Turn on MSNBC, that socialist bastion of lesbian propaganda, and you see Chuck Todd talking about the importance of bipartisanship, sandwiched in between his trusty segment about— seriously—the White House soup of the day (I HOPE IT’S SPLIT PEAS!), Michael Steele being taken seriously for some reason, three to thirty-five hours of Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews gushing over George W. Bush’s package in a flight suit, and more.
Hurray! Liberals!
Look, it’s okay for a station to have voices like that, balanced by Rachel Maddow, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Chris Hayes, but (and here’s where a thing called “false equivalency” comes in) not when you are known as the left-wing version of Fox News.
False equivalency is when someone falsely equates an act or idea of one thing as being equally egregious to that of another thing when that comparison isn’t actually fair or valid.
See, viewers naturally assume, based on false equivalency, that if Fox News is as right-wing as it gets, MSNBC is as left-wing as it gets, and consequently that their programming is as extreme as that of Fox News (which it is not, hence a “false” equivalency).
Oftentimes, MSNBC actually peddles the mainstream Democratic Party platforms, thereby alienating many leftists who are dissatisfied with Democratic leadership. They think: Gee, if I don’t have a home on the so‐called left‐of‐left MSNBC, where do I belong?
This is where “The Daily Show” came in.
It was a false liberal ascription that befell Jon Stewart’s “newsroom” and turned it from a comedy show on a corporate television station that was very funny and provided an entertaining reprieve from life’s suckage into a show that routinely expressed outright contempt for actual counterculture activities and yet has also been called “the most trusted name in news.” (See, we promised we’d tell you how it happened.)