Sean Davis on Neil deGrasse Tyson’s latest effort at walking back his misquote of President Bush:
To sum up: Tyson fabricated a quote from a newspaper headline and to this day has offered zero evidence that this headline exists, other than his memory (you’ll just have to take it on faith). Tyson fabricated a quote from a member of Congress and to this day has offered zero evidence that this quote has been uttered, other than his own insistence that it was privately said in his presence (you’ll need to take that one on faith, too). Nor has Tyson offered any evidence whatsoever to independently corroborate his jury duty story, which, to my knowledge, has at least four different versions (you’ll need to take Tyson’s story about that on faith, too).
Finally, we have a quote that Tyson fabricated about President George W. Bush that Tyson then deliberately used to cast the president in the worst possible light, all so he could get an attaboy ego boost from the know-nothing seal clappers who paid $70 each to be in his audience. And what does he say after weeks of obfuscation and nonsense justification for blatant fabrication in service of an ideological agenda?
“My bad.”
Read the whole thing. I’d compare Tyson to Bill Murray’s aging hipster pseudo-scientist character Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters, but in the end, Venkman and his team came through and saved New York. But that’s Hollywood. Back here in reality, Tyson has done considerable damage to his reputation over the past few weeks after Davis and others (including our own David Steinberg) did yeoman work uncovering his many self-serving misquotes.
Don’t expect the MSM to notice though. At least not immediately.
Related: Rich Lowry on “The Cult of Neil deGrasse Tyson,” at Politico, which as fallen for a few cults of its own.
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