She wasn't all that passive.

She didnt Factor his ass

Is it really an appeal to authority if you're answering allegations that you're not a scholar with your scholarly credentials though?

The most insidious thing about FOX News is that, by rights, every one of these fuckers knows what a "scholarly argument" is. Many of them are alumni of some of the best schools in the world with impressive academic and professional credentials. But whether for money or power or celebrity, they decided the best use of their talents would be to put on a kabuki performance of a dumb person.

That's what makes people like O'Reilly so infuriating. He's a fucking Harvard graduate whose entire debating style is making "PSCHAW" grunts 148 different ways.

Citing your academic credentials when someone accuses you of being a Muslim spy is an argument from authority, and having a religion while studying religion invalidates your historical research.

I'm just making sure that's what you said.

Yeah, you can almost see her brain flailing around desperately trying to justify this "story" as anything but bigoted sensationalism.

The part where he just accuses her outright of not having read the book.

"You're putting yourself out there as....I don't know, a scholar or something....but why not get an outside observer to write this book instead? Why couldn't this be written by some sort of paradoxical being that exists in a state of quantum flux that at once has never heard of any religion yet is an expert in religion?"

I feel like if you were married to this woman, this would be the style in which absolutely everything was discussed. A wholly unrelated farce of a conversation, doggedly driven toward a single desired outcome, into which you need only play your part.

I admire his restraint, actually. When she said "Debate," I really wanted him to reply with, "Debate? Don't flatter yourself, darling. People do RESEARCH before a debate."

I think you're confusing debate with passive aggression.

Compare with bobby jindal.

I'm sure he doesn't believe god actually wrote a book, or gave prophecies to people who did write a book. But you'd think knowing the comprehensive history of all the horrible things done in the name of islam would distance you further. I don't know. All I know is that Democrat with a PhD in Reagan was the best song the minutemen didn't make.

He wrote the book based on process of elimination.

If he wrote a book critical of Islam, he'd be blown up.

If he wrote a book critical of Judaism, it would be unpublishable in the West.

And who really cares about the Buddists? All they do is help people and try to diminish suffering, so they are of no value or interest to anyone.

Hence, Jesus.

The Neo-American Church and the Church of Secular Humanism are the only acceptable religions.

I mean the Art Kleps NAC obviously, not that other one.

The idea that there was no historical Jesus is pseudo-intellectual claptrap. Virtually everyone who's researched religion agrees there was a Jesus.