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Everything was arranged for the taping Tuesday afternoon. When the interview started, I was surprised and delighted to learn that McWhorter was actually a fan of mine. He said (Im paraphrasing here) he loved The Edge of Evolution and wanted the book to become better known. He said that this was one of the few times that he initiated an interview at Bloggingheads. He said he was familiar with criticisms of the book and found them unpersuasive. He said that Darwinism just didnt seem to him to be able to cut the mustard in explaining life, and he had yet to read a good, detailed explanation for a large evolutionary change. He also said that he had never believed in God, but that EOE got him thinking. In return I summarized my arguments from EOE, talked about protein structure, addressed his objections that intelligent design is boring and a scientific dead-end, and so on. At the end of the taping I thought, gee, those folks at Bloggingheads TV are a real nice bunch.

The next day I emailed the Bloggingheads editor to ask when the show would go on. He answered right back that at that very moment it had been activated, and thanks for participating. I clicked the link, and there was the show. I thought I looked older on screen than I am (my beard isnt really that white), but emailed some friends to let them know the interview was up anyway. That evening I got an email from one of them saying that he couldnt find the interview — it had been yanked.

Let me emphasize this, dear readers. Here we are living in the land of the free and the home of the brave. And yet a web site puts up an interview with an (ahem) somewhat controversial figure, pulls it back down within hours, erases it, sends it down the memory hole. Why might that be? There would seem to be two possibilities: 1) maybe we arent quite as free as we think, or 2) maybe not quite as brave.

I bet on possibility #2. Because of the magic of the internet, it turns out that shortly after the shows posting the comments section of the site was overrun by bitterly virulent (in the words of one principal in this saga) cyber bullies, some murmuring darkly about a grim future for Bloggingheads. After I found out the video was removed I emailed John McWhorter and the editor to ask for an explanation, and John emailed back that he himself requested the video to be pulled because people thought he was too easy on me, which was supposedly contrary to that old Bloggingheads spirit. I find that quite implausible (other shows on the site feature discussions between people who agree on many things). Rather, I suspect the folks at the website werent expecting the vitriolic reaction, began to worry about their good names and future employment prospects, pictured themselves banished to a virtual leper colony, panicked, and folded.

Well, mobs, including internet mobs, are scary things, and its understandable to panic when they unexpectedly show up at your door. But if youre going to set up a website to air discussions about contentious issues of the day, you should have a whole lot more guts than displayed by Bloggingheads TV.

SOURCE: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/08/bloggingheads_tv_and_me.html