{"id":518381,"date":"2010-04-06T10:00:27","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T14:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/?p=13548"},"modified":"2010-04-06T10:00:27","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T14:00:27","slug":"let-them-eat-fake-bad-astronomy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/518381","title":{"rendered":"Let them eat fake | Bad Astronomy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I wish I had thought of the title of this post, but I have to give credit to the wonderful Rachel Maddow. I happened to catch a few minutes of her show while on the road the other day, and although it made my blood boil, I watched the entire segment, <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/21134540\/vp\/36155851#36155851\">which is now online<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"embeddedvideo\" id=\"msnbccf058\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"420\" height=\"245\" src=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/32545640\" name=\"msnbccf058\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size:11px;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#999999;margin-top:5px;background:none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;text-align:center;width:420px;\">Visit msnbc.com for <a rel=\"nofollow\" style=\"text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px dotted #999999 important;font-weight:normal;height:13px;color:#5799db important;\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\">breaking news<\/a>, <a rel=\"nofollow\" style=\"text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px dotted #999999 important;font-weight:normal;height:13px;color:#5799db important;\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032507\">world news<\/a>, and <a rel=\"nofollow\" style=\"text-decoration:none;border-bottom:1px dotted #999999 important;font-weight:normal;height:13px;color:#5799db important;\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/3032072\">news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<p><\/center><\/p>\n<p>In her segment, Ms. Maddow talks about the out-and-out lying being done by so many right-wing media outlets, in this case about ACORN and Climategate. As I have been saying many times, the far right in this country have been beating the pulpit to a bloody mess with their distortions and noise-making. They will do or say just about anything to distract people from the real issues. As long as people are scared to death by this noise, they won&#8217;t <em>think<\/em> about issues, they&#8217;ll <em>react<\/em> to them.<\/p>\n<p>Elizabeth Kolbert &#8212; gotta love that name &#8212; <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/talk\/comment\/2010\/04\/12\/100412taco_talk_kolbert\">has an article in The New Yorker<\/a> on a similar theme, saying how the sturm und drang over Climategate is much ado about nothing, an overtrumped, overhyped, and breathlessly hyperbolied mountain crafted entirely out of molehills. I have said <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2009\/11\/30\/the-global-warming-emails-non-event\/\">exactly that<\/a> myself. <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/badastronomy\/2009\/12\/04\/global-warming-emails-followup\/\">Twice<\/a>. And as I expected when I posted those articles, there was a huge amount of noise, but the points I was making &#8212; the ones I was actually making, and not the ones denialists tried play up &#8212; still stand. The hacked emails did <em>not<\/em> show widespread conspiracy by climatologists, and in fact a parliamentary committee that convened to investigate the hacked emails <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/www.ens-newswire.com\/ens\/mar2010\/2010-03-31-02.html\">cleared scientists of all wrongdoing<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll note that the far right doesn&#8217;t own the copyright on this; the far left has its share of antireality. The alternative medicine movement is a fine example of this. But the right is the one currently making the most noise. I agree with some of the basic tenets of Republicanism &#8212; I&#8217;d prefer a small government over a bloated bureaucracy, and I believe in fiscal responsibility &#8212; but the GOP as it stands now is a far cry from the roots of its party. I think the unholy (so to speak) alliance it curried with fundamental religion a few decades ago has led it to the antireality stance it has today. And either way, and from whatever direction, the noise machines are in full swing.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve seen this over and over again, and it will continue for as long as the media allow it, and we allow the media to allow it. I&#8217;m really glad Ms. Maddow and The New Yorker called them out on it. The blogosphere does what it can, but until the main stream media take this issue on, I fear that most people won&#8217;t see the man behind the curtain.<\/p>\n<p>Global warming <strong>is<\/strong> real. Evolution <strong>is<\/strong> real. Vaccines do <strong>not<\/strong> cause autism. Homeopathy <strong>doesn&#8217;t<\/strong> work. These are facts, and they don&#8217;t care whether or not denialists spin, fold, and mutilate them. Until we face up to reality, however, they will spin, fold, and mutilate us.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/u8A7sUNSIiyZlwCmz8MtLi5v1fE\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/u8A7sUNSIiyZlwCmz8MtLi5v1fE\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/u8A7sUNSIiyZlwCmz8MtLi5v1fE\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/u8A7sUNSIiyZlwCmz8MtLi5v1fE\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/BadAstronomyBlog\/~4\/nnXdYCQZUkw\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/VE5Or5_g-ak\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I wish I had thought of the title of this post, but I have to give credit to the wonderful Rachel Maddow. I happened to catch a few minutes of her show while on the road the other day, and although it made my blood boil, I watched the entire segment, which is now online: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-518381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}