The Truthiness of John Tierney

By: Greg Mitchell Judging from the evidence, when you earn an appointment as an Op Ed columnist at The New York Times you are offered lifetime tenure. How else to explain John Tierney still keeping his post after the past year? It?s not as if there aren?t any thoughtful conservatives around who, unlike Tierney, are funny on purpose--Christopher Buckley comes to mind. Hell, even his dad, Bill Buckley, still works with a sharp pencil from time to time.

The Times hailed Tierney at his hiring for his ?contrarian? views. They didn?t mean it this way, but that word, in Tierney?s case, is actually a melding of conservative and libertarian, with the accent on the first syllable. Perhaps they didn?t realize that Tierney would not only express views contrary to accepted wisdom but to scientific evidence and reasoned thinking. I keep expecting him, at the end of most columns, to offer the Ann Coulter Defense--?I was only kidding!?--but he never does.

Just this week he wrote a pair of columns that pooh-poohed our dependence on foreign oil and the threat of global warming. Let?s not forget that this is a man who once wrote a book called ?The Best Case Scenario Handbook? (with an introduction by Christopher Buckley). It was, we think, meant to be funny, but it doesn?t read that differently from many of Tierney?s supposedly straight-faced columns, such as the one where he pointed out the benefits of global warming for polar bears, or the one that backed a human mission to Mars.

One scenario in that 2002 book--your car gets rear-ended by another vehicle and Bill Gates stumbles out and asks, "What'll it take to make this go away?"--recalls some of Tierney?s fantasies about Social Security reform. And his advice in that book for what to do if the ATM starts dispensing money like crazy--stuff the bills into your shirt and take the money and run--reflects the glee Tierney?s beloved free-marketers express in embracing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

When Tierney wrote his comic masterpieces hyping Social Security privatization last year I thought they were excerpts from his book. Alas, they were on the level. One of them was so goofy he had to admit that readers who called him a "superficial nitwit" were "at least half-right" (but which half?).

Unfortunately, it was no laughing matter last month when Tierney exploited the murder of his former Times?colleague David E. Rosenbaum, in bashing liberals for preventing the privatization of ambulance service in Washington, D.C.

But what can you expect from someone who, last summer, dubbed the Valerie Plame/CIA leak scandal "Nadagate," saying it featured "a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit" ?

Frankly, I wish Stephen Colbert would quit making fun of poor John Stossel, and instead go after Tierney, even if the Times columnist does not have a trademark moustache that is easy to mock.

But just when you thought he could not possibly top himself, Tierney did it this week.

First, on Tuesday, as the Iran nuclear crisis spiked, he announced his energy plan, to wit (and I do mean wit): ?When something finally comes along that's cheaper and more reliable than oil, no national energy plan will be necessary. Capitalists will be ready to sell it to eager American drivers. For now, the best strategy is to buy gasoline and stop worrying that it's sinful or dangerous.

?When you hear politicians calling you an addict and warning that you'll be cut off, try my plan for energy independence?. After you fill up your tank, twist the rear-view mirror so you can gaze at yourself. Repeat these words: ?I'm good enough, I'm rich enough, and doggone it, people in the Middle East like my money.?"

And one might add: Those people sure know what to do with it.

Then, on Saturday, in a column called ?Burn, Baby, Burn,? he maligned environmentalism and suggested that global warming not only should be approached in the ?cheapest and least painful? way, it might even turn out to produce ?net benefits.? This means, as he put it, ?rejecting the assumption that we must immediately start atoning for our excesses.? The Kyoto treaty is nothing but an expensive hair shirt that appeals to ?penitents.? Maybe all we?ve being doing these past few decades is ?resetting God's thermostat.?

As usual, Tierney quoted one supposedly expert source?almost always someone neither you, nor nearly anyone else, has ever heard of. In the latest column it is Robert Nelson, a professor of environmental policy at the University of Maryland. He is trotted out in service of Tierney?s view that ?environmentalism has always fundamentally been a religion,? which Nelson has apparently dubbed "Calvinism minus God.? Nelson, Tierney observes, calls the global warming debate ?the latest example of environmentalist creationism.?

The real fun with Tierney is checking out his sources. Here?s Nelson in his obscure (except to Tierney) essay on ?Environmental Religion? in the Case Western Review Law Review in 2004: ?Admittedly, when they testify before Congress, or seek to reach skeptical audiences, the leaders of environmental organizations usually suppress the most overt religious elements in their thinking,? which emerged from something he calls ?the fourth great religious awakening.?

Now, what does he cite as an example of this religious fervor? Well, a recent fundraising letter from the Wilderness Society warned that ?Big Oil companies? are engaged in ?the sacrificing of priceless resources for profits.? What they really mean, Nelson points out, is ?the money changers have once against invaded the temple.? This is ?evidence of the religious side of environmentalism.?

Like Tierney, he did not add, ?I was only kidding!?