Funniest Bad Fox News Interview Ever [W:353]

[Aderleth]

I don't normally jump on the "look how awful Fox is" bandwagon, just because a) it's like kicking a half dead rabid puppy and b) anyone who can't admit how spectacularly awful Fox News is is probably far too ideological to merit conversation.

But...

In this particular case, the interview in question is so hilariously bad, I think it warrants some attention. So what follows is Reza Aslan calmly explaining who he is and what he does for a living to a disbelieving Fox reporter who was looking forward to some Muslim bashing. Enjoy:

Is This The Most Embarrassing Interview Fox News Has Ever Done

 

[americanwoman]

I don't normally jump on the "look how awful Fox is" bandwagon, just because a) it's like kicking a half dead rabid puppy and b) anyone who can't admit how spectacularly awful Fox News is is probably far too ideological to merit conversation.

But...

In this particular case, the interview in question is so hilariously bad, I think it warrants some attention. So what follows is Reza Aslan calmly explaining who he is and what he does for a living to a disbelieving Fox reporter who was looking forward to some Muslim bashing. Enjoy:

Is This The Most Embarrassing Interview Fox News Has Ever Done

Props to Aslan for keeping his cool in the face of such ignorance.

 

[What if...?]

I don't normally jump on the "look how awful Fox is" bandwagon, just because a) it's like kicking a half dead rabid puppy and b) anyone who can't admit how spectacularly awful Fox News is is probably far too ideological to merit conversation.

But...

In this particular case, the interview in question is so hilariously bad, I think it warrants some attention. So what follows is Reza Aslan calmly explaining who he is and what he does for a living to a disbelieving Fox reporter who was looking forward to some Muslim bashing. Enjoy:

Is This The Most Embarrassing Interview Fox News Has Ever Done

Sounded like a lot of debates here!

 

[Northern Light]

Saw this recently, and to be honest was not all that surprised. Fox should be renamed to polemic news because all it does is turn people into enemies, and with a total lack of intelligence and human decency.

The sad thing is that some people must really buy into this crap otherwise Fox would have changed its approach years ago.

 

[Utility Man]

He talks to her as if she is a 2 year old child :lamo

 

[Aderleth]

He talks to her as if she is a 2 year old child :lamo

And rightly so.

 

[Somerville]

He talks to her as if she is a 2 year old child :lamo

Aw, c'mon. That's too mean, I thought she was more in the 5 year old range. You know, that age when kids get really curious about things like "Why is the sky blue?" and "Are there really unicorns and faeries?"

 

[TheDemSocialist]

Dear god :doh
Isnt Jesus like the 2nd most quoted prophet in the Quaran anyways?
But besides that FOX god damnit just more ammo why no one should watch this ****.

 

[Aderleth]

For those who are interested in a real discussion of faith, here's Reza circa 2007 having a genuinely interesting debate with an atheist scholar about religion as a historical concept, the role of faith in the world, interpretation of religious texts, etc. It shows up about three paragraphs into the Mother Jones article on the subject of this thread:

The Most Damning Part of That Reza Aslan Fox News Interview You've Been Hearing About | Mother Jones

The whole debate is about an hour and a half long. I'm currently about 20 minutes in and it's fascinating.

 

[Helix]

that's the first time i've watched that much fox in almost ten years. totally worth it, though. :lol:

 

[Top Cat]

He talks to her as if she is a 2 year old child :lamo

You're right. He should have dumbed it down even further.

 

[Ben K.]

"Why would somebody who believes in democracy write about a republican? Er, I mean..."

What an cring-worthy ten minutes.

 

[mak2]

I watch Fox a lot and I have see some really bad...but this is really, really bad. I bet hte Fauxites thought she made him look stupid and talk slow.

 

[What if...?]

I watch Fox a lot and I have see some really bad...but this is really, really bad. I bet hte Fauxites thought she made him look stupid and talk slow.

Which is why we can't have nice things.

 

[tererun]

I don't normally jump on the "look how awful Fox is" bandwagon, just because a) it's like kicking a half dead rabid puppy and b) anyone who can't admit how spectacularly awful Fox News is is probably far too ideological to merit conversation.

But...

In this particular case, the interview in question is so hilariously bad, I think it warrants some attention. So what follows is Reza Aslan calmly explaining who he is and what he does for a living to a disbelieving Fox reporter who was looking forward to some Muslim bashing. Enjoy:

Is This The Most Embarrassing Interview Fox News Has Ever Done

That was awesome in how badly faux failed. I love at the end where she knows she lost and makes up a lie that he is not telling people he is a muslim.

 

[Somerville]

more from the American Conservative

... even if Green’s line of questioning weren’t laced with xenophobia, ignorant about the purpose of scholarship, or breathtakingly incurious, it would still be problematic. There is a deeper philosophical problem behind focusing on the fact that Aslan is a Muslim.

