Does journalistic insistence on catapulting President Barack Obama into historic greatness and relevance know no bounds? CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley on Tuesday night insisted upon trumpeting Obama’s proposal, to spend $100 million to map the human brain, through the hagiographic maneuver of putting Obama into a trilogy with the triumphs of Thomas Jefferson and John Kennedy:
Finally tonight, for Thomas Jefferson it was the Louisiana Territory; for John F. Kennedy, the moon. Well today, as Bill Plante reports, President Obama announced a mission to explore and map another frontier filled with mystery and possibility.
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Without any concern for the cost of the proposal, and without putting it into the context of Obama’s petty decision to suspend White Hours tours, Plante touted how at the White House “today the President proposed a $100 million mission to begin mapping the activity in the human brain. The partnership between government, private industry, and universities is so ambitious it could take a century to complete and cost billions more.”
He soon recalled how “a half century ago, President Kennedy set the nation’s gaze skyward. This, says Dr. Kandel, is infinitely more ambitious.” Nobel winner Dr. Eric Kandel heralded: “Going to the moon -- I don’t mean to in any way minimize it -- was in part an engineering project. This is going into the unknown. This is like Columbus discovering America, if you will.”
Plante concluded his April 2 report: “A voyage of discovery, not to the stars, but to how we understand the stars.”
-- Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here [2] to follow Brent Baker on Twitter.