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May 11, 2009 9:21 AM

Loren Coleman over on Cryptomundo has New Zealand writer Leigh Hart’s apology for his hurtful remarks in a column yesterday, but Coleman isn’t having it. He points out that the apology appears as deceitful as the initial incident was. Elsewhere, Melissa Hovey has a take-down and call to action at her blog  The Search for Bigfoot. So the international incident does not appear to be over.

Here’s what I think — it looks to me like fictional bits are interwoven with actual facts from the conference in Mr. Hart’s article, and that a kind of humor was the author’s main intent. But Loren is right that the real names and real events used do more than blur the line between satire and plain mean-spiritedness. Humorous or not, those named or described in the article have every right to be hurt or outraged even if all Mr. Hart was trying to do was make a funny.

But I don’t really think that was all he was trying to do. The thrust of the article is to ridicule the kinds of people who believe enough in bigfoot to attend a conference, and if ridicule is the object, mixing true things with false things will do the job.

Satire works, and is elevated to art, when it exposes the true folly inherent in a situation. But what Hart is ridiculing here is not just bigfoot believers, but belief itself, as we can see with this passage from his article comparing belief in bigfoot to belief in religion:

The parallels with religion are obvious, as we have many idiots believing in something they canʼt actually see, yet they are prepared to fight to ensure that their particular blind faith is more dominant than someone elseʼs.

We have seen this before in skeptical writing. There is always this comparison made to religion, and calling bigfoot enthusiasts “believers.” But Mr. Hart willfully ignores the fact that one of the objects of his scorn, John Cartwright, does not simply have faith that bigfoot exists, but speaks of having seen, at close distance. He doesn’t spend any time knocking Mr. Cartwright’s sighting — in fact he ridicules Cartwright’s reaction to it. So it seems he accepts, at least within the article, that it happened. Yet he still aims his darts and arrows at the conference attendees for their belief. So we don’t really have satire here, since the existence of what he would be mocking appears to be granted. Whether the object of belief exists or not is apparently not important, simply that one believes in something, even if it exists, is enough to draw Mr. Hart’s critcism.

That sort of jeering nihilism, aimed as it is at real people who are named or described in the article, strikes me as beyond the bounds of acceptable human discourse, as we expect to find it in newspaper columns. Let Mr. Hart put such stuff in a blog, or leave it scribbled on legal pads strewn around his apartment, but I don’t think a serious newspaper should be printing it.

Doesn’t all of this remind you of certain kids who can’t bear not having something that they want? “Your red car sucks!” ..because I can’t have it.

UPDATE: The Cleveland Scene has weighed in on the matter with an article, which ends with this:

You know you’re a dick when geeks who believe in monsters seem cooler than you.

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