Earlier this month, on February 11, Media Matters announced:
A Media Matters study of Sunday talk shows and 12 cable news programs from January 25 through February 8 found that few economists have been given time on television to talk about the economic recovery plan. During 139 1/2 hours of programming in which the economic recovery legislation was discussed, economists made 25 guest appearances out of a total of 460 -- only 5 percent.
As if that weren't bad enough, Media Matters went on to say:
On cable news channels, economists made a total of 18 guest appearances out of a total of 399 guest appearances in broadcasts that included guest discussions of the stimulus. The show that featured the most guest appearances by economists was Fox News' Glenn Beck, which featured seven: Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore (who appeared twice), Barry Ritholtz, Amity Shlaes, Thomas Sowell, and Ben Stein:
That's more than 1/3 of all the economists who appeared on one show--and most of those economists (Ritholtz is the glaring exception) are not the least bit representative of the profession. As a group, they are more accurately described as political activists, impersonating economists, pimping their expertise, such as it may be. The way they are used (and use themselves) is entirely typical of the rightwing approach to expertise--particularly scientific expertise--across a wide range of issues, including global warming, and evolution, just to name two of the most prominent and outrageous examples.
In all three cases--global warming, evolution, and economic recession--there exists a solid professional consensus about the fundamental processes involved, a consensus which the right wing does everything possible to obscure, distort, deny--and even stand on its head. In short, they fight back through a process of mass impersonation. Traditionally, elites were honored, respected and obeyed without question. The triple threat of the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment did away with much of that. Now we often trust experts instead-particularly scientists. And so the conservative elitists fight back by impersonating the sorts of experts who have proven themselves over the course of the past 300-700 years.
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