The NY Times has a Bee in its bonnet
The New York Time has accused the right-wing humor site Babylon Bee of having “trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire.”
Ha ha ha NY Times; that’s a good one. A real knee-slapper!
Oh, you say you’re not trying to be funny? That wasn’t a joke? That’s considered serious analysis these days at the Times.
Actually, though, it’s the NY Times that traffics in leftist propaganda under the guise of objective news. “Misinformation” is the Times’ middle name – including this misinformation about the Babylon Bee.
Apparently, the Bee is considering suing the Times.
Leftists hate satire because their words and positions are indistinguishable from satire.
The Babylon Bee, which is wonderfully amusing, has engendered the wrath of countless humorless leftists, and it should perhaps consider using “progressive” tactics against its enemies. Seth Dillon, like Andrew Torba of Gab (also viciously hated by the left), is Christian, and should accuse his critics of the kind of religious discriminatory animus which would surely be proclaimed were either one of these two entrepreneurs a Muslim, for example. The strategy might not succeed, but at least his opponents would be compelled to defend themselves against the charge of bigotry.
Ridicule of the left, is now misinformation according to the left?
Of course it is.
“Why it is selfish, disrespectful, invidious, revisionist, incites division , and lacks a social conscience and committment to self-sacrificial inclusion and your voluntary extinction.
Your laughter is dehumanizing Violence perpetrated agsinst the voices defending the weak, the victim, and the powerless!”
Yeah right …
I’m tired of the mentally ill. They run our politics, subvert our institutions, assault our sensibilities and persons and shit in our streets. They manufacture chaos and grief inside themselves and spread it wherever they travel.
They are inhabited by demons of their own creation – though on principle I would not absolutely rule out other possibilities – which they are determined we must bend knee to serve and adore.
You cannot have functioning human relationships in such an environment, much less tranquility and productivity.
DNW:
Dostoevsky’s novel The Possessed, which I read in college, was actually called Demons or The Devils if the title had been translated more accurately. See this:
I think one of the reasons I never became a leftist was because of that college course in Russian Intellectual History.
@ Neo,
I’m probably due to reevaluate “Russian literature”
In H.S and college I found it so relentlessly downbeat and hopeless in tone – plus I could not remember the names – I simply walked away.
They should have given them names like Breckenridge, Clay, Wilkinson and so forth … LOL
My own experience of Russian Literature consists of reading Crime and Punishment and trying to read War and Peace. The former seemed that it would have been enjoyable with a better interpreter and the latter I gave up on when after three hundred pages I still found myself consulting the character list and realizing there were only about two on there I gave a damn about.
Re: Russian lit…
Avoid the Constance Garnett translations. For a time she was the best in the West, and bless her for that, but today there are better.
For Tolstoy, Rosemary Edmonds was my breakthrough. Garnett was too clunky.
DNW:
Two tips for reading Russian lit. The first is to learn the rules for Russian naming. The second is that whenever a character is first mentioned, write down who that person is, either with some sort of family tree, or chart, or list. Add the person’s secondary names as you go along You’ll be glad you did.
I’ve enjoyed Powerline’s gradual move from some seriousness to outright ridicule for the New York Times. Today:
___________________________________________
The New York Times, which these days is the Democratic Party’s goon squad, is trying to drive the Babylon Bee out of existence.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/03/thats-not-funny-2.php
Add the person’s secondary names as you go along You’ll be glad you did. –neo
Absolutely. I took some Russian in college and still got in trouble. For example, “Alyosha” (“The Brothers Karamazov”) is a diminutive for Alexei, but not the only one:
_________________________________________
His full name is given as Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov and he is also referred to as Alyosha, Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyoshechka, Alexeichik, Lyosha, and Lyoshenka.
–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alyosha_Karamazov
_________________________________________
Then there are the Russian Verbs of Motion…
The Russians are mad, mad, I tell you. But what literature!
Very interesting link, and obviously good information to know. In the abstract and from an historical perspective.
Applying it however, looks too much like genealogy work to me … My head is still swimming from trying to sort through 6 generations of males who seem to have been limited to the names “John” and “William”, usually both in combination obverse or reverse, with a very occasional Charles or George thrown in as a kind of desperately needed landmark out of the maze.
As to the Russians, I have always had a mild if distant sympathy for them; and especially was attracted to the once glimmering but ultimately dashed hopes offered by the psychological oases [in the student study sense] of Great Kiev, or the Republic of Novgorod.
But somehow the sly poisoners always seemed to triumph.
DNW:
Russian lit is daunting. I didn’t make it through Dostoevsky, but Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” and “War and Peace” were quite readable, even without notes. I just fell in love with the characters.
