Tucker Carlson said on Fox that more children die of bathtub drownings than of accidental shootings. They don't.
Steve Doocy said on Fox that NASA scientists faked data to make the case for global warming. They didn't.
Rudy Giuliani said on Fox that President Obama has issued propaganda asking everybody to "hate the police." He hasn't.
John Stossel said on Fox that there is "no good data" proving secondhand cigarette smoke kills nonsmokers. There is.
So maybe you can see why serious people - a category excluding
those who rely upon it for news and information - do not take Fox, well
... seriously, why they dub it Pox News and Fakes News, to name two of
the printable variations. Fox is, after all, the network of death
panels, terrorist fist jabs, birtherism, anchor babies, victory mosques,
wars on Christmas and Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi. It's not just that
it is the chief global distributor of unfact and untruth but that it
distributes unfact and untruth with a bluster, an arrogance, a
gonad-grabbing swagger, that implicitly and intentionally dares you to
believe fact and truth matter.
Many of us have gotten used to
this. We don't even bother to protest Fox being Fox. Might as well
protest a sewer for stinking.
But the French and the British,
being French and British, see it differently. And that's what produced
the scenario that recently floored many of us.
There was Fox,
doing what Fox does, in this case hosting one Steve Emerson, a supposed
expert on Islamic extremist terrorism, who spoke about so-called "no
go" zones in Europe - i.e., areas of Germany, Sweden, France and Great
Britain - where non-Muslims are banned, the government has no control
and sharia law is in effect. Naturally, Fox did not question this
outrageous assertion - in fact, it repeated it throughout the week - and
most of us, long ago benumbed by the network's serial mendacities, did
not challenge Fox.
Then, there erupted from Europe the
jarring sound of a continent laughing. British Prime Minister David
Cameron called Emerson an "idiot." A French program in the mold of "The
Daily Show" sent correspondents - in helmets! - to interview people
peaceably sipping coffee in the no-go zones. Twitter went medieval on
Fox's backside. And the mayor of Paris threatened to sue.
Last week, Fox did something Fox almost never does. It apologized. Indeed, it apologized profusely, multiple times, on air.
The most important takeaway here is not the admittedly startling
news that Fox, contrary to all indications, is capable of shame. Rather,
it is what the European response tells us about ourselves and our
waning capacity for moral indignation with this sort of garbage.
It's amazing, the things you can get used to, that can come to seem
normal. In America, it has come to seem normal that a major news
organization functions as the propaganda arm of an extremist political
ideology, that it spews a constant stream of racism, sexism, homophobia,
Islamophobia, paranoia and manufactured outrage, and that it does so
with brazen disregard for what is factual, what is right, what is fair,
what is balanced - virtues that are supposed to be the sine qua non of
anything calling itself a newsroom.
If you live with
aberrance long enough, you can forget it's aberrance. You can forget
that facts matter, that logic is important, that science is critical,
that he who speaks claptrap loudly still speaks claptrap - and that
claptrap has no place in reasoned and informed debate. Sometimes, it
takes someone from outside to hold up a mirror and allow you to see more
clearly what you have grown accustomed to.
This is what the French and the British did for America last week.
For that, Fox owed them an apology. But serious people owe them thanks.
ABOUT THE WRITER
Leonard Pitts Jr., winner of the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for
commentary, is a columnist for the Miami Herald, 3511 N.W. 91 Avenue,
Doral, Fla. 33172. Readers may write to him via email at
lpitts@miamiherald.com.
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