Mark Buchanan begins his PPV New York Times column of Friday by claiming “most people have reacted enthusiastically to Al Gore’s new book, ‘The Assault on Reason.’” Before you hurt yourself laughing, consider that Buchanan’s assertion might actually be true, at least in his personal experience. The former Nature magazine editor now lives in France.
Even so, as a theoretical physicist, you might expect Buchanan to be rigorous in drawing conclusions. Yet he adduces but one piece of evidence in support of his Everybody Loves Al theorem, a quote from a review stating ““Gore understands our problems as does no other politician of our time.” Clicking the link , we find that the reviewer is one Maryscott O’Connor, and that her review appeared at something called . . . the Feminist Bloggers Network, and is cross-posted at Progressive Historians, Daily Kos, and MyDD.
A quick Googling takes us to O’Connor’s web site, My Left Wing , wherein she describes herself as “a Radical Leftist Liberal Socialist Commie Feminist Pinko from Hell.”
In the name of science, why don’t we slightly revise Buchanan’s finding?: “most radical leftist feminist bloggers and Kosmonauts have reacted enthusiastically to Al Gore’s new book.”
There.