Trust Me, I'm a Scientist!
Topic: Liberal Fascism
With a regularity that really is quite startling, the celebrity darlings of the Left turn out to be jerks, phonies, liars, etc. The latest to have his name inscribed on this Roll of Shame: Neil deGrasse Tyson, scientific guru to the politically impeccable.
Tyson has become famous as the face and voice of the (self-described) reality-based community, most recently as the host of Fox TV’s Cosmos reboot. His denigrations of thought processes judged (by Neil deGrasse Tyson) to be insufficiently scientific and rational are greeted with plaudits and hosannas from the leftie fever swamps. “Believe me, if the Bible had ever been shown to be a rich source of scientific answers and enlightenment, we would be mining it daily for cosmic discovery.” Take that, you backwoods bitter clingers!
It helps, of course, that Tyson is not only a trained scientist but black and therefore doubly immune to criticism. That’s probably why he’s gotten away for so long what seems to be one of his favorite pastimes: fabricating quotes and facts so as to make himself look brilliant, others stupid. For example, Tyson is fond of telling—and retelling—a tale about that fundamentalist dunce, George W. Bush:
Here’s what happens. George Bush, within a week of [ after 9/11] gave us a speech attempting to distinguish we from they. And who are they? These were sort of the Muslim fundamentalists. And he wants to distinguish we from they. And how does he do it?
He says, “Our God”—of course it’s actually the same God, but that’s a detail, let’s hold that minor fact aside for the moment. Allah of the Muslims is the same God as the God of the Old Testament. So, but let’s hold that aside. He says, “Our God is the God” — he’s loosely quoting Genesis, biblical Genesis—“Our God is the God who named the stars.”
The problem is two-thirds of all the stars that have names, have Arabic names. I don't think he knew this. This would confound the point that he was making.
But you know what the problem really is? George W. Bush never said any such thing in the days after 9/11. Here’s what he actually said, much later, after the loss of the space shuttle Columbia: “The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today. The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth; yet we can pray that all are safely home.”
Incidentally, the Old Testament twice mentions that God named the stars. Not in Genesis, though. Tyson needs to brush up on his Scripture.
Despite these inconvenient facts, the great man insists that his version of the story is true: “I have explicit memory of those words being spoken by the President. I reacted on the spot, making note for possible later reference in my public discourse. Odd that nobody seems to be able to find the quote anywhere—surely every word publicly uttered by a President gets logged.” Yes that is odd—incredible, even, and it leads irresistibly to the conclusion that Tyson made the story up. The Left has rallied to his defense, arguing that his memory is maybe not that explicit, that he may be a bit confused about the details and that anyway, President Bush did too make a moral distinction between American and its enemies…though not in the words that that Tyson insists he heard with his own ears. (Mollie Hemingway of The Federalist has much more on Tyson’s adventures in terminological inexactitude.)
So you might be forgiven for suspecting that when it comes to smearing his political opponents, Neil deGrasse Tyson is contemptuous of the facts. For make no mistake, he’s is a political animal for whom scientific rationality gives place to ideological commitment. Tyson's claims on behalf of the scientific method are not bogus but they are exaggerated for political effect. His is an updated version of the old Progressive credo: that rational, fact-based analysis holds the key to all political, economic and cultural questions. Science! When Tyson pronounces the word, the capital “S” reverberates. Thus for example when a conservative critic suggests that given the uncertainties of climate science, it might not make sense to upend the global economy in the name of “fighting climate change,” Tyson bitch-slaps that critic with one of his pompous put-downs.
But when you take a peek behind the curtain, the man at the controls of Starship Tyson turns out to be an ass-clown liar.
Posted by tmg110
at 10:38 AM EDT
Updated: Monday, 29 September 2014 10:57 AM EDT