Doonesbury is a guardian of the enlightenment

Doonesbury's latest features a potential new character - Dr. Nathan Null.

Doonesbury: March 5, 2006

" ... I always teach the controversy! Like the evolution controversy, or the global warming controversy ... not to mention the tobacco controversy, the mercury controversy, the pesticides controversy, the coal slurry controversy, the dioxin controversy, the everglades controversy and the acid rain controversy ..."

Dr. Null is presumably inspired by Bush's current advisor, John Marburger

... John Marburger, science advisor to the president, responded that the computer models used to make predictions about climate change and public health were both ambiguous and prone to group-think errors by scientists.

Advising Bush on science must be a bit like advising Genghis Khan on etiquette; it's hilarious to see GWB reinventing himself as some friend of science education. I imagine Marburger was first among those willing to consider the job.

Trudeau provides quite a list of attacks, but he left out lots of bipartisan whackiness, such as the claim that "natural" therapies are magically safer than "artificial" therapies or RFK Jr's autism by immunization campaign. I think that over the past 40 years the right has been a greater enemy of the Enlightenment than the left, but really Reason is an uncomfortable companion for any politician. GWB is simply the worst of an often bad bunch.