CRACKPOTS….Chris Mooney says we need to wake up:
[In Salon,] Michelle Goldberg really gives you a feel for the anti-evolutionist juggernaut that’s now preparing to bowl over the educational system, ending on this sobering note: “Evolution’s allies might win the battle for Dover’s biology classes, but they’re losing America.” Indeed, it’s nearing high time for some serious alarmism about the ongoing anti-evolutionist campaign. Scientists need to wake up, fast ? those who haven’t already. And then they need to start to fight back.
That said, I’m not as pessimistic as Goldberg. Although Democratic politicians tend to be cowards on this subject, the elite media still have no love for creationism, and that’s a powerful force to be reckoned with. Science’s defenders should bring out national television crews, and let them interview the Bible-thumpers who come out for these battles on the local level. One of these types appears in Goldberg’s article ? and I’m telling you, mainstream journalists are not ready to embrace people like this.
I think Chris is right. As I’ve said before, the mainstream media really is biased toward showing what they’re familiar with, and what they’re mostly familar with is their fellow college educated social liberals. Unfortunately, this is a two-edged sword: when it comes to the crackpot end of the spectrum, lefty crackpots get a lot of press and end up convincing a lot of people that liberals are nuts, but conservative crackpots are mostly considered weird loons confined to their weird little rural communities and are therefore ignored.
If conservative crackpots got half that press that folks who camp out in redwood trees got, ordinary Americans would probably be a lot more scared of them. It’s time to put these guys front and center.
