It's probably not news to anyone reading this, but the most honest commentary on the current events of the day seems to be available on late night comedy shows. Since Trump has a tendency to 'lie his ass off' constantly, conventional 'journalists' don't know how to cover him and call out his fallacies for the nonsensical garbage that they are.
ANNOUNCER: That's because political satire has something that TV news lacks a really low tolerance for bullshit. Part of what makes Trump such an easy target for satire is that a lot of what he says is ridiculous.
TRUMP: I know more about ISIS than the generals do.
ANNOUNCER: That makes him a gold mine for political comedians.
Sophia McClennon (Associate Director of International Affairs at Penn State) (who) has written a couple of books about how political satire it makes us smarter news consumers; and she argues that part of why satire is better at covering Trump is, that traditional journalists don't always know when to call bullshit.
Look at what happened after Trump tweeted that Obama had wire-tapped his phone at Trump Tower, comedians all covered it basically the same way:They said it was baseless
COLBERT: Trump has not produced a shred of evidence
OLIVER: there was no evidence for Trump's claims.
COLBERT: The craziest thing about Trump calling for an investigation without any evidence is that it actually worked. Congress is going to investigate Trump's wiretapping claim
Regular news sources admitted Trump had no evidence for his claims, but they go a step farther. :
ANDERSON COOPER: No facts to back up his claims
.
But then they host debate after debate on the matter, 'arguing with paid Trump supporters,' even though they've asserted that it's baseless. They have to both sides do it, even on provable lies. That's what makes Cable News so unwatchable, with the exception of a few programs.
The fact that this type of coverage is not only pointless, like debating if the earth is flat, it 'rots our brains' and leads us to believe fake, garbage news is credible.
While 24 hour news programs have filled their shows with screaming matches, the shorter comedy programs can really focus on the actual absurdity and why we shouldn't lend one ounce of credibility to the nonsense.
It was the comedians who were able to see through the temporarily sane sounding tone of Trump's Congressional address. The regular news? Well, Van Jones pissed more than a few of us off with his 'presidential' comment. Colbert and Sam Bee saw right through the charade.
McClennon corrects the wrong assumption that satire is partisan. Satirists are after good rational thinking. However, one of our two major political parties disavows rational thinking, so satire seems to favor the liberal side of things. That dirty word, 'liberal' meaning one prefers facts, reality and provable truths.
That explains why there are no good comedians who consider themselves leaning towards the political right. The right prides itself on a complete absence of rational thought, and punching down on the less fortunate or marginalized with fictitious insults isn't the least bit funny.