Tolstoy’s brilliant trick was to write short, focused chapters — only four or five pages apiece. Of course, there are … a lot of them.
(Tip: Skip the “War and Peace” chapters on the theory of warfare. Likewise, the whaling chapters in “Moby Dick.”)
Leftists hate to be made fun of. They’re serious, you know, important people. Laughing at them is offensive.
I saw, in the Bee, a picture of Air Force One with a handicapped parking sticker in the front window. Hilarious!
Liberals/progressives/lefties do NOT like being laughed at. It’s not only OK, but even obligatory to poke fun at the drooling, illiterate, cave-dwelling deplorables of the sloping foreheads. But for deplorables to poke fun at their betters is verboten. Turnabout is NOT fair play. As liberals/progressives/lefties should be worshipped, it is slander to laugh at them.
Liberals/progressives/lefties are VERY serious. They are the GOOD PEOPLE combating the evil fight wingers. As a Gilbert & Sullivan fan, I’ll change the lyrics of Arthur Sullivan’s “Onward Christian Soldiers” to “Onward liberal soldiers, Marching as to war, With Inclusion and Social Justice marching on before. ”
Just like my NYC relative who had no hesitation in commenting about Texas and its recent blackout, but got up in arms if a Texan had the effrontery to comment about Mayor Warren Wilhelm- excuse me, Mayor Bill DeBlasio. Very strange that a Texan should know something about NYC, she said.
“As liberals/progressives/lefties should be worshipped, it is slander to laugh at them.”
That’s one theory for why “the left can’t meme.”
I think they just don’t understand their own ideas, or the ideas of others, very well, so they have difficulty understanding satire, jokes, and memes, or coming up with their own.
“Leftists hate satire because their words and positions are indistinguishable from satire.” – Esther
That’s why the Babylon folks started the website Not the Bee.
My favorite part of the story is when the Times reminds us that Snopes felt called upon to do a fact check of the Washing Machine Purchased by the Media to Spin the News.
Anyone who has to be told that is satire should not be voting.
“My head is still swimming from trying to sort through 6 generations of males who seem to have been limited to the names “John” and “William”, usually both in combination obverse or reverse, with a very occasional Charles or George thrown in as a kind of desperately needed landmark out of the maze.” – DNW
That’s a lot like the problem for us folks doing Welsh genealogy. Everyone is named Evan Richards, Richard Evans, John Thomas, Thomas Hughes, Hugh Evans — well, as one researcher put it, after the English Church made them give up the traditional Welsh patronymics, “They only had 30 baptized names among them!”
Not that Rhys ap Huw ap Rhys ap Iwan ap Huw makes the situation any better, but at least there is a sequence to it.
I had the opportunity to walk through a small church yard in Wales and spotted a headstone with a friend’s name on it, so I took photograph of it just as a joke to show him when we got home. Then I saw another, and another, and … I ended up with at least 15 pictures of memorials with the exact same name.
Trivia note: “Price” is a Welsh surname now, but it was taken from “ap Rhys.” There are other similar derivations.
Dostoevsky is the absolute genius of the soul depths, and “The Demons” (also the Italian title is “I Demoni”) is a masterpiece of introspection into the spiritual malady which is revolutionary ideology: the way he’s able to capture the essence of the leftist ideologue is preternatural and it’s remarkable that such human characters remain so precisely identifiable after 150 years (the old narcissist Verkhovensky!).
Dostoevsky quotes the 5th chapter of the gospel of Mark, where the devils enter a herd of pigs: “about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.” There is no better image for a sick ideology that drives a multitude of people to madness and utter destruction, inexorably; is it an image or really a demonic possession?
There’s so much biased crap in this, that it’s just ridiculously wrong to the point of lying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/19/technology/political-cartoonists-facebook-satire-irony.html
}}} One cartoon in December took aim at the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group.
Of course the PBs are a “far-right extremist group”…. there’s no other kind, whatsoever.
And as to “The Nib” ‘toon’, being referred to, it was itself a pretty much slanderous collection of idiocy, with no connection to reality on any level. AND it wasn’t remotely funny.
The other cartoon which was referred to was also a ridiculous misrepresentation of
1 — Typical Shooters, who consistently tend to be liberals… as nazis. (Waaait a minute, maybe he’s right!)
2 — Antifa as “brave souls” willing to work to stop shooters (has anyone in antifa ever attacked anyone armed with a weapon? Well, maybe in Oregon, but they’ve whined about that ever since…
}}} In January, Facebook barred Mr. Trump from posting on its site altogether after he incited a crowd that stormed the U.S. Capitol.
An obviously false statement promoted as fact. The crowd was marching and into the Capitol a half-hour before Trump finished his speech. It’s over a half-hour walk from the speech location to the Capitol. Clearly, the speech had little, if any, effect on those involved in the march.
Furthermore, when he found out about it, his speaking was a call for those in the Capitol to stop, and to stand down… which was silenced by the merdia, both broadcast and social.
Then there’s another toon which was “taken down”:
A weekly installment of the comic strip “Tom the Dancing Bug” by cartoonist Ruben Bolling, which is syndicated by Andrews McMeel Syndication and ran on the Nib, was taken down by Facebook.Credit…
Sooooo, was it possibly taken down for DMCA violation? This is unclear. It’s either a badly constructed comment, or it’s ignoring an obvious question. Bad reporting, either way.
}}} After Russians manipulated the platform before the 2016 presidential election by spreading inflammatory posts, the company recruited thousands of third-party moderators to prevent a recurrence.
Yeah, and that abuse of the social merdia systems to disappear legitimate content (e.g., Biden’s LaptopGate), which clearly had a notable effect on the election? Any chance of efforts to prevent a recurrence of THAT? Nahhh, don’t think so.
}}} removed vaccine misinformation
More importantly, removed vaccine INFORMATION from legitimate professionals which “just happened” to disagree with the Official Position of the Government. Any chance of efforts to prevent a recurrence of THAT? Nahhh, don’t think so.
}}} [Updated March 22, 2021: The Babylon Bee, a right-leaning satirical site, has feuded with Facebook and the fact-checking site Snopes over whether the site published misinformation or satire.
“Fueded”? No. The Bee has made fun over the incapacity of both FB **and** Snopes to recognize OBVIOUS Satire.
A typically and clearly absurd headline such as (made up, not actual Bee headline):
“Joe Biden Trips over Curious George banana peels on airplane stairway”
would EASILY treated as though it was intended to be factual, and get a “Mostly Fake” rating from Snopes and Politifact… with the explanation (in case you were unaware) that Curious George is a fictional character and didn’t drop any banana peels on the plane.
}}} The cartoon was a condemnation of how Mr. Trump had fed his supporters violent speech and hateful messaging, Mr. Zyglis said.
As in other spots, supporting — by repetition — someone blatantly lying regarding the actions and speech of others.
}}} “Those of us speaking truth to power are being caught in the net intended to capture hate speech,” Mr. Zyglis said.
Yeah, all those people hung at the gallows for speaking out against Trump… Zyglis was speaking “truth to power” alright.
Someone needs to tell these imbeciles what the term “Speaking Truth to Power” actually means. Hint: It’s not saying bad things about those in power, when those in power are constrained from actually responding. Speaking “Truth to Power” would be standing in Tiananmen Square, with two pictures, one of Xi, and one of Winnie the Pooh. Standing outside the White House a year ago, with a “Trump Sucks!” placard… no, not the same level of risk.
}}} If he accumulates more strikes, his page could be erased, something that Mr. Bors said would cut 60 percent of his readership.
What, you mean the way the Bee has been erased from FB? Because when I take a link I find amusing and post it up, no one else even sees it. Not even “friends”.
The Bee is one of those things which has been erased from FB, without cause. They are clearly satire, and the fact that they often skewer the Left is irrelevant.
FB, by eliminating them, is clearly exercising direct publishing control over content, which is a direct violation of the very reason they have “immunity” as “neutral carriers”.
If you’re deciding who can and cannot speak on your platform (the sole exclusion being clearly and unquestionably illegal speech, aka, direct threats of violence or open attempts at commercial fraud) then you are acting as a publisher, not as a neutral carrier.
}}} Mr. Bors said he had also heard from the Proud Boys. A group of them recently organized on the messaging chat app Telegram to mass-report his critical cartoons to Facebook for violating the site’s community standards, he said.
1 — Note that he’s making a claim, not an assertion of fact, but it’s presented AS THOUGH it were an assertion of fact.
2 — As though the same had not happened — repeatedly — for people on the right by groups on the left, for far less blatant violations of supposed “community standards”.
The solution to the problem is clear: Make FB stop making ham-handed, utterly incompetent attempts to police content for anything except glaring illegal speech.
Force FB to return to its primary reason for existence, acting as a neutral carrier, like the phone company, which makes no effort to stop thieves, murderers, and con artists from using the phone to further their illegal efforts. It’s not practical on any level, without massive errors and massive intrusion into arenas they have no business intruding into.
It’s really THAT simple.