Posted on 02/11/2005 7:45:54 AM PST by Jean S
On Dec. 1, Harvard University’s Center for Health and the Global Environment gave its “Global Environmental Citizen Award” to the longtime liberal journalist Bill Moyers.
Accepting the award from the actress Meryl Streep — she praised Moyers’s “resourceful, intrepid reportage,” and he praised her “special kind of courage” and declared himself “in the front row of [her] fan club” — Moyers devoted his speech to the dangers that Christian fundamentalists allegedly pose to the environment.
“Remember James Watt, President Reagan’s first secretary of the interior?” Moyers said. “My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, ‘After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’
“Beltway elites snickered,” Moyers continued. “The press corps didn’t know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious.”
And so was Bill Moyers.
The only problem was, James Watt never said what Moyers — and the ever-engaging Grist — said he said.
Watt himself got in touch with the conservative website Powerline to set the record straight. But by then, the “last tree is felled” quote had slowly begun to spread.
• On Dec. 11, The Miami Herald reprinted a portion of Moyers’ speech, including the quote.
• On Dec. 19, an Indianapolis Star columnist quoted Watt’s phantom statement.
• On Jan. 7, a Knoxville News-Sentinel columnist quoted Watt.
Then a few more small papers published the quote.
Finally, on Feb. 6, last Sunday, The Washington Post published a front-page story titled “The Greening of Evangelicals: Christian Right Turns, Sometimes Warily, to Environmentalism.”
The article included this passage:
“Even for green activists within the evangelical movement, there are landmines. One faction in the movement, called dispensationalism, argues that the return of Jesus and the end of the world are near, so it is pointless to fret about environmental degradation.”
“James G. Watt, President Ronald Reagan’s first interior secretary, famously made this argument before Congress in 1981, saying: ‘God gave us these things to use. After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’”
Two days later, the Post published a correction saying, “A Feb. 6 article quoted James G. Watt, interior secretary under President Ronald Reagan, as telling Congress in 1981: ‘After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.’ Although that statement has been widely attributed to Watt, there is no historical record that he made it.”
Even though the paper admitted error on the major point, one might still quibble with the correction.
The article had said that Watt had “famously” made the statement in question. But a search of the Nexis database finds that the first-ever reference to Watt’s “quote” came in that Dec. 11 Miami Herald excerpt of Moyers’s speech. Watt left office in 1983, meaning that the “famous” quote somehow escaped attention for 21 years.
The Post correction said the phrase had been “widely attributed” to Watt. But according to Nexis, it has been cited a total of 10 times since Dec. 11 — and two of those were in the Post’s original story and in its correction.
The article from which Moyers got the Watt quote was titled “The Godly Must Be Crazy” and was posted on Grist last October. Moyers called it a “remarkable work.” And indeed, it is.
Writer Glenn Scherer reported that a large number of legislators — 45 in the Senate and 186 in the House, to be exact — either “hold are or beholden to” end-time beliefs. That is, they either agree with or depend on the support of people who “believe we are living in the End Time, when the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.”
The same lawmakers, Scherer continued, “may also believe, along with millions of other Christian fundamentalists, that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed — even hastened — as a sign of the coming Apocalypse.”
To flesh out his argument, Scherer cited the alleged quote from Watt. And then he added, “Today’s Christian fundamentalist politicians are more politically savvy than Reagan’s interior secretary was; you’re unlikely to catch them overtly attributing public-policy decisions to private religious views.
“But their words and actions suggest that many share Watt’s beliefs. Like him, many Christian fundamentalists feel that concern for the future of our planet is irrelevant, because it has no future.”
Now, Grist says it is “aggressively looking into the accuracy” of the Watt quotation. But it’s already out there, having gone, apparently without checking, from Grist to Moyers to The Washington Post.
In his Harvard speech, Moyers warned his audience about people blinded by their ideology and religious beliefs. The combination, he said, can make one “oblivious to the facts.”
Well, at least he was right about something.
York is a White House correspondent for National Review. His column appears in The Hill each week. E-mail: byork@thehill.com
Zeal?? Ohhhhhh, so THAT's what it's called,,,,
Moyers proves that even incompetent, drunken, butt-wipes can make a good living in the US.
More conservative Christian bashing by use of stereotypes.
He's already on record as Hating Republicans!
Man, did they ever get that quote wrong! Watt's quote was actually:
"When Jesus Christ returns, the last liberal will be felled."
Moyers and Alan Colmes are look alikes. Both of them have that slimey serpent look.
moyers set up the democrat website
tompaine.commonsense
for his son to run.
Denny Crane: "There are two places to find the truth. First God and then Fox News."
Yes, like those Christian fundamentalists who flew the planes into the WTC, and those Mormons who flew another plane into the Pentagon. And those other Amish nutters who kidnap people and decapitate them on video while praising Jesus, and release the video to the world on the net.
Oh wait, none of that happened did it? How can people such as Moyers be so blind, and how can other people praise and laud them for their blindness??? Liberalism is a mental disease!
Thanks for posting this article. I'll be saving it and printing it out; I have too many liberal friends, and one of them is sure to try to hit me with this BS "quote" sooner or later.
...as long as they learn to game FedGov (taxpayer)money.
King and Queen bee buzzin' round their little hive.
Zeal? What zeal? No zeal here. Move along, move along...
I'll just bet the reporter who wrote that in the Knoxville News Sentinel was one "Don Williams" ARRRRHHHHHHH!!!! As a resident of Knoxville, I can tell you there are literally thousands of people who refuse to pay for that paper because of his rantings and ravings. The man is a total American Hating, Bush hating Nut Case. And he is one of the Sentinels Star columnists along with Molly Ivins etc.
Yep. That's what it's called now. Dan Rather's memo-gate was just "myoptic zeal". Evan Thomas of Newsweek would call it "policy" but I'm pretty sure "zeal" is going to be the new phrase for it.
If I could get my two bare hands around Bill Moyers throat and squeeze the life out of him, I would consider my life well lived.
In his Harvard speech, Moyers warned his audience about people blinded by their ideology and religious beliefs. The combination, he said, can make one “oblivious to the facts.”And there are none so blind as those blinded by leftism.
I'll be darned. I didn't realize that Meryl Streep was a Professor of Environmental Science at Harvard.
Maybe they gave her an honorary degree for her immense intelligence and long years of innovative research in this field. How else to account for her role in this academic awards ceremony?
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