Make that two loads. The Uptown paper of record today tops itself with not one, but two odious piles in the editorial slot.
First up, finger wagging about the Mecklenburg Mills fiasco. And a weak finger wag at that. Despite declaring the city’s performance on the housing project “abysmal” the Ob cannot quite bring itself to point to City Manager-for-Life Pam Syfert as the root of the problem. So once again, Syfert gets a pass from the Uptown crowd. How many decades will that go on?
Next, we have the altogether bizarre fret that allowing global warming skeptic Richard Lindzen to speak at Discovery Place has somehow sullied the science museum. The Ob calls for the museum to host an on-the-other-hand talk by a global warming alarmist to even the score. Yeah, we just don’t hear enough of that Chicken Little stuff otherwise.
Then the fret veers into la-la land by positing that state Sen. Robert Pittenger is unduly influencing matters. Hold on:
Dr. Lindzen’s visit to Charlotte, which included a Wednesday luncheon at the City Club, was partly sponsored by the Foundation for NCFuture, whose president is N.C. Sen. Robert Pittenger. Sen. Pittenger, a wealthy Charlotte real estate investor, is a most loyal Republican. He says he doubts humans cause global warming or that government should do much to try to stop it.
Here’s the context: At a science museum funded in part with public money, a forum features a global warming skeptic, sponsored by a politician with an anti-global-warming agenda who happens to be in a position to affect the museum’s state funding. It’s no wonder some folks who take global warming seriously are upset.
In preparing next year’s Science Cafe forums, the museum should make doubly sure it offers the public a look at mainstream views of the climate change issue. Not to do so might hurt Discovery Place’s excellent reputation and give the public a misleading view of scientific consensus. Worse, it would look as if the museum was more concerned with politics than science.
Wait a second, is this the same Robert Pittenger who the Uptown paper of record is forever telling us has no influence in Raleigh because he is too conservative? And all of a sudden he is going to start pulling funding from Discovery Place?
I think someone has confused Pittenger with Speaker Jim Black, who pulled grant money from UNCC when he didn’t like what one of its professors had to say. As Carolina Journal reported:
Black revealed, though, that he was also capable of punishing those who disagreed with him on policy issues, as he did in May 2005 with UNC-Charlotte economics professor John Connaughton.
Department of Commerce officials wanted to hire Connaughton for $50,000 to study the economic effects of the automotive supply industry in the state. But since the professor had criticized North Carolina’s marginal tax rates as uncompetitive, [Black aide Meredith Norris] prevented the department’s contract from going to Connaughton.
And isn’t Robert Pittenger the lone psycho hold-out on the alarmist “do something, anything” state climate change panel? Why does it matter that he brings in a respected MIT professor who happens to share his views to speak to local residents?
Because it makes Pittenger look less like the lone wacko the Uptown paper of record has painted him as for months. And that is the real basis of this fret — someone with opposing views to the Ob routed around the paper and went directly to the people with their case, unfiltered.
As a result, a talk which merited all of 150 words of news coverage in the paper nonetheless gets 415 words of editorial fret and misdirection.
That is very sad — and telling.