UNSCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Timely parody

Sometimes it's hard to laugh
*WRITES COLUMNIST PAT RICHARDS: While this magazine cover parody of "Scientific American" (retitled "UnScientific American") was well done -- and while I did find it funny when taken in a vacuum all by itself -- I would have been more amused if the Wall Street Journal had not just reported that a recent survey showed 6 out of 10 Americans actually do question the validity of evolutionary science (or just flat out don't believe in evolution at all). | See Pat Richards' entire commentary below.

Pat Richard's The Dumbing Down of America
Posted March 24, 2009

Unscientific American: Too Close to the Truth
By Pat Richards, Columnist

Yesterday a friend sent me a link to an image on the internet. He thought it was funny and that I might enjoy it, but I found it hard to laugh.

To see a larger version of the "Unscientific American" image, visit: http://doctore.blog.is/users/b4/doctore/img/el-gran-poco.jpg or Click Here>

While this magazine cover parody of Scientific American (retitled "UnScientific American") was well done -- and while I did find it funny when taken in a vacuum all by itself -- I would have been more amused if the Wall Street Journal had not just reported that a recent survey showed 6 out of 10 Americans actually do question the validity of evolutionary science (or just flat out don't believe in evolution at all).

I'd bet that 40 years ago the same survey would have found only 1 out of 10 people who questioned the validity of evolution.

Now, sure... these kind of people *are* incredibly funny/stupid... but there are just so damn many of them now. This is the result of 30 years of carefully cultivated (and obliquely funded) faith-based socio-political propaganda by neo-conservative Republicans. And it is not an isolated incident: The GOP did the same unforgivable thing over the past 30 years with their calculated and coordinated effort to discredit the science behind global warming.And now they are fully-committed to a public disinformation campaign to convince Americans that "no big government project ever really worked". Not one. Not ever.

Just forget about the Social Security Program, Hoover Dam, Unemployment Insurance, the Interstate Highway System, the Veteran's Health Administration, all the trails and buildings in our National Parks, Medicare, the elimination of polio and malaria in this country, the electrification of the entire Southeast and the existence of the Blue Ridge Parkway among many other things. Nope, none of those Big Government programs ever worked. Not really.

Naturally, we chuckle at the idea that anyone could be gullible and uninformed enough to buy such obvious drivel, but given the neocon's 6-out-of-10 success ratio with debunking the scientific facts supporting evolution and preventing global warming from being taken seriously until it was too late, I have to wonder: will we still be laughing about their latest Big Lie some 5 or 10 years from now?

Most people still don't realize that the ruling fundamentalists in the Republican Party have been conducting a deliberate, well-funded, decades-long propaganda campaign to not only revise political history, but to redefine common terms, debunk actual established facts and generate an anti-science bias among the Joe Six Packs of the world.

This is a calculated political strategy on their part -- and the extensive use of ridicule/jokes/humor is their most important tool in these campaigns, so how "funny" is that?

In the past we all used to laugh about it, but the dumbing down of America really isn't a joking matter anymore -- it's gone way too far. The few thinking people who are left should be screaming bloody murder about it and publicly fighting it.

And while we can use humor to fight it, the trouble with joking about it too much is that it causes people who should be alarmed and mobilizing to oppose the dumbing down to laugh, sit back and think, "Well, it's just a few nutballs who actually believe this stuff, not something we seriously have to worry about."

And that's not funny either.

Copyright 2009 Pat Richards
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