Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Stop preaching at me through my goddamn television!


Let me start by saying that I typically listen to NPR while working at home, but I could not stand the domination of General Petratus last week and Colorado Matters has been kind of boring lately. Plus, truth be told, I wanted to see how Whoopi Goldberg was going to work out on The View. She's ok. I enjoyed the week-long discussion about bras that occurred after the producers made her wear one on the show. Anyway, they added another host last week. Sheri Shepherd, a right-wing fundamentalist christian. She must be the perky blond's wet dream. The chat around the table has become a fundamentalist christian circle jerk and it is starting to piss me off.

This morning was the last straw. Whoopi asked Sherri if the earth is flat (in an attmept to get her to think critically), and the fucking genius said she had not really thought about it. She thought maybe the earth could be flat. I turned off my television and went back to NPR.
UPDATE: Huffington Post has the clip.

The earth is flat??!!! Come on. How much money does this woman earn on the show and she hasn't accepted that science might be right about the earth being round. People, this is how republicans get elected.

Also, I love this story. Nebraska State Senator Sues God.
UPDATE: God apparently responds to lawsuit

2 comments:

ChristianLiberalChick said...

Flat. The earth could be flat. Got it. People flying from the US to China better go through Europe or they'll fly into outer space. Oh wait, there can't be outer space, that would mean the pictures from there of a round earth are real! She'd better stick with acting and let other people tell her what to say.

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

Sherri's statement actually has a good pedigree. The passage below if from Study in Scarlet, an original Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes story. Dr. Watson discovers to his amazement that Sherlock Holmes believes that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Here's the relevant text:

"His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."

"To forget it!"

"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."

"But the Solar System!" I protested.

"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."