The gloriously unhinged progressive pushback against the Babylon Bee



By Stephen Daisley - Posted at Spectator USA:

The humor may or may not be to your taste but it’s hardly about to bring the republic crashing down in a slurry of ignorance.
Going viral is ordinarily pay-dirt for a small website: new readers, more subscribers, and a bigger slice of that sweet, sweet Google Ads revenue pie. Unfortunately for satirical Christian news-site the Babylon Bee, it went viral in the wrong way: it made fun of Democrats. Last week, its spoof story ‘Democrats Call For Flags To Be Flown At Half-Mast To Grieve Death Of Soleimani‘ attracted 750,000 shares on social media. The headline and the body of the text are patently absurd and obviously satirical. Of course Democrats didn’t call for the flag to be flown at half-mast for Soleimani. It’s not like he was Osama bin Laden or anything.

Donie O’Sullivan, who covers ‘disinformation, politics and technology’ for CNN, saw darker forces at work. He intoned: ‘To put this in perspective, this is the same number of engagements the top NY Times and CNN stories on Facebook had over the past week. A lot of people sharing this “satirical” story on Facebook don’t know it is satire.’

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