-By Warner Todd Huston
It’s sad that the Nutrooters can’t even demagogue a story right! I mean, about all the extreme left in this country has left is demagogy, and they can’t even get THAT right anymore. Here is one from the fringe, nutters on a site called BSAlert.com. It is hilarious in that their August 8th story so badly missed its target as well as instructive for its display of an utter inability to discern reality from their favored fiction. Couple that with a wild-eyed effort at assumption and the extrapolation of one person’s comment into an assumption of ubiquitous representation and you have a fine example of what the nutroots is famous for: BS. Yes, it’s amusing that the site called BSAlert gives us a perfect example of what it purports to reveal… unfortunately it uncovers its own BS instead of other’s.It’s sad that the Nutrooters can’t even demagogue a story right! I mean, about all the extreme left in this country has left is demagogy, and they can’t even get THAT right anymore. Here is one from the fringe, nutters on a site called BSAlert.com. It is hilarious in that their August 8th story so badly missed its target as well as instructive for its display of an utter inability to discern reality from their favored fiction. Couple that with a wild-eyed effort at assumption and the extrapolation of one person’s comment into an assumption of ubiquitous representation and you have a fine example of what the nutroots is famous for: BS. Yes, it’s amusing that the site called BSAlert gives us a perfect example of what it purports to reveal… unfortunately it uncovers its own BS instead of other’s.
(I’ll wait while the nutrooters who stumbled upon this post look up the words “demagogue” and “ubiquitous.” OK. Learned what the definitions are, guys? Great. Now we can continue…)
This nutrooter post breathlessly proclaims in its title that “Bill Nye Boo’d In Texas For Saying The Moon Reflects The Sun”
The BSalert post goes on:
Bill Nye, the harmless children’s edu-tainer known as “The Science Guy,” managed to offend a select group of adults in Waco, Texas at a presentation, when he suggested that the moon does not emit light, but instead reflects the light of the sun.
As even most elementary-school graduates know, the moon reflects the light of the sun but produces no light of its own.
But don’t tell that to the good people of Waco, who were “visibly angered by what some perceived as irreverence,” according to the Waco Tribune.
Nye was in town to participate in McLennan Community College’s Distinguished Lecture Series. He gave two lectures on such unfunny and adult topics as global warming, Mars exploration, and energy consumption.
But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: “God made two great lights — the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars.”
The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.
At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled “We believe in God!” and left with three children, thus ensuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they’d always suspected.
OK, so according to the BSers at BSAlert, we are to believe that all of Waco, Texas, are anti-science whack jobs that would be so gauche…
Yes, I’ll wait while you look up “gauche,” too….
OK. Back? Great
…so gauche as to attack that poor, innocuous Bill Nye the Science Guy. (No I will not wait for you to look up “innocuous.” I have to move on here. If I had to wait every time you didn’t get a word, I’d never get through this Fisking.)
For one thing, the crowd was likely not upset that Nye told them that the Moon didn’t emit its own light in supposed contravention to Biblical teaching. What they were upset over was Nye’s seeming desire to attack religion in the middle of a science lecture. Perhaps some of the audience was in knee jerk reaction to Nye’s usage of religion, but they were upset at what they felt was a mistreatment of believers not a contravention of the Bible’s version of scientific exposition. They did not imagine that the moon emitted light of its own and did not imagine the Bible said it did.
Next the nutrooter site, by quoting “one woman” who angrily left the Nye appearance yelling “We believe in God,” has decided that one somewhat over reactive woman will be an example of the typical Wacoan, one that “people across America” will see and imagine that all of “Waco is as nutty as they’d always suspected.”
I guess to the nutters of BSAlert.com, one woman apparently equals all of Waco, Texas. I would like to point out to the BSers that it is highly doubtful that even half of Waco had attended the Nye lecture, so it’s a tad disingenuous for them to assume that the attitudes of the few people Nye upset equates to that of the entire town. In fact, I’d bet that there isn’t a single venue in the town where the estimated Waco population of 121,496 could have gathered to take the chance to be offended by Bill Nye’s elocutionary skills and religious allusions. (I told you I’m not waiting while you thumb your dictionary!)
I find it odd, indeed, as the case may be, that Nye even used the reference, anyway. He was in the Bible belt, after all. What did he expect? People to shower him with hosannas when he dragged the Bible into his talk? He should have known better. Not too smart for a “science guy” I’d say.
Worse, Nye obviously has no idea what he is talking about in the first place. He has no clue upon what historical context the Bible was written, and therefore hasn’t a clue that the Bible is NOT saying that the moon emits its own light. In truth, the Bible’s reference to the “two lights,” the Sun being the “greater” one and the moon the “lesser” one, is an effort to debunk pagan rituals of imbuing power and god-like status to the Sun and the moon. To the ancients and the pagans of the Biblical era and before, the sun and moon were often considered deities and given names of their own (In Hebrew Shemesh and Yarih, respectively). So, the Bible slighted that special relationship by merely calling them “lights.” Instead of allowing them to be considered gods the two objects were identified only as created by God to divide, govern and give light to his creation. God was demystifying the status of the two celestial creations, not imbuing them with powers undue them.
So, not even the Bible is really saying that the moon emits its own light. In fact, it was saying just the opposite. The Bible was saying that the moon has no power of its own at all, no power that is not imbued within it by God himself.
Lastly, the nutrooters of BSAlert indulged in a little bit of self-aggrandizement.
This story originally appeared in the Waco Tribune, but the newspaper has mysteriously pulled its story from the online version, presumably to avoid further embarassment.
Aside from the fact that there are supposed to be two r’s in embarrassment, it is highly doubtful that the nutsrooters of BSAlert caused the Waco Tribune any “mysterious” angst. More likely the Waco paper pulled the silly story because its time had run out. Small papers do not allow every single on-line posting to remain forever on the web. Their server space is not infinite and money is ever and always a problem for small, local papers. It is extremely doubtful that the paper took out the story for any other reason than to save server space and move on with newer stories.
All in all, the nutrooters at BSAlert might be able to stand back and cynically laugh that some folks in Waco might be overzealous in their religious observance. But they really have no basis to claim that they are anti-science. After all, if these Wacons were anti-science, why did they even take the time to attend a lecture by Bill Nye “the science guy” in the first place? They MUST have had SOME interest in science for them to have gone to see the man renowned for his own interest in science.
Well, there you have it. A perfect example of the nutroots’ inability to understand real Americans and their total failure to interpret an incident for its truth as well as a fine example of their ability to turn just anything into a chance to demagogue for their favorite cause célèbre.
Thank you BSAlert for alerting us to your BS. You have, indeed, done us all a service.
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, men’snewsdaily.com and americandaily.com among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a guest on several radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston