Last week, Media Matters ran this piece exposing the views of Lord Christopher Monckton:
Media Matters Action Network, our partner organization, has unearthed a 1987 American Spectator article in which Lord Christopher Monckton — one of the right’s favorite global warming deniers — advocates requiring the entire population to undergo monthly HIV tests and forcibly quarantining “for life” those who test positive.
You would think that such views would have made Monckton a marginal figure. But apparently there are no views too extreme for the right-wing media.
On October 23, for instance, Glenn Beck said on his Fox News show that Monckton is “one of the world’s foremost authorities on what the global warming hoax is really all about and what they are about to sign over in Copenhagen.”
Monckton appeared as a guest throughout Beck’s October 30 Fox show. Beck introduced Monckton by saying: “With me now, Lord Christopher Monckton, former adviser to British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher and climate change expert.”
On October 19, Rush Limbaugh described Monckton as “a voice of sanity,” saying, “The hysteria on the left on virtually everything is all over the place. So you got to hear a voice of sanity in this. Last Wednesday, St. Paul, Minnesota, during a presentation at Bethel University, a portion of remarks made by Lord Christopher Monckton regarding the United Nations’ climate change treaty.”
Allow me to just remind everyone that Mike Huckabee said more or less the same thing … in 1992, which was five years after Monckton wrote his piece and four years after the federal government had distributed a pamphlet penned by then Surgeon General C. Everett Koop entitled “Understanding AIDS” which explained that the disease could not be contracted through everyday contact:
“It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population,” he said. “This deadly disease, for which there is no cure, is being treated as a civil rights issue instead of the true health crisis it represents.
“If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague.”
Huckabee is currently a leading contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, a highly sought-after speaker, and host of a television program on Fox News.
Considering that such views didn’t turn Huckabee into a marginal figure, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock to see someone like Monckton hailed as a “voice of sanity” because, as Media Matters notes, there simply are “no views too extreme for the right-wing media.”
UPDATE: Over at Open Left, Nick Berning points out that Monckton is not actully a “lord,” nor is he a “Nobel Laureate.”
