Best of the Bee: Part 4
The last of the pre-COVID year
It’s time to continue going over the approximately 666 articles I wrote for The Babylon Bee. Here are my favorites I wrote from the end of 2019 — the last of the pre-COVID articles before all our jokes by necessity were about the CDC and masks.
The Trump presidency was always kind of bizarre to me. I saw him as this 90s obnoxious billionaire novelty act, so him becoming president was a bit like if Pee-Wee Herman became president. And, can you imagine just ten years ago pitching a movie idea about Trump becoming president and saying it would be a drama and not a comedy? They’d think you were insane. Anyway, scientists have for decades been giving these dire predictions about how far off destruction from climate change is that we’ve passed the point multiple times now, so this is how I came up with a way to square that circle. And if climate scientists did say we’re all dead and the events lately are some bizarre test before we proceed to the afterlife, I’d give that more consideration than what they usually say.
BTW, the way Lost fumbled its great start and had a terrible finale is just one of those things I’m never going to get over.
Netflix Moves All Comedy Specials To Horror Category
This one keeps being relevant as I wrote it two Dave Chappelle comedy specials ago, his last one getting even more controversy. It’s really like the left is scared of comedy these days, treating it like some dangerous weapon to only be wielded very carefully and with many, many rules in mind. Anyway, I like my writing of the left treating comedy like horror; that was fun. “Oh no! He’s going to punch down! I can’t watch!”
Also, someone should tell Dave Chappelle he doesn’t need to use so many naughty words to be funny.
Nation’s Murderous Psychopaths Undecided On Whether They’ll Follow New Gun Laws
Ah. The fatal flaw of gun control. It’s laws that you’re not allowed to have a gun, but murderers don’t usually follow laws. How do people keep missing that? The fun part of this one was writing the casual conversation of deranged murderers, such as Murdering Steve, discussing the situation. I mean, do you really want to break gun laws and get a fine on top of all those murder charges?
The Bee turned this one into a video a little bit after I left.
Pennywise Now Frightening Children With Presentation On Climate Change
A lot of people find it a virtue to scare children. Right now, they scare kids about COVID and masks, but it was all about how we’re all doomed from climate change in the long, long ago. Since Pennywise feeds on children’s fear, it just seems like a great gig for him, and a lot of adults wouldn’t want to criticize him for it.
“You’re gonna die, Georgie! Just look at this hockey stick graph! Nothing is going to stop the warming! You’re doomed!”
I also love my joke at the end of the older fears that are now forgotten from when I was a kid.
I love this one, though I had to look up what it was in reaction to. Apparently, while campaigning in 2019, Warren claimed she lost a teaching job because she was pregnant, but the story was suspect. So I decided to turn that into the dumbest sexism imaginable. And with my sense of humor, the dumber things are, the funnier. “She’s a woman! Jobs are for men!”
Texas Luring Jobs Away From California With Promises Of Electricity
California has some of the highest taxes in the nation and has trouble with providing its citizens with basic utilities — which ain’t a great combo. So no wonder there’s a huge outflux to Texas (though, of course, everyone there is suspicious of Californians).
I got my comeuppance on this article, though, when in February 2021, we had this giant freeze in which the power was out for days. All six in my family ended up sleeping on our big couch in front of our gas fireplace. Fun times.
After Accumulating $999,999,999, Man Stops Earning Money So People Won’t Get Mad At Him
The obsession of people with billionaires has always been bizarre to me. I mean, someone else having a lot of money doesn’t affect me (I wrote a short story, The Demon Capitalism, which I’ll probably later put on this Substack). And while a billion is a lot for an individual to have, the federal government is regularly passing bills spending way more than Elon Musk’s net worth — and that, unlike with billionaires, is our money — so it seems that should get more of our concern. Anyway, here is someone’s quest to avoid having an “evil amount of money.”
Wise Man Who Brought Myrrh Thought They All Agreed On A Spending Limit
While I wrote many articles for the Bee, what I’ve always wanted to do is write TV shows or movies, and so I’d often write articles more like a sketch with a lot of dialogue, as happened with this one. I love the back and force as the guy who brought gold tries to act all innocent about it.
“She seemed to like the myrrh once you explained it to her,” Balthazar said.
“Yes, she was very polite about it,” Caspar responded. “But do you know what you don’t have to explain to people? Gold!”
It ends up Family Guy had a similar sketch, though I don’t think I saw it before this.
Superman Criticized As Unrealistic For Portraying A Journalist As Heroic
It does seem like the main job of journalists these days is to find random people and destroy them, suppress certain information, or lobby to get some people kicked off social media. The heroic Superman doesn’t fit that mold.
Really, the idea of Superman being a journalist is more outdated and dumb than the glasses disguise. In the earliest comics, it was a device so Superman could know what was going on to find out who to save, but that makes no sense now, so they have to portray it like he enjoys being a journalist. But why would a guy who can do stuff — like punch out meteors — waste time writing about other people doing stuff?
Trump: ‘I Have Done More For Christianity Than Jesus’
This may be the most viewed article I wrote, but it didn’t do well at first. Articles making fun of Trump tended not to do great, but it was satire malpractice not to do it. This article was in reaction to Trump saying he did more for religion than any other president, and I just tweaked that a little. But not enough, because how this one took off was the left picked it up thinking it was a serious article, and it got spread far and wide. Despite the charges that the Bee was misinforming people on the right, many of the articles that got the most spread as “fake news” were spread by people on the left.
Anyway, I love just taking a ridiculous position and arguing it seriously, so it was fun to write Trump’s argument that he was more important to Christianity than Jesus in Trump’s voice. I thought I nailed it.
That’s it for now. Next time, we’ll start to see my COVID jokes. Exciting!
I’ve never understood the “hate” for the end of Lost. The writers strike + plus not knowing how long they were going to need to stretch out the show we’re tough in the middle seasons, but a lot of people were saying “oh see they were just in purgatory the whole time,” and I felt like they must have been watching a different show or something.