Real skeptics are good, deniers who claim to be skeptics are bad. As an aside, mediocre white males who claim to be skeptics (Michael Shermer) are also pretty useless (except in his own specific field.)
In your mind how are figures of the movement such as Michael Shermer not true skeptics? The movement goal is to challenge misconceptions among the non-scientific community.
The paranormal community, for instance, would claim that Michael Shermer is a 'debunker' and not a true skeptic in that he doesn't even read the evidence before offering counter arguments.
Stanton Friedman, who is a believer in UFOs but also has a MSc in nuclear physics, has been very critical of Shermer for this. They have debated a number of times and maybe Shermer has learned some of the evidence since then, but when I first heard them in a debate, Shermer frequently said "I don't really know much about the specifics of the case, but...."
I can understand if you don't believe something or if it's counter to your world view that you aren't going to look in to it all that much, but if you are going to be so arrogant as to not only call yourself a skeptic but to found a society claiming yourself as a skeptic, I think you should make much more of an effort.
I have heard him in interviews on other paranormal topics and he seems to do this pretty much all the time: making counterarguments without actually knowing the details of the evidence behind the claims. I think it is fair to refer to him as a 'debunker' and not a true skeptic.
As for my views, I followed him for a while on twitter and I find him to be, indeed one of the privileged white males, who has succeeded despite being banal (I don't dispute his scientific knowledge or capabilities.) Most of his tweets tended to be on the political side when I followed him and he tended to rail against 'political correctness/left wing censorship in universities' and once cited the old canard "Hitler was a leftist because the term Nazi means National Socialism"
I was going to reply to him "Great, then we should get along fine with North Korea since it's democratic (People's Democratic Republic of Korea) but somebody had already beat me to it.
To me he's an arrogant and banal person.
There are also claims that he's very sexist. That doesn't really fit here, but I mention it because since I'm criticizing him, I don't want to potentially leave the impression that I don't care about that.
As an aside, in terms of banal white males who achieved success for no discernible reason I would add Tyler Cowan, David Brooks and possibly Steven Pinker and David Brooks. Malcolm Gladwell is a fraud, but at least he stole a worthy idea to achieve success. Oh yeah, another banal white male is David Brooks. Did I mention David Brooks?
My knowledge of Shermer comes from reading articles in the Scientific American, which he can be sometimes arrogant and pompous, though he always backed it up with a intrigue of the weird things that many Americans believe in. For skeptics it's hard to convey just how delusional many people are if they believe in much of the stuff without any scientific evidence to back off the claim. For Shermer and the skeptic community they just have a disgusting distaste for the paranormal and woo stuff that any counter-argument is going to end with logical fallacies that are so far fetch that makes it possible for believers in science to take with a grain.
Shermer has always been somewhat on the left, so hearing the anti-SJW talk is very disappointing, expected from an older and privileged white guy.
David Brooks is a useless twit and don't understand the NYT reasoning for keeping him on the columnists staff.
For another key skeptic person with a hostility towards anything paranormal how do you feel about the Amazing James Randi?
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