Let’s just jump right in, shall we?
The Babylon Bee is irrefutably the best satire site in the known universe, in my not-so-humble, often-sarcastic (in a “good” way, of course) opinion. Satire is the most difficult kind of comedy to perfect (again, IMNSHO); the closer to the truth and the more prophetic, the funnier, and smarter, satire becomes.
This is precisely why The Bee stands alone at the top.
The Bee was launched on March 1, 2016, and over the last two years, nearly 100 of its “articles” have become reality — veritable fulfilled prophecies, as I said in the headline.
Founder and CEO Seth Dillon explained the Bee’s success to Fox News:
The problem isn’t that our satire is too close to reality, It’s that reality is too close to satire, so our jokes keep coming true.
The Bee maintains a regularly updated list of its pieces that have come true, or at least partially true, some of which appear to have been written by a clairvoyant, due to their uncanny closeness to the real insanity out there — on both the left and the right. Dillon told Fox:
So we have a spreadsheet of nearly 100 jokes now that we’ve tracked. They were fulfilled like prophecies instead of punch lines.
Which will no doubt keep coming, which is good — and bad.
Let me state the obvious, at this point: As is the case for conservative political pundits like yours truly, the crazy-ass state of politics, combined with the bonus of “woke,” and two years of the worst presidency in the history of America, has provided the most target-rich environment for conservatives that this writer has ever seen — by far.
Nonetheless, the Bee picks the real “winners” on a consistent basis. Dillon further explained, with a specific example:
Who would take likability lessons from Hillary Clinton? But then a month later, there’s a real story that [Harris’] staff reached out to Hillary’s staff to make her more likable.
The Bee’s prophetic article, “To Improve Public Perception, Kamala Harris Taking Likability Lessons From Hillary Clinton,” was published in July 2021. A month later, Axios reported that a former Clinton advisor hosted a dinner with prominent Democratic women — including Clinton’s former spokeswoman — to discuss how to defend Vice President Kamala Harris from bad press.
Here’s another:
“We even did one about how Trump had claimed to have done more for Christianity than Jesus himself and that one went crazy viral,” Dillon said. The Bee’s 2019 article, “Trump: ‘I Have Done More For Christianity Than Jesus,'” was ridiculously fact-checked and rated “false.”
Lo and behold, in 2021, then-President Trump declared during an interview:
Nobody has done more for Christianity or for evangelicals or for religion itself than I have.
How Trumpian — and how Babylon Bee.
Here’s more, via Fox News:
In September 2022, the Bee joked about the economy with the headline, “9 Reasons Not To Worry About The Tanking Economy.” Just two days later, the Washington Post published the headline “7 ways a recession could be good for you financially.”
Dillon added that sometimes it’s hard for his writers to come up with satire because the real news headlines already read like jokes.
“There are all the time stories that come across the screen that are just incredibly outrageous,” he said, “You know you wouldn’t believe that they’re true, and we have to do a double take and see, is this parody, is this a real story?”
Dillon stated the obvious, which I suggested at the top:
We’re living in really crazy, insane times. So, yes, there are plenty of times where we pull up a headline, and we’re just baffled by it.
More, via Fox:
On Feb. 3, 2023, the Bee posted the headline “Biden Says He’ll Shoot Down Chinese Spy Balloon As Soon As He’s Done Letting It Spy.” One day later, Biden announced that the balloon was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean after it finished crossing the United States, arguing that he waited so debris wouldn’t fall on civilians.
Finally, here’s another example, as Dillion explained:
We did show a joke during the pandemic about how pants sales were plummeting because everyone was working from home. And it was this picture of a guy sitting there in his pink boxers, but he’s got a nice dress shirt on, like at his desk. The very next day, there was a story about how Walmart was seeing increased sales of tops, but not bottoms.
Dillon told Fox the Bee gets 25 million page views a month, has tens of thousands of paid subscribers, and more than a million YouTube subscribers. I am proudly among them. Here are a few of my favorite Bee stings from the past:
Ingenious Parents Figure out How to Get Their Kids Back in School — Babylon Bee Style
The Bottom Line
As long as we, unfortunately, have the Looney Tunes Left, Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, and yes, Donald Trump to kick around, the longer the target-rich environment will remain.
That said, I’d be pleased as punch if the Bee only had the Democrats and the rabid left, from which to choose easy-to-satirize targets.
You?