Now for the Clown Award, given for meritorious stupidity.We had multiple aspirants for the big red nose this week, a veritable plethora of worthy candidates
We have Rep. Virginia Foxx, who makes me think of what the Bride of Frankenstein might have looked like if she'd lived long enough to get senile, declaring that the federal government should have no role in trying to make college affordable or accessible, which would make her against such as the G.I. Bill, Pell grants and other government aid programs.
She said this while backing legislation that would prevent the Obama administration from enforcing new rules on for-profit colleges, which have been accused by Government Accountability Office and Senate investigations of deceptive marketing and encouraging fraud.Then we have Sen. Ted Cruz, seen to the right of Ms. Foxx, who claimed that if the Senate immigration bill becomes law, in 10 or 20 years the number of undocumented workers in the US will swell from 11 million to "20 or 30 million."
When asked to back that up, Senator Crazy's office said his statement "cannot possibly be fact-checked, because it was not a factual statement - it was an opinion." What's more, no one can question that opinion because "any attempt to assess the truth or falsity of this statement would simply be political editorializing."
This is known as the nyah-nyah-can't-touch-me gambit, which most of us left behind by about 5th grade as too childish.
And we have the GOPper leadership of the House of Representatives, which last week passed a bill with a provision barring funding for the anti-poverty organization ACORN. In fact, nearly every bill that clears the House Appropriations Committee includes a section barring the use of funds for ACORN.
ACORN shut down three years ago. It doesn't exist. It was brought down by years of attacks by the wackso, culminating in a combination of a lying video by wannabe scumbag James O'Keefe and bogus, unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.
ACORN closed in 2010. Yet to this day the GOPpers still bar funding for it, bill after bill after bill. Boogeyman much?
But the winner, and at the end of the day she was the clear winner, is Lauren Green of Fox News.
On July 26, she interviewed, if I can stretch the word that far, she "interviewed" religious scholar Reza Aslan, author of a new book about the life of Jesus, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth.
The first thing out of her mouth was "You're a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?"
Aslan responded by noting that he's a scholar of religions with four degrees, including one in the New Testament, is fluent in biblical Greek, and has been studying the origins of Christianity for two decades.
"But," Green came back, "it still begs the question why would you be interested in the founder of Christianity?"
Because, Aslan said, he's a professor of religion, including the New Testament. Quoting him, "That’s what I do for a living, actually."
Didn't matter to Green, who then read aloud from various Islamophobic columns which dismissed Aslan’s academic credentials and referred to him only as “an educated Muslim” with an “opinion” about Jesus.
Throughout the nearly 10 minute interview, Green repeatedly posed innuendo-laden questions intended to portray Aslan as a religiously-motivated agitator who had written a hit piece against Christianity, including saying Aslan didn't talk about "the real Jesus" - which unintentionally but clearly reveals Green's bias - and saying he was "dishonest" because, she claimed, he didn't go out of his way in interviews to say that he's a Muslim. None of which had anything to do with the actual content of the book, with which Green was unsurprisingly unfamiliar.
One wonders if Green would ask the same sort of questions to a Christian who had written a book on Islam.
Actually, no, you don't wonder that at all. Not with a clown like Lauren Green.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/25/virginia-foxx-make-college-affordable_n_3654419.html?ref=topbar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/26/ted-cruz-immigration_n_3660728.html?ref=topbar
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/house-gop-acorn_n_3672557.html?ref=topbar
http://www.factcheck.org/2008/10/acorn-accusations/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/27/reza-aslan-fox-zealot_n_3665211.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/idiocracy-in-full-effect.html
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/fox-news-anchor-to-religious-scholar-why-would
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