Morgan Griffith Speaks; Stupid Pours Forth

Griffith: Sneering

Public Radio in general and WVTF in Roanoke in particular have a reputation of a higher level of reportage on issues that affect Americans. Occasionally, however, through no fault of their own, there comes a piece of a story that is so monumentally stupid as to be laughable. One of those happened this morning as I was on the way to paint my son's porch.

A teaser for a story coming up quoted Sen. Mark Warner, President Obama and 9th District Congressman Morgan Griffith on Obama's plan to combat climate change. Obama and Warner are conservatives, though Obama tends to lean a little left with environmental good sense. Griffith is setting a new standard for being so far right that he's fallen off the planet Reality.

A portion of his statement this morning said that Obama's plan is "not based on science as we know it." Let's make that "science as Morgan Griffith knows it." That would be from the perspective of a drunk driving lawyer whose career was spent getting rich people off the hook in the courts before becoming a politician (and I mean "politician" in the least palatable sense of the word). He is now in the business of making rich people richer while taking from the poor, a sort of reverse Robin Hood.

Every time Griffith opens his mouth something monumentally stupid comes out. He's like Virginia Senator Ralph Smith of Botetourt County (former mayor of Roanoke), the guy who generally sets the south end of the standard for dumb (Ralph can't even say "hello" without a script), but Griffith's position--strongly supported by the Texas Oil Koch brothers--is always the one that's worst for the public, best for the wealthy. He preaches coal and oil as the fuels of the future, not the polluter of the past. That's his understanding of "science as we know it."

(Photo: Roanoke Free Press)