Let’s suppose for the sake of argument the following: Reza Aslan brings personal biases and prejudices from his Muslim faith to his study of the historical Jesus; the liberal media is breathlessly excited by Aslan’s book, even though it merely rehashes debates that have been going on in historical Jesus studies for decades, because that media tends to be hostile to traditional Christian faith.

it is an interesting take on the subject and hand AND I learned a new word - Bulverism

Then there's the comment on the AC page

Chris says:
July 29, 2013 at 10:40 am

We need a new word rather than conservative to differentiate ourselves from the idiots on FOX and talk radio. The word is hopelessly tainted.

 

[Aderleth]

That was awesome in how badly faux failed. I love at the end where she knows she lost and makes up a lie that he is not telling people he is a muslim.

That's actually apparently from the Fox News op ed that she referenced earlier in the segment. It was part of the narrative that Fox was trying to write about Aslan, which is fairly laughable given how long Aslan's been around as a prominent muslim religious scholar.

 

[radioman]

Is This The Most Embarrassing Interview Fox News Has Ever Done

-------------

Well....it was pretty bad....but in an ocean of embarrassments, one more bucketful doesn't make much difference.
At least she didn't ask him why he hates America.
I'm ordering Aslan's book this afternoon.

 

[lolabird]

He talks to her as if she is a 2 year old child :lamo

He emphasized over and over that he is a scholar. He emphasized over and over that he has a PhD in the study of Religions. He read 1000 books and had 100 pages of notes before he wrote his book, which he referred to a debate. When debating, doesn't one interject their own beliefs? Don't forget, he's a scholar.
I'm not a fan of Fox News but I understand the interviewer's dismay at his supercilious attitude.

 

[Aderleth]

-------------

Well....it was pretty bad....but in an ocean of embarrassments, one more bucketful doesn't make much difference.
At least she didn't ask him why he hates America.
I'm ordering Aslan's book this afternoon.

I'm expecting mine in the mail when I get home from work this afternoon. It sounds really interesting. Also, no she didn't ask him why he hates American, but she did at one point ask him why a Democrat would choose to "promote democracy" by writing about a Republican, which is such a bewildering assortment of crossed wires I don't really know where to start.

 

[cabse5]

Give Fox News props. At least they haven't put Aslan on some kind of hit list.... Being disrespectful of Muhammad has gotten people killed.

Maybe the Fox News interviewer should've implied that Christianity is a better religion than Islam, if, for any other reason, that people can criticize Jesus and keep their heads.

 

[radioman]

Give Fox News props. At least they haven't put Aslan on some kind of hit list.... Being disrespectful of Muhammad has gotten people killed.

-----------------
You are so right.
FOX helped put Aslan on the best seller list.

 

[Aderleth]

He emphasized over and over that he is a scholar. He emphasized over and over that he has a PhD in the study of Religions. He read 1000 books and had 100 pages of notes before he wrote his book, which he referred to a debate. When debating, doesn't one interject their own beliefs? Don't forget, he's a scholar.
I'm not a fan of Fox News but I understand the interviewer's dismay at his supercilious attitude.

The debate he was referring to was the show he was on - which is apparently a debate show - not the book itself. Obviously any scholarly work contains some element of the beliefs of its writers, but a good scholarly book will reflect only the relevant beliefs (which is to say beliefs regarding the actual subject at issue). Implying that one's faith supercedes an honest approach to the research is incredibly insulting, and reflects a laughably poor misunderstanding of how academia works. Here's a quote from the comments of the video by a religious studies grad student at Harvard on this point:

"As somebody who is studying to become a religious studies scholar, I couldn't help but cringe and become enraged at this. Obviously, she has NO IDEA about the world of academia and religion - because if she had even an inkling of an idea of it, she would know that scholars of all different types of faiths write about traditions that are NOT of their own. I'm a Muslim, and I study Judaism along with Islam. Nearly the entire concentration in Islamic Studies in my Masters program at Harvard is composed of students who are either Christian or Jewish - but you don't see me asking them WHY they are doing it."


He kept referring to his background, because she kept asking him variations of the same spectacularly stupid question, thus indicating that she couldn't wrap her mind around his answer.

 

[Aderleth]

Give Fox News props. At least they haven't put Aslan on some kind of hit list.... Being disrespectful of Muhammad has gotten people killed.

Maybe the Fox News interviewer should've implied that Christianity is a better religion than Islam, if, for any other reason, that people can criticize Jesus and keep their heads.

Yeah, news organizations don't generally get praise for failing to murder people. That's kind of a given.

 

[Your Star]

Holy **** that was bad.......like how the **** can someone be that ignorant? :lol: