Barbie and Ken talk terrorism…
When Fox & Friends co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck recently interviewed Nolan Peterson, a former US Air Force pilot, on the Islamization of French society, the obviously extremely intelligent Mr. Peterson (not to be confused with Steven Emerson, the Fox News terrorism “expert” British Prime Minister charitably called a “complete idiot”) claimed that there were “741 no-go zones throughout France” under de facto Islamist control.
Not “700 plus” or “around 750” “no-go” zones, but exactly 741 “no-go” zones. Surely a dude this specific came armed with the knowledge to drop on the Fox New viewers. Peterson described Paris as “pretty scary,” comparing the City of Light to Afghanistan, Iraq and Kashmir and adding that he’s seen “young men wearing Osama Bin Laden t-shirts in a hookah shop.”
Sounds like something some old fart watching Fox News who has never been that far beyond the confines of his hometown would think is true, so… hey, why not? It’s not like it’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s job to know what he’s talking about, is it? She’s just supposed to nod with a furrowed brow, try to look serious and read from a teleprompter. She barely understands what she’s saying half the time, let alone the “experts” she interviews, so cut her some slack.
This is the face of a man who definitely knows what he’s talking about. You can tell by his smirk.
The segment is the quintessence of Fox News: False (i.e intellectually useless) information propagated by two people, one who has no idea what he’s talking about and a second who has no idea what he’s talking about either, producing together an incoherent news segment for an audience who has no idea if what they’re hearing is even true or not, but who accept it as true because it sounds like something they already believe.
When Yann Barthès, host of the French show Le Petit Journal saw the Fox News segment he sent his courageous producers, dressed in full combat gear to some of the 741 “no-go” zones to survey the situation with some pretty nonplussed man-on-the-street interviews.
Snopes investigated the claim of these supposed Islamist “no-go” zones only to find that the brain trust at Fox News mistranslated “zones urbaines sensibles” (ZUS), which is basically the equivalent French term for “urban renewal zones” and turned it into something it wasn’t…
Fox News vs. reality. Amusing yes, but ultimately it’s reality itself that ends up diminished…
Peterson apologized to the entire country of France for his smirky Fox News appearance in an open letter.
Via Daily Kos