Popular atheist blogger, University of Minnesota biology professor, and intelligent design critic PZ Meyers went to see the premiere of the pro-creationist movie Expelled!: No Intelligence Allowed and was ejected from the line before he could go into the screening. Meyers promised to behave himself (why shouldn’t he, he’d be saving up all his material for his blog).
But, Meyers is also articulate and possessed of some influence and he is actually in the movie. Apparently, his participation was obtained under circumstances that were not quite conducive to letting him know what the movie was actually about. So when someone scanned the guest list for the screening of the movie, the producer was concerned and decided he didn’t want Meyers in the theater at all.
So, they sent in police goons to get him out of there, and after several rounds of discussion, they eventually succeeded in getting Meyers out of the line. But they got so caught up in their panic to keep a middle-of-the-road academic blogger out of their movie… that they ignored Richard Dawkins, who got in (and who also stood up and asked the first question, which was why Prof. Meyers had been expelled from the screening).
Here’s Meyers and Dawkins talking about it:
This would count as a Really Bad Idea because it rather transparently shows that producers have a “no dissent allowed” attitude about what they are trying to promote, belying the claim that they really seek open-mindedness about their ideas.
I am surprised Ben Stein would be associated with a movie like this.