Maxim Destructs

So the Maxim Institute's credibility is finally finished, with the revelation in the Christchurch Press that their main propagandist, Bruce Logan, has apparently been extensively plagiarising work.

I couldn't understand why anyone took them seriously in the first place; as a far right moral conservative think tank, they should always have been treated skeptically. They damaged the anti-Civil Unions campaign immensely through their casual links with fringe groups like Destiny, but this really seals the deal.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, really. Now nobody will take them seriously on anything.

Comments

[Tony Milne]

I think this has definatly damaged them quite a lot, but they have heaps of money and staff, so I'm sure they'll find a way around it. Maybe they'll change their name...

[stephen]

Where do they get all that money, I wonder? I hope some enterprising journo will be motivated to look into that.

I think it is an overstatement even to dignify them with the name think-tank. First, it seems they don't do their own thinking. Second, they are not in fact actively seeking solutions to their perceived problems; instead, they are seeking rationalisations for sectarian religious beliefs.

This latest news shows they're not only fake as far as ostensibly secular policy goes, their fakery is fake.

[Tony Milne]

SOmeone has tried to defend them - Garnet Milne (no relation to me!).

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0510/S00159.htm

[Russell Brown]

"SOmeone has tried to defend them - Garnet Milne (no relation to me!)."

When the only person defending you is a known loon like Garnet Milne, you're *really* in trouble.

I have some more on this - and on The Press's behaviour in the past - in Hard News today, and there'll be an MP3 of my 95bFM interview with Paul "Scoop" Litterick online by tomorrow morning.

Also: having flipped, The Press appears to be embarking on a long-overdue investigation of the Maxim phenomenon. Two page feature in Saturday's paper, I hear.

Cheers,
RB

[Gooner]

What's with the fixation? What's wrong with being a "far right moral conservative think tank"? Why does this deserve scepticism?

"They damaged the anti-Civil Unions campaign immensely through their casual links with fringe groups like Destiny,..."

Not sure about this Jordan. You should have been pleased at this if correct!

"Now nobody will take them seriously on anything".

Then why write on them here if they're not worth taking seriously? Why Russell's musings on Hardly News and Bfm interviews?

And really Russell, long-overdue investigation? They are a private organisation. Who cares where they get their funding. You guys are the ones flipping, not the Press or Maxim.

[Tony Milne]

Tim Barnett MP has an interview with Linda Clark tomorrow on Maxim.

[A.J. Chesswas]

You're jumping the gun with your condemnation Jordan. I'll still be buying "Evidence" when it arrives in the local bookshop on Friday. But then I'm just another loon like Garnet Milne ;)

[stephen]

Gooner, they're a private organisation, true. But their aim is to change public policy. That makes their funding a matter of public interest, I reckon.

A friend of mine speculated once that they were funded "by rich Americans who feel we don't have enough hate over here and want to export it." I'd like to know whether that's true.

[Cathy]

As a self explained and internet measured member of the economic far right and socially reasonably conservative, I resent any inference that these pasty white, god loving, family loving, single fearing, fundy fuckwits are "far right" anything.

Far "up themselves" more like it.

A group of people who bandied together because they are so dull, boring and happy clappy that individually no one would listen to them.

A group of people who lack such imagination and thought that they copy each other and other peoples ideas and work.

[Gooner]

Maxim is a lobby group. Of course it intends to change public policy. That's what lobby groups do. We live in a pluralistic society. I don't moan about the leftie lobby groups. I'l certainly take them less seriously now but they've damaged themselves by this without the necessity of listening to Tim Barnett and Linda Clark rave on about it like lunatics.

[Gary]

"Where do they get all that money, I wonder?"

Fair question, Stephen! Its just not right that people would be passionate enough about something that they would spend their own money on it. It must be some sort of ill-gotten gains! Lets find out so we can take it off them!

[Aj]

"These pasty white, god loving, family loving, single fearing, fundy fuckwits are "far right" anything. Far "up themselves" more like it. A group of people who bandied together because they are so dull, boring and happy clappy that individually no one would listen to them."

Cathy, you could be describing the Exclusive Brethren Cult, the one and same that Don was so keen to met several times leading up to the election.
Not so far right that the Nat's wouldn't suck up to them in order to collar the $500,000 smear campaign.

[Craig Ranapia]

RB:

So when do you think Fairfax New Zealand (of which The Press is a part) is actually going to hold anyone involved with the Operation Leaf debacle to any degree of professional accountability?

I'm a little more worried that you appeared to have done more fact checking on that story in five minutes with Google than anyone at the Sunday Star-Times. Now much fun as it is to pile onto Maxim, a major MSM outlet printing outright fiction as a major news story is the kind of "bad faith from contributing writers" that really scares me.

[Steve McKinlay]

It's just as deplorable being a left oriented dogmatist as a right angled one. Maxim's "mistake" as Fleming described it on National Radio this morning, actually - mistake - plagiarism isn't a mistake it's dishonesty. It's like taking 50 bucks out of your employers till and saying, oh sorry it was a mistake. yeah right.

Anyway, their mistake is the issue. I don't much care for their views or their politics - they are entitled to their skewed bizzare opinions - god know's (well at least Larry Baldock knows) mine are just as skewed. It's the bullshit attempt at shuffling this off as a "mistake" which adds to the damage. Plonkers - the real mistake they make (along with United Future party members and votes) is that they stupidly think everyone is dummer than them.

[Cathy]

Aj

And I am pretty sure that link to the EB's and the related shennanigans was what cost the Nats the election.

Which is why the centre right does not need any relationship with fundy's and religious organisations in general.

It scares the voters off.

[Aj]

Cathy, I agree with you.

[peasant]

Allow me to take this occasion to plagiarise Douglas Adams:

"And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change," a bunch of Christophobic hooligans conspired to smear Bruce Logan. They could not dispute the message, so they attacked the medium instead.

[Jordan]

That's more than a little arrogant, to say that people who don't like the hard right of religion are anti-Christian.

[SPC]

Criticism of a Christian is Christianphobia, or criticism of a Christian activist intent on the Christianising of the values of mainstream political society?