Memo to James Watson and John Ray: YOU ARE DUMB.

I'm sure most of you have heard by now about James Watson, famed discoverer of DNA, and his wonderful comments about genetics, race, and intelligence. I'm not going to go into a ton and a half of detail. But I do want to address one aspect of his apology before I move on. ACTUAL QUOTE TIME!

"I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said."

I have a theory, but unfortunately, every single story I've seen paraphrases the full quote. The relevant bit is where Watson says "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true." The "this" he's referring to is what's paraphrased. The vast majority of stories I found identified "this" as a hope, either expressed by Watson himself or attributed to society as a whole, that all people are equal.

Am I the only one who thinks he was trying to tell a joke? A hideous, unfunny, racist joke? "Oh, sure everyone's equal, but you know how it is, guys. The black interns NEVER get the test tubes clean. It's probably some inherent genetic flaw, am I right? Tip your wait staff, I'll be doddering all week!"

But I don't want to dwell on his actual statements too much. He's 80 fucking years old, he's a dickhead, he's pretty much always been a dickhead, and he's being suitably punished. He's had to cancel lectures, I'm sure the book he was trying to promote will suffer in sales, and most crucially, he's had to endure hundreds upon hundreds of news outlets and bloggers falling back on the lame "Elementary, Dr. Watson" ploy for headlines and opening paragraphs.

His statements were crazy and indefensible, which is why I was surprised to find anyone defending him. Honestly, I was expecting the creationists to paint us all with Watson's racist, eugenics-loving brush because he works with DNA and DNA is where evolution plays out. I wasn't actually expecting someone to step up and take his side. And I certainly wasn't expecting it to be Michelle Malkin.

Unfortunately, for the purposes of high comedy, that second expectation was founded. It wasn't Malkin, but rather one of the lesser, lesser, lesser lights of the right-wing blogosphere. One John Ray, contributer to The Astute Bloggers, who ironically manage to misspell both the "Ass" and the "Toot" in their name in such a way that the average reader is led to believe that they actually consider themselves insightful.

John Ray faced a difficult literary challenge. How to agree with a guy who says black people are genetically inferior while proclaiming your lack of racism and not turning the part of your website's motto about "PROMOTING UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHTS" into one of the Internet's all-time greatest unintentional jokes. It's a challenge he steps up to with swagger and aplomb - neither of which actually help.

"Cautionary note: People have a tendency to see statements about groups as applying to all members of that group. That is rarely so and is certainly not true in this instance. There is no inconsistency in saying that blacks as a whole are less intelligent while also acknowledging that some individual blacks are very intelligent. What is true of most need not be true of all."

That is some fine, racist hair-splitting right there. It's not inconsistent to say that black people are on -average- dumber than white people, because it allows for the existence of the occasional dark genius. You know, like Urkel. Not inconsistent in the slightest. Racist? Yes. Wrong? Yes. Pigheaded? Fuck yeah. But at least it's not inconsistent.

Ray's disclaimer is almost longer than his argument, which is the kind of thing we leftists usually get yelled at when we use it for global warming and evolution - the science is in, no reputable scientist disagrees with the conclusion that black people are stupid, and Stephen Jay Gould doesn't count because he's a Marxist. Yes, I'm paraphrasing, and no, I'm not actually paraphrasing as much as it may sound like.

It's all a huge pile of Bell Curve Turner Diary bullshit, of course. Fueled by a bunch of people who will never admit it, but have been threatened for decades by what the struggle for equality has taken away from them and their position atop society's food chain. An amount that is way too much for them, yet strangely, not nearly enough for us.