Monday, January 31

Does geography have a liberal bias?

We begin with Media Matters:


Wait for it...

Wait for it...

And...

Now, far be it for me to critique the general public's knowledge of geography. When I was in high school, I had Europe memorized and now I can't remember what's where because a good chunk of it as changed. So if Fox News is incapable of remember where Egypt is, it's probably because of the recent changes in the area that have caused confusion.

We can all understand that, right?

Except that Egypt's existed for thousands and thousands of years.

I know Fox doesn't care for all that learnin' stuff that well, so I'm going to explain things from the "Egyptian History! For Kids! site.

First, they say:

Because it is surrounded by deserts like the Land of Oz, Egypt is pretty hard to invade. So a lot of the time Egypt was at peace. But not all the time....The Egyptians also sometimes fought off invasions from the Libyans to their west, or from the Nubians to their south (and sometimes they lost to these invaders too). Around 1700 BC, there was a big invasion of Hyksos from the north.

1700 BC... that's like... lots and lots of years ago. Probably even before I was born.

So a little more about Egypt:

As in the rest of Africa...

Dude. Egypt's in Africa?. When the &*%@ did that happen?

Of course, as you've now probably figured out, that is not, in fact, Egypt that's labeled as Egypt. Egypt would be that unlabeled part that's part of Africa, just to the left of (literally, not figuratively) Syria and Jordan. The part marked as Egypt?

That's just an obscure little country no one would know about called... Iraq.

For what it's worth-- I don't think this is part of some fiendish plot of some sort on the part of Fox to push some talking point or another. I think they've simply become so fact-averse that they don't bother checking. I'm guessing this was done by an Intern (or, possibly, Tom Delay in some prison furlough program) and no one paid enough attention to actually double-check anything. Which, I believe, illustrates the Fox News motto:



F*$! it, we'll do it live!