Phoning it in

In an effort to get enough copy to fill the Editorial Page, The Daily Mail, here in the capital of West By God Virginia, has been reduced to repeating the illogical rantings of Peggy Noonan's columns from the Wall Street Journal. This is what has become of the noble art of editorial writing at Charleston's afternoon newspaper, paraphrase and summarize. What the editorial writer did with the other seven hours and 45 minutes of his or her day is a mystery.

As is why anyone would think they had made a good point with this editorial. In the interests of veracity, I think I'll just point a few things out.

1. Peggy Noonan's displeasure with liberals really shouldn't carry that much weight. Whether she's written speeches for Dan Rather or not, Noonan's career since 2000 has been centered around being a rabid proponent of and appologist for the Bush Administration. She's hardly a non-partisan, objective angel looking on sorrowfully as liberals sin. She's got an agenda, and that agenda perenially involves pushing the idea that liberals are terrible people who hate America and unfairly attack our sainted hero of a president, George W. Bush. In other words, she's unreliable as a critic and her writing should be carefully examined before being repeated. The Daily Mail editorial writer obviously failed to carefully examine anything.

2. That lack of care is demonstrated by their decision to echo Noonan's column in naming James Hansen as an example of a liberal free-speech violator. I mean the bias is just a little blatent. The Bush Administration tries to censor Hansen (the only real violation of the First Amendment the editorial mentions) and that's no big deal. Hell, it's even excusable because Hansen endorsed Kerry, the scumbag. But Hansen gets sick and declines to testify before Congress and it's an egregious violation of the principle of freedom of speech.

3. To point out how egregious a violation the liberal Hansen has committed, the editorial writer, in a fit of false analogy, brings in the story of Galileo Galilei, who was silenced by the church when he demonstrated that the earth revolves around the sun. Note that I said "demonstrated." Galileo had the evidence on his side. This is where the false enters the analogy, because it is those who maintain that global warming is a threat who have the evidence on their side in this debate. The Bush Administration and those who share the views of the Bush Administration have pretty much no evidence to back up their beliefs about global warming. And Bush is indeed seeking to censor those who disagree with his unsupported view. Yet, according to the editorial writer at the Daily Mail, it's the liberals who have the facts on their side who are analogous to the Inquisition, while scientists who maintain global warming is a myth, with virtually no evidence to back that up, are pretty much just like poor old Galileo. I have a feeling Galileo wouldn't approve of the comparison.

I know the editorial page of any given paper is a place for opinions. But let's face it, if you can't back your opinion up with logical arguments, you probably should just keep your opinion to yourself. That goes double for anyone who doesn't even formulate their own opinion, but instead simply holds up others' illogical opinions as if they were revealed truth.

Update: Eric Boehlert has more about Noonan's column at Media Matters.