Tuesday, October 21, 2014

A Defense of Neil deGrasse Tyson That Doesn't Help Neil deGrasse Tyson

Neil deGrasse Tyson is being defended by Tom Boggioni at alternet. Boggioni, who breathlessly refers to Tyson as "really really smart guy Neil deGrasse Tyson". Which works one of two ways for Boggioni, either he feels really really smart by association, or he appears really really stupid elitist to the rest of the world. Or both.

Boggioni's defense of Tyson consists of (a)claiming that bloggers are funded by the Koch Brothers; (b)paid to "get" Tyson; (c)comparing Tyson to Dan Rather, but an innocent Dan Rather, not the one we know; (d)that one critic works for an outfit that has Ben Domenech in it; (e)references an article which mentions neither tyson nor Lowry, who he was trashing at the time; (f)ends up admitting that his article is a smear job, in a very pompous and self-righteous attempt to claim by attachment that Tyson was smeared.

Let's see. Has Boggioni proven the innocence of Tyson? No, he never even tries. He only assaults Tyson's attackers with innuendo, false associations, false data, and pretensions of self-elitism for both himself and Tyson. But this is Alternet, after all, where logic and rationality are left at the door (if they ever existed in the Alterneters), and vitriolic elitist ideology is pumped out.

One might think that Tyson's lapses, if that's what they are, could be defended rationally. But that is not how the Left rolls. And this article demonstrates the problem with Tyson and his fans, which is that Scientism is not science; it is irrational ideology.

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