You've probably heard that the new darling of the Right is Ben Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon who recently spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast and supposedly was all brave and everything because President Obama was so mad about what he said.
Except I haven't seen any indication that Obama was mad about anything, and except for some mindless prattling about flat taxes and health savings accounts, Carson didn't say anything particularly exceptional.
He made up for it when he was on NPR's On Point this week. Feel free to listen to the whole thing if you want to hear a conservative Republican pretending he's not a Republican, and trying to duck any questions about progressive taxation, but that's not really what I'm interested in. (You'll hear some typical Republican tropes, including, “Your position is ideological, mine is common sense,” and a reprise from the Prayer Breakfast: “If ten percent is good enough for god, why isn't it good enough for the government?”)
If you skip forward to about minute thirty-five and start listening there you will hear him claim that there is no evidence for evolution. Or, to be specific, you'll hear him make the specious distinction between “micro-evolution” and “macro-evolution”, and claim that there is no evidence that any species has ever evolved into (or presumably, evolved from) another species.
Yes, this is the guy who is a famous doctor, and whom the Wall Street Journal is endorsing for President.
He'll fit right in.
He may be a neurosurgeon, but he’s no rocket scientist. I was singularly unimpressed with his intelligence.
He may be very good at his job, but his surprisingly naive responses to questions was at war with the condescending manner he adopted.
He sounded like one of those rich surgeons my mechanic father used to tell me about who had “a lot of dollars but not much sense” and couldn’t understand why their cars broke down when they’d never so much as checked the oil.
The interviewer was entirely to gentle with him even though he left holes in his remarks through which you could drive a truck.
Whenever he found himself in a clinch he pulled out that haughty BS about how long it would take to explain his extremely lofty, “common sense” position, if he had the time to waste on the listener.
I still can’t figure out how somebody with so little depth got to make a speech at the “Prayer Breakfast.”