Monday, February 9, 2015

Zero

I found a remarkable and hilarious bit on Fox News. President Obama talked about how there was religiously motivated violence in all religions and that we all had best keep in mind that it isn't just those others that do bad things - those that share a religion with us can also commit atrocities. True, that. The Fox News rebuttal included the following gem:

“Reports say radical Muslim jihadists killed thousands of people in the past few months alone. And yet when you take Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, whatever, their combined killings in the name of religion––well, that would be zero.”

The level of idiocy here is right off the scale. Here is the thing: If you want to do a segment about how climate change is a big lie at least you will have a bunch of credible people agreeing with you. If you do a Google search on climate change you will have reasonable sounding people and lunatics on both sides. While the deniers are wrong one could be excused for not realizing that given only a small amount of research. Thinking that no religion but Muslims commit religious atrocities though, that requires a steadfast refusal to do any research at all. This guy not only avoided actual knowledge, but didn't even do a cursory Google search on "Religious violence by Christians / Hindus / Buddhists / Jews."

Google searches shouldn't be the end of your journalistic enquiries when going on national television to lambast the President of the United States for his statements. But geez you really ought to do *at least* a Google search to see if you are going to look like a monumental idiot. Because this guy didn't do even that he certainly managed to look like said idiot. Maybe had he argued that Muslims kill more people he would have had a leg to stand on because at least that depends on definitions. But arguing that nobody else kills anyone? It leaves me breathless, in awe of the combination of bigotry and incompetence that is on display.

But this is the sort of person that voters listen to.  May The Flying Spaghetti Monster have noodly mercy on us all.

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