Whoopi Goldberg interviews Ann Romney and confuses Mormons with Quakers or Amish or something (at 5:10):
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: As first lady, if you get the job, it’s going to entail a lot of things, and one of those things is going to be talking to the mothers whose children are coming home in bags, you know, from wars. Now, I know -- I believe that your religion doesn’t allow you to go fight.
ANN ROMNEY: No, that's not correct. We have many, many members of our faith that are serving in armed services.
GOLDBERG: Okay, um, I say that because when I read about your husband, what I had read, and maybe you can correct this is that the reason that he didn’t serve in Vietnam was because it was against the religion. That’s what I read.
ROMNEY: No, that's not correct. He was serving his mission and you know my five sons have also served missions. None served in the military.
Goodness gracious liberals are idiots.
I know plenty of smart "liberals." Goldberg's remarks here say as much about the intelligence of "liberals" in general as Todd Akin's do about that of "conservatives." Which is to say, not much.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't even say Goldberg and Akin are stupid; they just misinterpreted some information they'd received and committed the unforgivable 21st century crime of making a soundbite-friendly gaffe in public.
Playing gotcha with soundbites is a great way to tarnish an individual's reputation. But it's a lousy way to refute the points they make.
There are 300 million people in this country, so any characteristic you can name is held by someone of any given political persuasion. That does not exempt people who profess to have something meaningful to say to the public (Goldberg is a highly paid star of a talk show-- the View).
DeleteWhen a grossly overpaid self-proclaimed public commentator says something breath-takingly stupid, it's fair to call them on it, and even ridicule them.
I think that abject stupidity and liberalism track together in a way that exceeds mere chance.
Goldberg is an idiot, like so many liberals and fewer conservatives.
IMHO.
I don't hold celebrities to a higher standard than I hold myself, and I've been breathtakingly wrong about things before. I can see how "He didn't serve because of a church mission" could be misremembered as "His religion didn't permit him to go to war." That's not a mistake I would make, but then I am more interested in comparative religion than I expect the average person to be. I can't fault Goldberg for making a mistake about Mormon theology, especially given the most intelligent thing most people can say about Mormonism is to giggle about "magic underwear." It was an honest mistake.
DeleteBut even supposing I agreed that Goldberg is stupid, does the fact that an ideology has stupid adherents say anything about the value of that ideology?