Clueless Media Analysis

by Michael Sean Winters

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Last night, Chris Matthews had Nia Malika-Henderson, national political reporter for the Washington Post on to discuss the previous night's GOP debate. At one point, the subject of Gov. Rick Perry's denual of the science surrounding climate change came up. Here is what Ms. Malika-Henderson said:

No, I think, when the Tea Party, when folks from the right hear
climate change, they actually hear climate tax. And so one of the things
they do is they just try to undermine the science of it. So that`s what
you saw him doing last night.

But I think this puts him obviously in the mainstream of the Tea
Party. And I think a lot of Americans, quite frankly, doubt some of this
climate change science.

Perry's anti-climate change stance certainly may be influenced by the interests of oil producers in Texas. But, its real source is the same as his unwillingness to accept the theory of evolution. Evangelicals are deeply suspicious of science because science, in their minds, challenges the Scriptural accounts through which they view the world. Man is given dominion over the earth, by God, so how could that go awry? Science explains that creation took millenia, but the Bible says six days. As William Jennings Bryan once said, "It is more important to know the Rock of Ages than the ages of rocks." Or as Billy Sunday said, "When the Bible says one thing and scholarship says another, scholarship can go plumb to the devil." Perry's stance on climate change is not about the tax code, it is about the fundamentalist Bible code.

Once again, a main stream media analyst plays to type. It is such a shame.

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