by We all know Fox News is the mouthpiece of the Republican party — Fox News hates Obama and they hate a freedom loving America — but this week, in the span of two days over two hours, we saw a bright line drawn between Good Americans and Bad Muslims on two entertainment shows broadcast by Fox television — the entertainment arm of Fox News. On the season finale of last night’s “Lie to Me” the bad guys were Muslims blowing up a bus and a mall.
On “24” — the Muslims on Monday were the bad guys again, and this time
they had a biological bomb — but they weren’t really the bad guys because they were being framed by bad White Guys — but, wait, the Muslims still looked suspiciously stereotypically radical and angry and really sweaty and they just looked guilty and one Muslim character held up the bio bomb in a crowded train station to invoke the old homily, by shouting at a police officer, “I have a bomb!”
The Muslim then ran up the stairs with the bomb as scores of terrified people scattered in fear and the Muslim fell into the loving arms of Kiefer Sutherland — who thanked him for his duty by playing the stereotypical role of a Muslim
terrorist — while everyone else in the city was made acutely aware of being attacked by a Muslim radical.
When Fox objectifies an entire people based solely on their religious beliefs and when Fox mocks them and paints them all as bad and foreign and dangerous just because they are different from us just so Fox can make a profit and provide a political shiv into their broadcast entertainment schedule, we — as faithful and moral viewers of that unsubtle propaganda — need to step away from the television and wonder why Fox is so set upon making Muslims the direct target of their hatred and despise.
Is Fox mocking Muslims to set a political agenda in a creative venue for a sly subconscious tickling of our terroristic fantasies?
Or is Fox trying to blur the line between entertainment and reality and news by hodgepodging all the bogeyman stereotypes about Muslims into a melting pot that congeals into a single, threatening, facade of a dagger — in the form of a star and a crescent — ready to stab into the fatted, fleshy, heart of innocent Americans everywhere?
What both “Lie to Me” and “24” have done this year to Muslims is obnoxious and unfortunate — and I hope the Muslim community will stand up against Fox’s ongoing and purposeful and cruel coloring of their religion for public profit.
The rest of us need to decry Fox’s open, jingoistic, propaganda war against Muslim nations via their family entertainment schedule.
Time to make some Muslim based sitcoms and dramedies, perhaps. Maybe something like 90210 but with a bit of humour to it. Eastenders.
Now that’s a million dollar idea, Gordon!
I’d also like to see an American terrorist cell on TV based on Native American revenge for all the land and rights that were stolen from them in the original terroristic threat on our soil.
This is an interesting trend David, in Indian mainstream movie industry – all the terrorists are portrayed as Pakistani Muslims; as if they are the only one to be blamed. I am not sure about Pakistani movie industry, may be all terrorists in their movie are Indians…
If you could find out about Pakistani movie villains, Katha, that would be an important topic to discuss! We only enemize what we fear; so those we choose to set against us in our cultural entertainment plays directly into our subconscious terms of terror.