Don't go there

Shortly after the Islamic terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket in Paris early this month, those whacky guys at Fox News extruded a huge steaming pile and jumped straight into it. Since then, the hits just keep on coming.

Some self-styled “terror expert” named Steve Emerson on Fox proclaimed that Western Europe, and particularly the UK, is swamped with Muslims, and that there are many “no-go” areas within these countries, places where non-Muslims fear to tread.

Among these he named Birmingham as being so “totally Muslim” that no one else will even enter the environs.

Well, the Twitterverse lit up like a Grateful Dead concert with the hashtag #FoxNewsFacts. The tweets were flying so fast and thick it was like machine gun fire on Omaha Beach. Like:

(I also read that they'd changed the name to Birming, on account of ham isn't Halal.)

(Cleverly combining the cat meme with the #FoxNewsFacts hashtag.)

I mean—you get the drift, right?

After my first beverage snort onto the keyboard I stayed away from liquids and just laughed until tears came. I found about six new people to follow in just a couple of hours.

Even British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is somewhere in the Attila the Hun range of the political spectrum (If Attila wore Savile Row) got it right. “This guy’s clearly a complete idiot.”

Cameron was educated at Eton College and Oxford University (Brasenose College). He has mastered the use of language.

Eventually Emerson apologized (although I don’t believe the phrase “talking out my ass” was used), but clearly their target audience lapped up the fear mongering like frat boys at an open bar. And clearly he's still clueless about Birmingham:

(Also, other Foxoid “experts” named several European cities as being no-go zones. The mayor of one of them, Paris, has announced her intention to sue the network, which should be interesting.)

But wait—there’s more. Because on Monday, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (right up there with the Attila crowd, though not as well-spoken as Cameron) flapped his hands about at a speech at a British think tank and re-declared that Europe is rife with Muslim-dominated enclaves where Christians fear to tread, including parts of London.

When asked for clarification on where, exactly, these no-go areas were, Jindal got a little vague, brusquely insisting that he’s talked with people (you know—people) who assured him that there are parts of London where women don’t want to walk alone.

Well, yes indeed there are. And parts of Los Angeles and parts of Buenos Aires and parts of Brooklyn and parts of Seoul that I don’t really want to walk around alone in. But my reluctance has nothing to do with the religious or even necessarily the ethnic makeup of those areas. They’re really mean streets and I’m not equipped to deal with them. (Like I wouldn’t want to walk the halls of JPMorgan Chase, one of the most alien and alienating environments I can think of.)

Jindal—like Fox—is unapologetic. They operate on the well-established principle that if you make a lie big enough and repeat it often enough, it eventually becomes the truth.

Meanwhile, plan on staying upwind of them. That pile is still steaming.