mounting nationwide campaign to prove Darwin wrong about evolution. His financial influence also helped propel the recent campaign to recall California Gov. Gray Davis. And besides contributing cash to George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign, Ahmanson has played an important role in driving Bush’s domestic agenda by financing the career of Marvin Olasky, a conservative intellectual whose ideas inspired the creation of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

The connection between President Bush and radical religion continues to grow more interesting all the time. Oh, that’s not good enough, you want some real, non-Salon, conspiracy-style ranting? Here you go. And some more general background with links to more info. Maybe it is just conspiracy handwringing – and we all know conspiracy theories are never true; there’s never anything to them at all. But that’s OK, because the production wasn’t all conspiracy theories.