Foxy Lazy

Via Owen Greaves.

The Fox News religion correspondent, Lauren Green, stared with suspicious bewilderment at her interview subject, the historian Reza Aslan, on their air to promote his new book, Zealot, a study of the historical Jesus. "Why," she said, "would a Muslim want to write a book about Jesus?" As if it were an inexplicable perversity, something he couldn't possibly have thought up on his own.

He immediately went a little prickly but maintained his kind smile and even tone of voice, informing her that he was actually not simply a Muslim but a qualified scholar, with several degrees and an intimate familiarity with New Testament Greek, etc., etc., and that it [jump]
was his job to perform such tasks. But for the next ten minutes he could not budge her from her deep stupidity. "But isn't your interpretation different?" she said accusingly, and so on, for nearly ten minutes, although she had clearly scarcely looked at the book or its hundred-odd pages of endnotes. "Shouldn't you acknowledge your religion?" she wondered. Apparently he does, on page 2, or ii.

It's an extraordinary piece of video, embarrassing and compelling.

I fired off some outraged Tweets:

Can't understand, Mr. Gibbon, why you, a non-theist Englishman, would spend all this time writing abt Roman pagans & Christians. @rezaaslan
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) July 27, 2013

People want to know, Dr. Malinowski, why your book is about dark-skinned animists. Do you have some kind of bias? @rezaaslan
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) July 27, 2013

Tell me, *Doctor* Tyson, you live on earth, but you obsessively study the stars. Is that because you have some kind of agenda? @rezaaslan
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) July 27, 2013

Dr. Aslan generously retweeted, and before long I was starting to feel like a Thing, as we twitterates call it. Note that the one that got the most attention was the least satirically pointed. By this afternoon there really was a Thing, with its own hashtag #foxnewslitcrit:

"We've found numerous interviews in which you have failed to disclose that you're a Presbyterian, Mr. Updike." #foxnewslitcrit
— JeffSharlet (@JeffSharlet) July 28, 2013

I've read you book Mr Alighieri and its not very funny. Is it fair to call it a comedy, let alone a divine one? #foxnewslitcrit
— Shawn O'Rourke (@spo1981) July 28, 2013

“But how do you KNOW these ‘black folk’ have souls? Can we see yours?” #foxnewslitcrit
— Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) July 28, 2013

Why do you hate the rich Mr. Fitzgerald? They are no different than you or me #FoxNewsLitCrit (Ugh, so many typos in the last one)
— John Dos Passos (@JohnDosPassos2) July 28, 2013

Alas, my own efforts had stopped really taking off. So I'm recycling them here, if you don't mind.

Mr. Murdoch, you're already over 80 years old. Why on earth would someone like you take an interest in "news"? #foxnewslitcrit
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) July 28, 2013

You come from a Jewish background, Dr. Marx, and yet you're critical of the love of money. Isn't that at least a bit *odd*? #foxnewslitcrit
— Yastreblyansky (@Yastreblyansky) July 28, 2013