Idaho radio host gets epic beatdown from Neil deGrasse Tyson

Say what you will about Neil deGrasse Tyson. That he’s a Christmas-loathing Scrooge. That he picks on “Star Wars.”

Or that the $85 tickets to his June performance at the Morrison Center in Boise were too spendy for the proletariat. (Steve Martin and Martin Short suddenly make Tyson’s tickets look like bargain-bin pricing.)

Just don’t call Tyson “a horse’s astrophysicist” and follow it up with flawed reasoning.

Idaho Falls conservative talk-show host Neal Larson discovered this the hard way.

In a piece published in the Times-News — in which he refers to the rock-star science spokesman as a “jackass” — Larson clumsily attempts to criticize the celebrity brainiac. Worse yet, he gets facts wrong.

Basically, Larson places his own head on a tee and waits for somebody to show up with a large golf club. So it’s fitting that the first commenter appears to be Neil deGrasse Tyson himself.

“Hello Neal,” the reply from user “neiltyson” begins. “First, I’ll forgive you for not spelling your name correctly.”

FORE!

You’ll need to go to the Times-News website to read the rest. It’s considerably longer than Larson’s original piece. And infinitely more hilarious. Let’s call it a rebuttal of galactic proportions.

I almost feel bad for Larson, a host at KID Newsradio. Neal. Buddy! It’s OK to take a stand in print. But I always try to remember to take pot shots at people that I think I can hang with intellectually. (And I fail all too often.)

This story was originally published August 24, 2016 at 8:37 AM with the headline "Idaho radio host gets epic beatdown from Neil deGrasse Tyson."