Did Fox & Friends Get Punked, Or Was This Just An Amazingly Bizarre Interview?

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A bizarre interview on this morning's edition of Fox & Friends was quickly ended after the guest seemingly baffled the hosts with possibly sarcastic answers that were in direct contradiction to the claims in his book.

Anthony Esolen was brought on the show to discuss his book Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. Co-hosts Clayton Morris and Juliet Huddy introduced it as a book about how modern 'distractions' like television, video games, keeping children indoors too often, and constant parental supervision are 'destroying our children's imagination.'

Asked a relatively straightforward question about the premise of his book, Esolen took to a confusingly sarcastic response, saying: '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.'

The sarcasm(?) continued: '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.'

Huddy tried again, asking Esolen to talk about his point that today's fairy tales are riddled with 'clichés and fads' has destroyed children's imagination.

But, once again, the author's response took an odd turn: '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 archetypical, 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.'

Huddy then cut off Esolen, calling the book a 'great holiday gift,' and ending the interview abruptly.

Watch below, via Fox News:

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• From the clip it didn't seem like he was directing any sarcasm towards the interviewers, he was speaking sarcastically to illustrate his point.

• Fox News punks its viewers every day. Turnabout is fair play.

• I agree Neal, the Title of the book is ten ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child. He obviously was trying to make his point.

• Hey,not everyone is into sarcasm,y'know?

  Especially those who don't understand it.

  *drink*

• Fox & Friends without gorgeous Gretchen Carlson? It just doesn't work.

• FoxNoise screech monkeys were flinging their verbal poo before they had a solid grasp of the topic ' yet again.

  Anthony Esolen is a brilliant professor and writer. Clearly these two professional Fox talkers didn't understand that Esolen often writes in a humorous manner critical of pop culture. They also didn't get his humor talking to him because they or their producers prepping the piece for air didn't read enough of the book or ask Esolen much if anything beforehand either.

  I've heard him speak a couple of times ' he's great. He can take a rather dull subject and with sarcasm and tongue in cheek humor make it interesting enough to hold your attention and make his point.

  FoxNoise clearly got nervous when he said 'political leader of the day' and some producer must have signaled in their ear 'Oh sh*t, he's about to mock republicans' move on, move on!' ' even though Esolen is a diehard conservative and not a political commentator, so he wasn't going to talk about any political person specifically.

  FoxNoise does not 'get' sarcasm and were incredibly rude to abruptly shut him down like that because of their own lack of understanding and comprehension. Idiots.

• He could have been alluding to Obama. The stuff about turning off your tv sets though clearly had them worried.

• Fox & Friends' It just doesn't work. <'- There, I fixed it for you.

• The guy correctly pointed out that education has become politicized by CONSERVATIVES and that interference in the educational process by conservatives has ruined the public schools. Conservatives are eliminating critical thinking skills to keep future voters from questioning the status quo they want to impose on this country.
  Putting garbage into the curricula in the form of religious stupidities, denial of proven & politically inconvenient science knowledge and eliminating the arts to prevent creative thinking and mental development is what conservatives are doing and this guy knows it.

• i see what you did there, you are illustrating how hard it is to understand simple sarcasm by making the obviously sarcastic comment of calling gretchen carlson attractive. i couldn't agree with you more, she truly is one of the falsest,tackiest most unattractive women on television today.