Right-wing megachurch The Babylon Bee is currently the middle of quite a public feud with fact-checking site Snopes over criticism of alleged comedic material the church published on its website recently. In an article that The Bee insists is supposed to be comedy,
…published an article titled, “Georgia Lawmaker Claims Chick-Fil-A Employee Told Her To Go Back To Her Country, Later Clarifies He Actually Said ‘My Pleasure.’” It was presumably meant as a parody of a viral Facebook post from July, in which Erica Thomas, a Georgia state representative, said a white man in a grocery store told her to “go back” to where she came from. According to the New York Times, the accused man disputed the Thomas’ story, identifying himself as a Democrat—which sparked outrage on the right…(Jezebel)
At the heart of the matter? The fact that Snopes took a slight editorial jab at The Bee for what they called “fanning the flames” of racial animus in the country with their piece on Thomas.
The Snopes piece, which has since been updated, originally included a dig of a sub-hed, critiquing the Bee’s lame attempt at humor. “We’re not sure if fanning the flames of controversy and muddying the details of a news story classify an article as ‘satire,’”it read according to The New York Times, adding that the piece was likely written“in an apparent attempt to maximize the online indignation.” Naturally, the Babylon Bee folk took offense at the characterization of their humor as unfunny and rude.
Part of The Babylon Bee’s public gripe with Snopes has been their insistence that mainstream and left-wing satire isn’t as heavily fact-checked. However, a very cursory look at Snopes’ archive finds plenty of stories that were published on left-leaning or mainstream sites that were fact-checked. A piece about right-wing firebrand and contributing racist Tommy Labotomy being upset about casting for a live-action Little Mermaid casting decision published by the award never-winning satirist James Schlarmann — a well known libtard cuck socialist baby killer — was fact-checked by Snopes just a couple of weeks ago. All told, close to a dozen of Schlarmann’s pieces have been fact-checked by not just Snopes, but several other outlets from time to time.
In our ongoing efforts to fact check the whiners about fact checking, we decided to do some scientific-ish research and determine if The Babylon Bee are being whiny bitches about this whole thing. Let’s go to the Pros and Cons!
PROS:
1. Bee’s Gripe: Calling Non-Jokes and Racist Tropes Something Besides The Best and Most Trenchant Satire Ever
The article that started The Bab Bee’s meltdown mode didn’t have very many jokes or punchlines. The headline itself was wordy, and basically just painted Thomas, a black woman, as inept and stupid. These are all very basic racist tropes. The setting for the story was also moved from the place where the real confrontation took place — a grocery store — and into a restaurant that seres fried chicken, given Thomas’ skin color, it would seem that intentionally or not, another racist trope in the setting of the story was also deployed. Finally, in the Bee piece, the person who plays opposite the “comically”/racist trope-ly caricature of Thomas was portrayed as a wholly sympathetic and “good” person, whereas it’s still unclear exactly what the man in the real story actually said to thomas.
We rate the Snopes criticism that the Bee story seems race-bait-tastic as TRUE.
2. Lots of Left-Wing Sites Do Get Fact-Checked
We know the idea of a group that associates with the Religious Right having a bit of a martyr complex is about as surprising as getting a shock when you rub your genitals on an exposed outlet, but it still bears repeating at least once more: Snopes does not just fact-check The Babylon Bee or even conservative alleged satire. It is the height of whiny bitch-ness to complain you are being singled out when it is very apparent you ain’t special and others have been treated very similarly.
3. No Comedy is For Every Audience
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Comedy is subjective. Maybe The Babylon Bee could afford to lighten up. Or, perhaps, they thought they’d become a giant satirical media outlet and never have their content critiqued or judged. Which would be the most hilarious thing ever associated with The Babylon Bee, ironically enough. Having a thicker skin would be better suited for comedians, one would thing.
CONS:
No cons identified.
CONCLUSION:
The fact that they’ve started an unrelenting media blitz against Snopes that essentially boils down to being criticized seems to indicate at least some trace amounts of whiny bitch. When added to the fact that, contrary to what The Bee says, there are plenty of left-wing and mainstream satire articles that are and have been fact-checked. It would seem self-evident that what gets an article put on fact checker radars is the virality of a piece, not the political ideology of the author. With all of these factors under consideration, we can render our fact check on the issue at hand.
Is The Babylon Bee Being a Whiny Little Bitch?
Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook, Spotify, and Instagram, but not Twitter because they have a definition of hate speech that includes “calling Ann Coulter the C-word.”
James’ newest satirical compilation is out now and available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and soon at WalMart.com.
