Neil deGrasse Tyson, the internet’s resident mansplaining science troll, has yet again graced this world with an idiotic take. Coming in hot out of absolutely nowhere for no discernible reason, as is his wont, he’s decided to go after Arrival, Denis Villeneuve’s staggeringly good 2016 sci-fi movie. The film’s unforgivable offense? Failing to sufficiently address the fact that when an alien writes on two-sided glass with weird alien ink, the image it draws might be backwards, or something.
It would be one thing if Neil deGrasse Tyson had a point, however unhelpful and inane that point may be. But he does not. For starters, the movie does actually address this, in the form of a Jeremy Renner voiceover. But more importantly:
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If this were the only time Tyson had flagrantly and publicly showed his ass on Twitter, I would leave him be. But no. We have been dealing with Neil deGrasse Tyson’s stupid bullshit for too long now. It is past time we say enough is enough, and forcefully, collectively call upon him to log off. For years, we’ve had to suffer through his patronizing, infuriatingly nit-picky takes on…
Marriage Story:
Leap days:
The word “awesome”:
Friday the 13th:
Whether sex hurts sometimes:
At best, these tweets are intolerably obnoxious. At worst, they’re flat-out offensive, like this one, posted immediately in the wake of mass shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio.
To be sure, all of these tweets suck complete ass. But let’s put them aside for a second.
Three women have credibly accused Tyson of sexual assault and harassment, including one who claims he drugged and raped her in the 1980s—something he wrote off as a “false memory” in his terrible, no good, very bad non-apology to his alleged victims. The accusations nearly cost him his shows on National Geographic and Fox, until he he was cleared by internal investigations and went back to work. The same thing happened at the American Museum of Natural History, where he was ultimately allowed to keep his job running the Hayden Planetarium. Meanwhile, this is happening:
Is there no justice in this world? Will we continue to sit idly by while an alleged rapist ostentatiously looks down his nose at us, doing condescending, totally unprompted, objectively terrible tweets all day? Are we just going to let this man continue to be the fucking worst?
No. The time to act is now. Let us all raise our voices, once and for all, and let Dr. Douche know exactly what he needs to do.
Neil deGrasse Tyson: Retire bitch.
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