Fox News: it’s almost satire in itself
The person who uploaded this on YouTube marked it down as ‘Fox News – stupidest interview ever’. I don’t watch a lot of Fox News, so I couldn’t possibly rank it. But certainly, if you didn’t know that Fox News is an actual US television channel, you’d think this was a piece of a satire clipped from one of the Saturday night comedy shows.
You can see what happened here. Reza Aslan’s publishers arranged the slot on the show as part of the book promotion ‘tour’. Fox News was keen because Muslimsare the new ogres and you know, they’re all terrorists out to destroy America.
The final bit, where the interviewer accuses Aslan of going on many shows “but you never said that you’re a MUSLIM” is just priceless, as is his do-I-really-have-to-be-polite response.
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The newspaper equivalent of Fox News would be the Daily Mail.
She’s a real livewire this one. More interested in regurgitating some random twit’s tweet, by way of argument against Aslan’s clear and highly researched knowledge about the matter at hand. She’s not even listening to what the man is saying. No wonder he kept having to repeat himself.
10/10 for retaining his composure and decorum in the face of it.
So he’s a scholar. Pity he isn’t mainstream.
http://www.clarionproject.org/Muslim_Brotherhood_Explanatory_Memorandum
“The process of settlement is a ‘Civilization-Jihadist Process’ with all the word means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers…”
The Muslim Brotherhood now the sole representative of all things Islam in America.
One good source of information.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFyFNvs2LDY
There she was, the quintessential liberal host on Egyptian TV.
Of course it’s about religion and what it does to people. What we cannot afford is the luxury of denigrating faith as irrelevant or the easiest of smug definitions, irrational.
Faith defies reason with its escathology. This one has self contradiction and auto fragmentation to achieve its goal. The work of a man whose sole aim was domination.
The essential, logical, rational and intelligent considerations to include a comparison with other faiths. Even because that’s where instinct works.
Anything else is ideological and perversely islamist. And that includes pushing others aside.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAO8oc93UVQ
One to watch.
Daphne, you might also like what Steven Landsburg has to say about these sort of things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hd8eUzwmqY
He reminds me of Franco Debono ; true he justifies the fact that we should bow down to his superior and extensive scholarship with a bit more than a form two report , but the attitude is pretty similar . He’s pretty pompous and condescending in his demeanor , and betrays quite a thinly veiled arrogant attitude and narcissistic personality . I do find it rather amusing when he implies that he has been studying or researching religions – including the historical Jesus- for twenty years , as if he’s got the ultimate reference and last word on the subject ! For Heaven’s sake , there have been greater scholars than him who have made this type of research their whole life’s work for the past two thousand years and are not as cock-sure about their conclusions as he is after a paltry 20 years . I say he’s a more sophisticated version of Franco Debono , and arrogant to booth . Pity his interviewer was as ill – prepared as a Super One journalist and made it so easy for him to patronize her .
[Daphne – At times like this I find it hair-tearingly frustrating the way in which media contexts are a foreign language to so many people. Reza Aslan is not speaking to/addressing his interviewer. He is speaking to/addressing the Fox News television audience. This is a BASIC ASPECT of televised communication. Everybody trained in communication knows that when you are interviewed on television you should address not the one person in front of you but the thousands in their living rooms.
And yes, he does have to spell his academic background out to them because they wouldn’t know it. In a BBC interview – a different context with a different audience – all of that would be understood and he wouldn’t bring it up. No, he is nothing at all like Franco Debono. Franco Debono is not qualified to speak about anything at an academic level and his listing of ‘achievements’ is inappropriate in context to the point of being an indicator of mental illness. There are no similarities at all. Aslan’s television hosts should have done the job of introducing and describing him to their audience. Given that they failed to do that themselves, he had to do it, because he knows that he would otherwise be seen as just another ranting Muslim with an opinion.]
This is hilarious. This guy reminds me of Franco Debono, constantly reminding us of his pass mark; and the anchor reminds me of every other local “journalist” “anchor” who obviously knows zilch about the subject she is discussing with her guest but merely quoting quoted quotes her producer or assistant producer has prepared for her to ask.
Tiftakru lil Franco jifrah u jiggieled ghax kien gab 98 fil-form 2?
X’redikolagni .
Fox News is one of the biggest jokes in the USA. It’s quite literally the go-to place for Republicans and Tea Party people who constantly need to be reminded of what their opinion is because they are incapable of forming one themselves.
I think it’s much like Super One TV, where in the face of problems and faux pas carried out by the Labour Party, people rush to find out how they are going to reconcile their support with whatever it is that has happened.
While having my reservations on Reza Azlan and his arguments, he definitely scores higher in my books than William Lane Craig who insists on using arguments that have already been comprehensively rebutted.
He is also not above using underhand tactics and lies in his commentaries (for which he has been publicly exposed and shamed).
And Daphne, the above isn’t the stupidest Fox news interview ever.
THIS Is The Most Embarrassing Fox News Interview …: http://youtu.be/P5f7fRtnasg
Enjoy.
FOX News is the US Republican version of One TV, but actually makes One TV look like a dispassionate independent news organisation.
Its viewers, who are not necessarily ignorant or stupid, live in a fact free bubble which is bizarre.
At his best, Bill O’Reilly might seem normal, but the station is a treasure trove of stupid and extreme commentators and presenters, with Sean Hannity probably wearing the crown of most stupid and extreme. Alas, Glenn Beck has moved on.
If you think that’s bad, how about Fox News host Megyn Kelly declaring in all seriousness that Jesus Christ and Santa Claus are white.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/fox-news-host-megyn-kelly-says-jesus-and-santa-are-white-193322244.html
[Daphne – St Nicholas was from Myrna in what is now Turkey. He could have been anything from a blue-eyed blond, to a redhead, to somebody with east Asian features and black hair, to somebody with olive skin and curly brown hair. But he would most certainly not have been of sub-Saharan African extraction. Over and above that, the ‘Father Christmas’ tradition is essentially a northern European one and so the mythical figure was conceived in a typically northern European man’s image. An African Father Christmas makes as much sense as the image of Christ conceived as a Nordic man because of the culturally-ingrained antipathy towards Jewishness. Jesus was Jewish – he would have had pretty much the same facial features, hair, eye and skin colour that I do, but his hair wouldn’t have been straight and he would have been a lot shorter. Christ has been portrayed the way he is for centuries because of the bipolarity between Christianity and Judaism. Portraying Christ (and for that matter, his mother) as they really were would have made it clear that they were Jewish.]
Ah yes, you’re right. However it still looks silly for one to argue incessantly (as Megyn Kelly did) that Father Christmas (the mythological man) is white, when he does not even actually exist.
Mary Poppins was Filipino.
Tourism update. At some point in the 11th century the businessmen in Bari decided that they did not have enough attractions in their city and that if they added some it would boost trade. So they mounted a raid in Smyrna and captured his bones and took them to Bari. Hence “San Nicola di Bari”.
This one is a funny take of afterlife of a bomber. Maybe it would amuse your readers?
http://www.freearabs.com/index.php/fun-stuff/satire/121-stories/1968-jb-span-terrorism-jb-span-afterlife-disappointment
This is classical unbiased Fox News reporting about Muslims http://youtu.be/-_zF7nbEvwY
Compare that interview with another one that this same interviewer conducted, this time with a Christian professor who wrote a book on ‘puritan islam’:
http://youtu.be/BnPqlOyF1Jk