Wednesday, December 05, 2007

The world is only 2000 years old

Sherri Shepherd makes Paris Hilton look like an intellectual giant.

The newest host on the The View made headlines in September by saying she wasn't sure whether the world was flat or not (this was after she said she didn't believe in evolution). What got less press was her craven defense of her flat-earthery; when she sensed that she had said something wrong she held her kids up in front of her as a shield. When Barbara Walter incredulously asked "You've never thought about whether the world was round or flat?" Shepherd replied, "I tell you what I've thought about. How I'm going to feed my child." It was a cowardly and disgusting play to change the issue and gain sympathy.

The next day, she claimed she was flustered by Whoopi Goldberg's tough questioning. That should have been taken as an admission that she wasn't ready for live television and she should have been sent back to the sit-coms. But, Barbara had pity and gave her another chance and she has used that chance to once again stand up for ignorance.

Yesterday, while the other hosts were discussing the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (!?), Shepherd announced that the Greeks couldn't have come before Jesus: "I don't think anything predated Christians." When Joy Behar attempted to explain the Greek-Roman-Christian chronology, Shephard stood firm: "Jesus came first before them."

This is not a question of Shepherd's religion any longer. Her disbelief in evolution could be explained by fundamentalism, her confusion about the shape of the earth by being suspicious that Goldberg was leading her into a trap, but this has no religious justification. Even the most extreme literalist fundamentalists believe that there was some history before Jesus. They do believe in Moses, Egypt, and Babylon. Even the most hardcore flood geologists put the flood over two thousand years before Jesus. The initials BC do mean something to them.

Shepherd is just plain ignorant. She's an embarrassment even by The View standards.

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