A “brilliant,” “genius,” “eccentric,” “very funny” English professor with a new book about parents screwing up their kids by shrinking their imaginations stretches the interviewers’ imaginations on Fox & Friends Black Friday.
Juliet Huddy: “It’s kinda tough love for parents in a way.”
Anthony Esolen: “A finger in the eye for most of what we do to children these days.”
Rather than presenting his case straight, Dr. Esolen employed sarcasm, throwing off the bewildered anchors who failed to catch his drift.
We do want to destroy the imaginations of our children, otherwise our economy would collapse and people would stop buying things they don’t need and don’t really even enjoy.”
You can’t let your kid be outside because a single blade of grass out there is a more wondrous object than anything that the kid will see on a screen in a month’s time of viewing television and video games. So absolutely, you’ve got to keep them indoors.
We have done a job on fairy tales in our schools the last several years. You can’t have fairy tales because they are based on what every culture really knows about human beings – it’s archetypal, it’s natural human knowledge.
And we don’t want that because that really taps in the imagination. And so instead we have to replace it with stories about who ever happens to be politically favored at the moment.
Two minutes in, Esolen experiences a Fox & Friends finger in the eye as a befuddled Huddy and an stupefied Clayton Morris awkwardly bailed:
Mediate muses the pair may have believed they were being “punked” in an “amazingly bizarre interview.”
UK Daily Mail: The academic frequently uses sarcasm in his work as a way of making a point, implying the show’s producers had not paid much attention to his style before asking him to appear.
Prof. Esolen is known for his jokes. Advises one student: “If you’re sensitive and from New Jersey don’t take his class.”