6 Idiotic Right-Wing Moments This Week: War on Science and Knowledge Rages On

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/6-idiotic-right-wing-moments-week-war-science-and-knowledge-rages-0




1. Elisabeth Hasselbeck demands that doctor panic about ebola because Elisabeth Hasselbeck is a parent.

Fox & Friends invited an actual doctor on this week to discuss the alarming news about the first case of ebola in America and then didn't listen to her expert opinion at all, and instead lectured her about what should be done. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Dalilah Restrepo was the lucky guest who got to be ignored and hectored into admitting that panic is the only reasonable response. The doctor held her ground admirably.


2. Reality star Jessa Duggar blames Holocaust on Charles Darwin.

To be fair, no one expects reality stars to be geniuses. But Jessa Duggar, spawn of the evangelical Duggar family, produced a real headscratcher this week when she visited the Holocaust Museum and concluded that evolution was to blame. See, the idea that people are descended from apes has lead directly to the racist idea that other people are “less than human,” and the deaths of six million Jews. Because religious people who believe God made people in his image have never ever committed any atrocities against people of say, different faiths. Nope, can’t think of a single instance, Crusades.

3. Dr. Ben Carson: AP History leads straight to ISIS.

A conservative Colorado school board is waging a war on historical knowledge in its effort to change the AP History curriculum to be a little nicer to America. When high school students admirably raised hell about this blatant propagandistic move, the story went national, and the case became a cause celebre. You might say, this war on knowledge and the hope that knowledge will triumph could be one for the history books.

4. Bobby Jindal continues his flight from knowledge and science—Stephen Colbert nails him for it. Jindal tries to fight Colbert with humor. Guess who wins.

After Mitt Romney lost the last presidential election, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal gave a rousing speech about how Republicans had to stop insulting people's intelligence, stop treating voters like know-nothing idiots, and how they had to “stop being the stupid party.” There is reason to suspect that Jindal, who graduated from Brown with a major in biology and was a Rhodes scholar is not completely stupid, just intellectually bankrupt.

[broiles]

1. I'd go with morally bankrupt.