Ah, Fox News. As an American, I apologize to the world for Fox News. (Or should I demand that Australians apologize to us?) An actual news organization, the BBC, reports on a faux pas from yesterday.
An American terrorism commentator has apologised for describing Birmingham as a “Muslim-only city” where non-Muslims “don’t go” during a Fox News interview.
Steven Emerson told the channel that in London “Muslim religious police” beat “anyone who doesn’t dress according to Muslim, religious Muslim attire”.
He later issued an apology for his “terrible error”.
His comments have come in for ridicule, with the hashtag #FoxNewsFacts trending on Twitter.
Ridicule? Can you do that? Someone might misunderstand.
On social media, Mr Emerson has been the butt of jokes, while he has been accused of “speaking nonsense” by people posting on his investigative website.
One Twitter user said: “As someone born and raised in Birmingham, I must admit there was a pressure to read the Kerrang.”
“I was supposed to go to Birmingham last week but I forgot my passport,” said another.
Risky, very risky. People might actually start canceling trips to Birmingham because of these tweets.
The Guardian’s Simon Ricketts on #FoxNewsFacts
I was at home and the video of the Fox News “expert” Steve Emerson had popped up on my Twitter feed and people were rightly expressing their disbelief at what he had said.
I thought it might be funny to counteract the anger with silliness, so I wrote a tweet and stuck the hashtag (#FoxNewsFacts) on it.
Sometimes the best response to such nonsense is satire and mockery, rather than anger and outrage.
It is? I thought responding to nonsense with satire and mockery was racist and colonialist and bad.