How Could They Be So Stupid?
The following exhilarating exchange was reported by Media Matters as taking place "On the March 28 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country, host Joe Scarborough interviewed Dr. Ronald Cranford, one of the two neurologists selected by Michael Schiavo to examine Terri Schiavo pursuant to an October 2001 appellate court mandate."
[Lisa] DANIELS: Doctor, was a CAT scan — Doctor, your critics would ask you [oops! she almost asked it herself], was a CAT scan used? Was an MRI taken? Were any of these tests taken?
CRANFORD: You don't know the answer to that? The CAT scan was done in 1996, 2002. We spent a lot of time in court showing the irreversible — you don't have copies of those CAT scans? How can you say that?
The CAT scans are out there, distributed to other people. You have got to look at the facts. The CAT scan is out there. It shows severe atrophy of the brain. The autopsy is going to show severe atrophy of the brain. And you're asking me if a CAT scan was done? How could you possibly be so stupid?
I'm extremely impressed by Dr. Cranford ("Cranford is a member of the American Academy of Neurology, an organization that has a published ethical code for medico-legal expert witnesses, and established the guidelines for persistent vegetative state." according to one comment writer at Media Matters), and gratified to see his annoyance at these so-called journalists. I don't know where they've been, but even I have seen the CAT scans, even I have seen that a good deal of the important and useful bits of her brain are no longer existing, and I profess a mostly studied indifference to the Schiavo story.
It would appear that the stupid Lisa was trying the troll that an MRI hadn't been done, an approach which some disingenuous people try to use to convince the credulous that there's doubt about the state of Terri's brain, when in fact there is absolutely no doubt.
And the surprise that the "reporters" evinced (see the transcript) that Dr. Cranford just didn't roll over and let them get on with quoting some quacks with no standing (pseudo-doctors that Fox loved to describe as "Nobel-Prize nominated"!) as though they were stating facts was also, I'm afraid, more gratifying than politeness allows me to confess.
In another context, since I've been reading and thinking a great deal about the current fundamentalist-christian insurgency against rational, reality-based thought and scientific method, I would write at length about Dr. Cranford's very pointed and well-deserved "You have got to look at the facts." How, in any sensible world that most of us would like to live in, could these people even be called journalists without occasional resort to facts? The larger context, of course is the anti-intellectualism (not to mention anti-humanism) that is the standard bearer for the fundamentalist crusade.
How could they be so stupid? Indeed!