Just how crazy is Christine O'Donnell? (3)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The mind is boggled.

Christine O'Donnell may very well be the stupidest public figure in America. Okay, there's a lot of competition, I know. At the very least, she's up there.

On HBO's Real Time yesterday, host Bill Maher again showed a previously-unreleased clip of O'Donnell from Maher's previous show, Politically Incorrect. And what she said back on Oct. 15, 1998, taking one of the most ignorant stands against evolution I've ever heard, is a lot more revealing, and a lot more troubling than what she said about youthful witchcraft-dabbling:

O'DONNELL: You know what, evolution is a myth. And even Darwin himself –

MAHER: Evolution is a myth?!? Have you ever looked at a monkey!

O'DONNELL: Well then, why they — why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans?

As Maher noted after showing the clip (which you can watch below), O'Donnell is "someone that could be in the Senate," explaining: "See this is the point I want to make -- is the stuff from the witch from last week was silly. Who cares what she did in high school, if she dabbled in witchcraft. But this is someone who could be in the Senate, who thinks that mice have human brains and doesn't understand 'oh my God, that monkeys don't evolve in the time that it would take to watch them.'"

Of course, O'Donnell is hardly alone in believing evolution to be a myth. It's a common position, and perhaps even a near-universal one, on the theocratic right, among fundamentalists both Protestant and, in O'Donnell's case, Catholic. And while it's true that she could be in the Senate, there are many like her already there. The likes of Jim DeMint may not embarrass themselves quite as ridiculously as O'Donnell, but anti-evolution and, more broadly, anti-science narrow-mindedness, rooted in Christian fundamentalism, is prevalent throughout the Republican Party and its various conservative constituencies.

O'Donnell is insane, but let's not make the mistake of thinking she's the exception.

(You can find more of O'Donnell's craziness here -- click and scroll down.)