That was a bit of an anticlimax. Louisiana Darwin activist Zack Kopplin has been crowing since February about what a big scoop he’d soon have, blowing the lid off how “creationism” is being taught in Louisiana public schools. In the wake of what he had to reveal, I’d be “frothing at the mouth,” Zack promised in a series of tweets.

His journalistic coup was supposed to serve as an indictment of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The problem for Kopplin was twofold. First, as I tried to advise him, building expectations like that is rarely a smart move.

@d_klinghoffer Don't worry, I'm working on something. Send me a picture if you start frothing at the mouth

— Zack Kopplin (@ZackKopplin) February 12, 2015

@ZackKopplin Go easy on the foreshadowing there, son. Better to lower expectations and exceed them, than to raise them and fall short.

— David Klinghoffer (@d_klinghoffer) February 13, 2015

Second, if some instructor really was slipping Bible lessons into her biology class — teaching genuine creationism — that’s explicitly not protected by the LSEA. If that was the “smoking gun” he had, it was irrelevant. It would make as much sense to condemn traffic laws and push to ban automobiles from our highways because sometimes motorists exceed the posted speed limit or engage in other unsafe and illegal driving practices.

At last Zack’s article appeared yesterday at Slate (“Dismissing Darwin“), and I think anyone would have to agree it was a letdown. We may have more to say on it in a little more detail later, but gosh, Zack has a whole lot of nothing here: at best, several confused or intemperate comments by citizens and office holders, including some who don’t seem to understand the meaning of the word “creationism.” But then neither does Slate, as Casey Luskin pointed out in a post this week. What seems to be his actual smoking gun, a letter signed by a bunch of teachers, sounds like they followed the letter and spirit of the law. The same is true of a curriculum he got hold of. Where’s the “back door” for creationism?

Ironically, for hot-headed comments by school board member David Tate, Zack links as his source to an article in The American Spectator by Discovery Institute’s Bruce Chapman, who goes on to say “Tate’s fulminations are not characteristic of the educators and legislators who passed the new Louisiana law, but you can be sure that the Darwinist opponents of the law will try to make them sound representative.” Chapman of course was right about that, but Zack doesn’t quote him on it.

It’s interesting that he doesn’t mention Discovery Institute by name at all, though we’ve been a strong advocate of academic freedom laws. I suppose that could be seen as excusing him from having to include a comment from Casey Luskin deflating his thesis, in reply to a quote that Zack does give from Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education.

Zack concludes his article with a call to action:

From the governor who signed the law to the teachers who implement the policy, everyone recognizes this is about creationism. I told Sen. Appel that I wanted to work with the Senate Education Committee to investigate what was being taught in Louisiana. “I would support that,” he said. I’m working on obtaining copies of Ouachita’s and Central’s curricula and more emails. I’m doing my part. The Senate Education Committee will consider a new bill to repeal the Louisiana Science Education Act on Wednesday. I look forward to the legislators doing their part.

That’s what he was saying yesterday, and as of today the bill has died in committee.

I tweeted to Zack to ask if there’d be more to his article, since what he’s delivered so far falls short of the mark.

@d_klinghoffer I'm sure there will be. I'm digging for more documents

— Zack Kopplin (@ZackKopplin) April 21, 2015

He assured me he’s working on more scoops. I asked if that meant the check was in the mail, which threw Zack for a loop.

@d_klinghoffer what check?

— Zack Kopplin (@ZackKopplin) April 21, 2015

What, people don’t write checks anymore, or put off creditors with lame excuses? Well, Zack I see from Wikipedia is still just 21 years old. He’s got a lot to learn.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, my wife points out this story in yesterday’s Washington Post about how, in fact, many people do not know how to write a check anymore and in increasing numbers are looking to Google for pointers.This paragraph tickled me:

Looking at the geography of check befuddlement, searches for “how to write a check” appear to be clustered in the Northeast — Pennsylvania leads the pack, followed by Delaware, New York, Massachusetts and Hawaii. There are a lot of colleges in the Northeast, which fits the hypothesis of confused college kids driving the trend. But it doesn’t explain why there are also a lot of people looking for check-writing help in Oklahoma, or in Louisiana.

Image: Louisiana State Capitol, by Bluepoint951 at en.wikipedia [CC BY-SA 2.5], from Wikimedia Commons.