Rachel Maddow debates Oregon GOP candidate Art Robinson on his secret campaign backers, his proposal to disperse radioactive waste in the oceans or ‘even over America,’ his denial that AIDS exists, and his climate change denial.
When she quotes his own writings to him, he accuses her of smearing him.
If this strange bird is a scientist and was allowed within a mile of Cal Tech, I weep at the thought of Newton and his colleagues spinning endlessly in dark and lonely graves.
I can appreciate that there are opportunities for taking quotations vastly out of context, but what Mr Robinson claims to be the context is, frankly, absurd.
Does he not realise that most of Maddow’s viewers can remember 1995 and the fact that AIDS denialism was recognised by then as a crackpot conspiracy theory? Does he not realise that there are records from 1995 about the state of scientific knowledge?
And no, the fact that Thabo Mbkei and Manto Tshabalala-Msimang dabbled in AIDS denialism in the late 1990s and early 2000s did not mean that it was the subject of real scientific debate. It just means that some people with responsibilities that were a matter of life and death allowed health policy to be decided by a bunch of nutters.
That’s just the low hanging fruit. He’s got a ton of insane ideas. Check out http://www.whoisartrobinson.com.
I hate to say it, but Robinson has a point about the interruptions. Maddow keeps handing him the rope, but jerks it back when he starts tying the noose for himself. I think she just sabotages herself like that.
And she really should pick stuff more recent than 15 years ago. Same as with the old Christine O’Donnell crap. There’s more than enough in the here-and-now.
Robinson is using the standard FakeNews method of constantly interrupting, talking over, shouting down, drowning out any real discusion. For people who are losing their hearing like me, trying to listen to two people talking at once is just hopeless. Fake has been doing that shit for years. Raise the emotional level of the viewers, get their adrenaline flowing, repeat the bullshit over and over–anything to prevent reasoned discussion and thought.
If Rachel were O’Reilly et al on Fake, she would have cut off his mike. Instead she behaved as Democrats do. She tried her damndest to engage this Repugnant in a civil discussion. That was a non-starter. Sad to see…
As soon as he felt like he lost the message, he started filibustering the host. After a while he repeated his string of oaths towards her and I realized he had a practiced battery with which to deflect. She did well to not shut off his mic.
And the guy used to be a pretty good scientist decades ago. His deamidation work was excellent. But he hasn’t done real science since probably the 70s and has gone into conspiracy theories full-time. This is how his early career went:
‘By all accounts, Arthur Robinson was a talented biochemist prior to founding the OISM. His early promise as a student won him a job as an assistant chemistry professor at the University of California-San Diego, where he struck up a partnership with his mentor, Linus Pauling, the only individual ever to receive two separate Nobel awards (for chemistry in 1954 and peace in 1962). Pauling and Robinson shared an initial enthusiasm for Pauling’s controversial theory (which has since been rejected by most researchers) that high doses of vitamin C could ward off colds, mental illness, cancer and a host of other diseases. Robinson and Pauling formed the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine to explore Pauling’s theory, but the partnership ended badly in 1978, when Robinson’s research led him to conclude that high doses of vitamin C might actually be harmful instead of beneficial. Pauling’s leftist leanings also clashed with Robinson’s conservative political views, and other trustees at the Pauling Institute accused Robinson of poor management. Pauling forced Robinson to resign from the Institute and terminated his research, labeling it “amateurish” and inadequate. ‘
link to sourcewatch.org