To my great surprise and mild chagrin, Richard Dawkins is still going on about Ahmed Mohamed and his clock.
Don't call him "clock boy" since he never made a clock. Hoax Boy, having hoaxed his way into the White House, now wants $15M in addition!
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 24, 2015
"But he's only a kid." Yes, a "kid" old enough to sue for $15M those whom he hoaxed.
And how old is this "kid"? https://t.co/kjzxGDs5Az
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 24, 2015
@FuxWitHux No. Just fed up with people saying of the click hoax boy, "He's only a kid", as though that means he can't be criticised.
— Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) November 24, 2015
I’ve seen essentially two divergent and competing narratives around this whole kerfuffle. One of them is fairly charitable and the other far less so.
N1) “…the end purpose of the project was not a functional clock but a bench rugged electronics research object.” [Source]
N2) The end purpose of the project was a deliberate bomb hoax. (Perhaps in hopes of a predictable overreaction from school officials.)
You are welcome, or course, to add other distinct interpretations in the comments. I’m not trying to construct a strict dichotomy here, it’s just that most of the people I’ve interacted with tend to accept one of these two theories of the case. I can generalize further, and note that my progressive friends tend to accept the first interpretation, my conservative relatives tend to accept the second one.
I’m going to digress for just a moment here, but please bear with me. Tomorrow evening, I’ll be watching my Chicago Bears play the Green Bay Packers, and there will be a disputed call which requires official review. My relatives from Chicago will look at the replay and they will tend to see the result which favors the Bears. My friends from Wisconsin (with whom I will not be speaking tomorrow) will tend to see a different result, looking at the exact same tape. I know that this will happen, because this always happens. Where there is some room for ambiguity, people will tend to read the evidence in the way which favors their preferred outcome.
Which brings us back to Ahmed. Why is it that progressives tend to admire Ahmed as a budding young tinkerer, whereas conservatives tend to fear and loathe him as someone who created a bomb hoax for fun and profit? Part of it could be that fearmongering around Islam works well for the nativist political narrative promoted by some well-known conservatives (e.g. the current frontrunners for the GOP nomination) but I’d say this cultural divide probably goes somewhat deeper than politics.
Your thoughts?
