Tom Maguire, Nitpick King of Pointless Snark.
TM: Eddy Elfenbein of Crossing Wall Street criticizes Paul Krugman's fixation on Tom DeLay:
Paul Krugman writes about Tom DeLay:
Going back to those tea parties, Mr. DeLay, a fierce opponent of the theory of evolution — he famously suggested that the teaching of evolution led to the Columbine school massacre — also foreshadowed the denunciations of evolution that have emerged at some of the parties.
These are the kinds of the things Krugman writes that are so frustrating. He’s a brilliant economist but too often drives off the reservation into dishonesty.
After reading Krugman’s account, are you led to believe that Tom DeLay said in a clear declarative sentence that Columbine was the result of the teaching of evolution? That he repeatedly said it and would say it again today if asked?
I really wonder how many people understand that saying something that’s factually correct isn’t good enough. An accurate fact can be presented in a dishonest way. I think if I said this to many political pundits, their heads would explode.
TM: Context? We don't need no stinkin' context!
Well, Maguire doesn't; he wants to emit an ink cloud that can be confused as a "gotcha."
So did DeLay claim that evolution led to Columbine? Yes! What happened in 1999 was that DeLay went out on the House floor and read out a newspaper letters-column by a complete imbecile, a person named Addison L. Dawson. That letter is here, and it is extremely kooky. (Whole stupid letter below the fold, too.) Maguire's go-to person, Elfenbein, says:
The letter was later read by Paul Harvey on the radio and then by Tom Delay in Congress on June 16, 1999 during a debate on gun control. (You can see the in the Congressional Record on page H4366.) The words are often credited to DeLay and not Dawson, though DeLay’s reading of it certainly implies an endorsement.
No shit it's an endorsement, because what DeLay said was this:
Every once in a while, I read something or hear something that blows away all that smoke that clouds a particular issue. A letter written by a Mr. Addison Dawson to the San Angelo Standard-Times is just such a statement.
So DeLay considered the stuff in the letter as Higher Truth, as, indeed, in his own words, All That Need Be Said on the question of school shootings. Adding the context, as Maguire urges us to do, makes DeLay look loonier. Maguire snarks:
Hey, no mention of rap music? Well, Tipper Gore could have signed up for some of these concerns, as could any earnest lib.
But of course the point is that no "earnest lib," much less Tipper, would have signed on to the whole package, much less read it into the Congressional Record, because you'd have to be far more dishonest than Krugman is supposed to have been to pretend that the letter isn't vintage culture war lunacy of precisely the sort that Krugman claimed was and is all that's left of the GOP.
The narrower point is of course that if you don't want to be associated with saying some crazy shit about evolution and gun control, don't read letters alleging this kind of crazy shit into the Congressional Record while saying this kind of crazy shit is The Shit.
Adding to the fun is that Maguire lets himself get pwned by a 3 1/2 year old Kevin Drum blog post, which deserves a golf clap, at the very least.
MAS. Meant to cite this. Elfenbein says:
I dunno, Dr. Bones. Why don't you ask him? I myself would very much enjoy the spectacle of watching DeLay try to walk this one back. Because if you think DeLay has anything else besides pandering to the wacky wingnut base at this point, well... let me just say, for the sake of your family, please delete all those emails from deposed Nigerian princes, OK?
MORE! FROM POWERTOOLS! Oh dear:
Actually, though, DeLay said no such thing. Krugman was just recycling, as he so often does, lies from the far-left blogosphere. (Hey, those guys work for free. Does Krugman get paid?)
The Congressional Record does well enough. But this is nice:
And, by the way, have you seen any such "denunciations of evolution" at tea parties, which are concerned with government spending, waste and taxes? No, neither have I.
LETTER BELOW. For the life of me, I can't understand what could have gone wrong in Littleton, Colorado. If the parents would have only kept their children away from the guns, we wouldn't have had such a tragedy. Yeah, it must have been the guns.
It couldn't have been because over half our children are being raised in broken homes.
It couldn't have been because our children get to spend on average 30 seconds in meaningful conversation with their parents each day. After all, we give our children quality time.
It couldn't have been because we treat our children as pets and our pets as children.
It couldn't have been because we place our children in daycare centers where they learn their socialization skills amongst their peers under the law of the jungle while 16 year old employees who have no vested interest in the children look on and make sure that no blood is spilled.
It couldn't have been because we allow our children to watch on average 7 hours of television a day filled with the glorification of sex and violence that isn't fit for adult consumption.
It couldn't have been because we allow our children to enter into virtual worlds in which to win the game, one must kill as many opponents as possible in the most sadistic way possible.
It couldn't have been because we have sterilized and contracepted our families down to sizes so small that the children we do have are so spoiled with the material that they come to equate the receiving of the material with love.
It couldn't have been because our children who have historically been seen as a blessing from God are now being viewed as either a mistake created when contraception fails or inconveniences that parents try to raise in their spare time.
It couldn't have been because our nation is the world leader in developing a "culture of death" in which 20 to 30 million babies have been killed by abortion.
It couldn't have been because we give 2 year prison sentences to a teenagers that kill their own newborns.
It couldn't have been because our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes that have evolutionized out of some primordial soup of mud by teaching evolution as fact and by handing out condoms as if they were candy.
It couldn't have been because we teach our children that there are no laws of morality that transcend us, that everything is relative, and that actions don't have consequences. What the heck, the President gets away with it.
Nah, it must have been the guns.