Ask A Genius 476 – Scientists in Science Costumes, Clowns with Clown Patois
December 17, 2018
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Even with this clownish behavior, what will happen with science?
Rick Rosner: We are not going to do anything about global warming. That whole set of related belligerent people with belligerently ignorant beliefs will persist even beyond Trump.
Probably, as long as Fox News keeps telling people that everything happening to Trump is a witch hunt and its fake news, this chunk of the American population will continue to buy that. When Nixon went down, there was a sense of national shame. His base still had 50 percent support among Republicans, even as he resigned. But they got quiet for a while.
That may not happen now because the same way global warming makes the oceans hotter, which makes hurricanes and tropical storms more powerful; Fox News continues to pump energy into the delusions stream, which will keep tens of millions of Americans not smart – when Americans need to stop thinking wrongly.
Even as Trump is revealed to be a terrible guy, I am not sure what you can do about Fox News. There used to be a thing called the Fairness Doctrine, which said that if you had a politician representing one silo. I do not know exactly. I should read it.
But somebody representing one side had to be countered by stuff on the other side. You couldn’t have a Rush Limbaugh on the air for three hours a day. Unless, you had the obvious contravening viewpoint on an equal amount of time.
Then the Fairness Doctrine is gone. The Fairness Doctrine did not even address people spewing out fake news. Except I do not want to call it fake news, because that is what the Right calls, “Actual news,” with people spewing out a stream of lies.
Because that did not even enter into the national awareness; that that would be a thing that was done as a vividly at it’s being done now.
I do not know that you could ever pass legislation requiring truth in what is pulp news or, even more, opinion. Without that, even as Trump falls, it will continue to have a huge chunk of the population of 60 million people, maybe, believing bullshit. Okay! That is it.
[End of recorded material]
Authors[1]
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
Footnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
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Rick Rosner 