04 January 2010

E-mail to Fox News re Brit Hume's outrageous religious commentary on l'affaire Tiger woods

I exaggerated my real degree of offense a bit, perhaps, in this e-mail to Fox News Sunday regarding the silly and stupid, as well as hateful and bigoted, remarks of Brit Hume urging Buddhist Tiger Woods to convert to Christianity. In reality, I think the man's an idiot and I give his opinions essentially no weight, so it's hard to be genuinely offended by anything he says. What is offensive is that this all-propaganda-all-the-time network exists at all and, its existence a fact, that it gives this blowhard air time. Here is the clip (with Andrew Sullivan's take), for those interested.

As a Buddhist, I was deeply shocked and offended by the increasingly incoherent Brit Hume's outrageous denigration of Buddhism and his shameless proselytizing of his religion, in connection with the essentially trivial and greatly over-emphasized Tiger Woods affair, on the most recent airing of Fox News Sunday.

Opinion is one thing, and is appropriate on an opinion show like
Fox News Sunday, although in my view no opinions regarding Mr. Woods's supposed need for redemption are appropriate or necessary and time spent on this affair on air is time wasted that could be better put to much more pressing matters. But in any case, in this context or any other, to dismiss and openly disrespect one of the world's oldest and most perennial religions in this manner is simply unacceptable, and well beyond the scope of reasonable on-air discourse. Mr. Hume should either apologize on air or be fired. Buddhists are obviously a minority in America, but the notion that this kind of open disregard and denigration is acceptable must be put to rest firmly and immediately.

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