Wolf ought to look into the stupid situation at CNN. |
Maybe yes, maybe no. But they don't do themselves any favors by having segments like this with religious scholar Reza Aslan. Now, before you see the CNN piece, a little background. In this embarrassingly obtuse interview with Fox News -- where, to be clear, it's Fox being obtuse -- we see how a truly propagandistic network approaches a religious scholar when its goal is to soil Islam:
This embarrassment of an interview is so obtuse, I've wracked my brain and can't come up with something to compare it to. You may notice, if you watch the whole thing, that the interviewer, Lauren Green, sticks to a script throughout the interview without apparently noticing that Aslan successfully and patiently refutes her entire set of talking points. To call her behavior bizarre is to be nice to her.
Now, on to CNN, where obtuse, again, is an apt word:
I'm not a defender of Islam. In fact, I'm an atheist who believes that religion is often not a force for good, whether it's in Northern Ireland or Saudi Arabia. But the ignorance on display by CNN hosts Alisyn Camerota and Don Lemon -- and Bill Maher, for that matter -- is stunning. And, once again, as Aslan gently schools the CNN hosts, they stick to their script without giving an inch.
Ignorance is a terrible thing to waste for some people. CNN isn't wasting a drop of it. In fact, they're wallowing in it.
Let's be clear: These CNN hosts are practicing a bankrupt style of interview. They state a bunch of things that are patently untrue -- though widely believed -- and refuse to acknowledge when Reza Aslan is making complete sense. In this, they reflect the pervasive ignorance of Americans in general.
We can't get anywhere in working with the Muslim world if we can't get past our boneheadedness. We may live in the Greatest Country in the History of Man, but we also live in one of the friggin' dumbest.
If we can't understand them, at least we can bomb them. We've got that going for us.
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