Why I love humor, the Babylon Bee, and Snopes

In our crazy world of extreme echo-chamber paranoia, the Babylon Bee is my online source of satire sanity. Check out these article titles (better if you go to their site to see the pictures).

•  Nation Torn Between Watching Democratic Debates, Sticking Face In Blender.
• Promising New Prospect Lebronna James Expected To Dominate WNBA
• Trump Proves He’s Not A Racist By Showing His Rejection Letter From The KKK
• Gideons Announce Daring Plan To Sneak Bibles Into Progressive Churches
• Polar Bear Apologizes For Being White
• Ginsburg: “I Am Mentally Fit Enough To Serve Through The End Of President Eisenhower’s Term.”

And it only gets better thanks to Snopes, the “definitive fact-checking site and reference source…”

I like Snopes, have used it a lot, and I don’t think they are part of some left-wing conspiracy to remove all source of humor and sanity from the interweb, but what do I know? This time they took themselves, and the Babylon Bee, too seriously. Snopes was a Facebook partner last year when they had Facebook slap Babylon Bee with a warning for posting this fake news article. See if you think this is fake news or satire. Ready?

• “CNN Purchases Industrial-Sized Washing Machine To Spin News Before Publication”,

Really? In addition, the warning threatened the Babylon Bee with limitations and demonetization. Later Facebook acknowledged the mistake saying the piece “should not have been rated false in our system.” Calling that article fake news rather than satire is itself fake news. This year they have been going after even more Babylon Bee articles. Things got ugly. How do you out-Snopes Snopes?

The Babylon Bee had an idea. The top of their home page now says,

• “Fake news you can trust, delivered straight to your inbox.”

Better yet, BuzzFeed just reported the top-performing article on Facebook related to the topic, “democratic debate” just before the last debate was an article by The The Babylon Bee.

The title?

• “Snopes Issues Pre-Approval Of All Statements Made During Tonight’s Democratic Debate”

And the article is even better:

Snopes Issues Pre-Approval Of All Statements Made During Tonight’s Democratic DebateU.S.—With the Democratic primary debates in full swing, many fact-checking websites are preparing to review candidates’ statements for accuracy. Thankfully, Snopes, the most unbiased fact-checking website ever, has found a way to expedite their evaluation process.

 Since their original founding in 1957 by the KGB, Snopes has gained a reputation for objectively reporting what someone’s secret motivations probably were, and what they probably really meant when they said something. More recently, they have perfected the art of determining whether a satirical article is hilarious, left-leaning comedy or divisive, conservative-leaning fake news.

 As part of their ongoing goal of being able to rush to judgment as quickly as possible, Snopes published a pre-approval of all future statements made by candidates during the Democratic debates. 

 “While we understand there may be some disagreements among progressive candidates on certain issues, we know that nobody who shares our worldview would ever say anything factually untrue,” Snopes explains in their article.

 Snopes also clarified that in the event a candidate does say anything that sounds untrue/conservative, they will automatically conclude that the individual had pure intentions and meant something completely different. As a very last resort, they may change a particular rating to “mixed,” assuming some context was missing.

 At publishing, Snopes had also released a fact-check for all future statements by President Trump, rating them all as “False.”

 Don’t mess with the Bee.