The great plains used to be a giant forest. The Indians burnt it to the ground to hunt buffalo.
— Jonah Goldberg

More here. Via Pharyngula.

1. 
   Roxanne 2006 02 07 at 2:27:31 am

   Time for a new nickname.

2. 
   Nikki 2006 02 07 at 3:42:02 am

   Like “Unbelievably Stupid”? Nah…too redundant.

3. 
   dread pirate roberts 2006 02 07 at 11:11:32 am

   if the indians burn the forest and jonah goldberg isn’t there does the fire make any smoke?

4. 
   norbizness 2006 02 07 at 11:30:50 am

   If you want a topical nickname, how about “Two-Fists With Hostess Snack Cakes”?

   However, in our mad dash to develop new nicknames, let us not forget the old classics.

5. 
   kathy a 2006 02 07 at 6:10:46 pm

   hey, check it out — unknown species recently found, and some thought almost extinct….

   http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/02/07/international/i132721S40.DTL

    

   http://www.conservation.org/xp/CIWEB/

6. 
   steve 2006 02 07 at 9:07:38 pm

   I don’t know who Jonah Goldberg is, but the comment is just too bizarre.  Maybe he got it from Rush Limbaugh?

7. 
   spyder 2006 02 07 at 9:35:58 pm

   I literally gagged as my throat tightened up reading that.  Does this freakozoid comprehend anything at all about geological, geographical, archeological history of the Great Plains?? Of course not. Has he ever spent time immersed in the floor of the sky country?  I can’t see how.  Does he know how to use the internet and any of dozens of search engines to validate his claim???  Guess not.

   Maybe he toured the towns of Bison or Lemmon South Dakota and thought all those petrified trees there were only a couple of centuries old.  He must have hung out with the wacky local religious zealot (Grand River Museum in Lemmon) who offers that God made them trees himself in only a matter of a few years.  Actually, if you haven’t seen them, they are well worth the strange journey it takes to get there.  There are several trunks that are still standing upright, and look like large topped (for logging) redwood or sugar pines, until you walk up and touch them.  Really pretty cool.

8. 
   Jym 2006 02 08 at 6:28:34 pm

   =v= Hey, I followed the link to the photo and loved the comments about the Abramoff-wannabe in the Fedora and the arboreal, fireproof buffalo.  Sometimes blogger-comment-sniping is worth reading.

   I wish there was a way to harness this white people energy and use it for good, not evil.

9. 
   TFox 2006 02 09 at 10:50:09 pm

   While I haven’t heard of Mr. Goldberg, the comment about fire rings a bell. Tim Flannery, in _The Eternal Frontier: an ecological history of North America and its peoples_, writes: “Stephen Pyne, that great historian of fire, thinks than an even more curious synergy existed between bison and Indians. Bison needed grassy plains in order to benefit from their new herding strategy, and it seems that such plains increased through the Indian use of fire over the past thousand years.” Not quite the same as the quoted comment, I know, but these memes need to start somewhere.

10. 
    Violet Socks 2006 02 10 at 4:30:57 am

    Does he know how to use the internet and any of dozens of search engines to validate his claim???

    spyder, I think the answer to that would be no.  I get my Jonah Goldberg filtered through the Poor Man, who notes that Jonah has a habit of asking his readers to do his searching for him.  The Poor Man also claims Goldberg has asked readers to Paypal him money for the coke machine, but make of that what you will.