Yahoo Movies The Babylon Bee Roasted for Cringe Attempt at Mocking Stephen King
Fresh out of Twitter jail after “Chief Twit” Elon Musk reinstated its account earlier this month, right-wing satire website The Babylon Bee went out of its way this weekend to prove that the “right is starting to get better at comedy and it’s making lefties nervous.”
The site, which fashions itself as a conservative version of The Onion, seemingly inspired Musk to purchase Twitter earlier this year when its official account was restricted for violating the platform’s policy on hateful conduct when it deliberately misgendered Biden administration official Rachel Levine, who is a trans woman.
Rather than delete the offending tweet, the site’s chief executive Seth Dillon vowed never to take it down. In the end, after Musk completed his Twitter takeover, The Babylon Bee was allowed to keep the post up and is now back to tweeting out its special brand of comedy.
Amid sci-fi legend Stephen King’s ongoing criticism of Musk’s chaotic tenure as Twitter’s owner, the site decided to re-share a satirical piece it published earlier this summer about the famed author’s tweeting habits.
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“Stephen King Estate Reveals He Died Years Ago And His Twitter Account Is Being Run By A Mentally Ill, Glue-Sniffing Parrot With Tourette’s,” the verbose headline blared in a Sunday afternoon tweet.
“Enter this little gal: Penny, a clinically insane blue-throated macaw who sniffs glue regularly and suffers from Tourette's syndrome,” the satirical article claims at one point. “Penny was hired to keep King’s Twitter account running with political hot takes and commentary on current events. She logs on to his Twitter every morning and just starts ranting like an absolute maniac on whatever the current topic is, or smashes the keys to tweet something insane about Trump.”
Needless to say, critics weren’t kind to this latest masterpiece from The Babylon Bee.
“Did a Mentally Ill, Glue-Sniffing Parrot With Tourette's write this?” IfNotNow co-founder Max Berger wondered on Sunday evening while The New Abnormal host Andy Levy mockingly added: “satire is my passion.”
Taking a shot at another right-wing “comedy” show known for its dearth of laughs, Tonight Show writer Chase Mitchell wished the article’s author luck in getting a job with Fox News’ Gutfeld.
Another Tonight Show staffer, meanwhile, joked about the writing process behind the headline. “I was in the writers room for this and they said every word we could think of gets to be in the sentence,” Kylie Brakeman tweeted on Sunday night. “Actually one guy said ‘pronouns’ but we were already using that for something else.”
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Defector Media co-owner David Roth also referenced the notion that conservatives seemingly only have “one joke”—and that The Babylon Bee was merely going out of its way to prove that axiom wrong.
“The bleeding edge in conservative comedy is responding to the observation that they only have one joke by writing seven punchlines per joke,” Roth wrote while suggesting they add, “...who identifies as an attack helicopter” to the end of the headline.
Amid widespread mockery, The Babylon Bee only added to the ridicule by posting another verbose tweet explaining the joke.
“A lot of people are missing the joke here, so allow us to explain: it’s that the Stephen King estate revealed that he died years ago and his Twitter account is being run by a mentally ill, glue-sniffing parrot with tourettes,” the account tweeted late Sunday night. “Hope this helps.”
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