Facebook Takes Fake Pence Story Viral, Crushes Truthful Conservatives
When even liberals are calling out an attack on Mike Pence, it’s got to be bad.
A satirical internet set that portrays itself as a branch of Fox News is making waves – and fooling readers – with a fake news posting that essentially accuses the vice president of condoning spousal abuse.
It really doesn’t get much lower than that.
The website is called “Fox News The FB Page” and uses a logo and design that mimics the “fair and balanced” network that liberals hate.
In a posting published Sunday, the website ran a spoof news article with the headline “PENCE SOFTENS STANCE ON PORTER ABUSE ALLEGATIONS.”
Here’s one paragraph:
“Pence has softened his comments about Porter saying his actions if true were ‘in accordance with Biblical principle’ and that women should ‘submit to their husbands as their husbands are their heads just as Jesus is head of the church.’”
The “Porter,” of course, was former White House aide Rob Porter, who resigned his post under pressure last week after two former wives went public with allegations that he’d been physically and emotionally abusive toward them during their marriages.
Porter denied the allegations, but White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said he wanted Porter’s resignation after photos were published showing one of the women with a bruised face, according to a CNBC report.
The story has damaged the White House, with Democrats and their allies in the media calling it an example of the Trump administration’s attitude toward women.
(Democrat respect for women depends a great deal on the party of the man who holds the presidency. If it’s a Republican aide accused of spousal abuse, there’s hell to pay. If it’s a Democrat president who admits using interns for sexual toys and is accused of actual rape, everything is A-OK.)
But the sick minds behind “Fox News The FB Page” decided to push things even further by pulling Pence into it – under the guise of a real news story.
Two things jump out about this.
The first is that Pence has been a figure liberals have hated since before he became Donald Trump’s running mate, since the staunchly conservative former Indiana governor makes no bones about his beliefs.
But Pence has never been accused of the slightest misbehavior with women. In fact, the worst liberals could say about him is that he is too careful – in their eyes – of putting himself in what could become a compromising position.
In a sane world, Pence would be known by the old-fashioned term of “gentleman.”
In fact, Pence’s real reaction to the Porter scandal was to tell reporters he was “appalled” by the news.
“There is no tolerance in this White House, no place in America for domestic abuse,” he said, according to CBS.
That’s the kind of man the liberals at “Fox News The FB Page” decided to make fun of, with a post that strongly implied Pence favors mistreating women — when his whole public life has been an example of exactly the opposite.
The story is so outrageous, even the normally liberal “fact-checking” website Snopes called it out as “false.”
But more importantly, is the role Facebook itself is playing in this kind of mockery.
“Fox News The FB Page” is a satirical site, and the American tradition is rich with political satirists making fun of politicians, sometimes cruelly, sometimes with good reason.
But the appearance of this website, combined with the minuscule attention span of far too many Facebook readers, pose a real danger that fake news like this will be taken as the real thing. In fact, the story had 4.7 thousand “likes” and had been shared almost 19,000 times by Thursday morning.
Judging by the comments on the page, many, many readers who “liked” and shared this piece of liberal propaganda had no clue the story was completely false. That’s their own blind ignorance at fault, but Facebook bears a share of the blame too.
Facbook has a well-deserved reputation for crushing news from truthful conservative sites, treating organizations with a non-liberal perspective like enemy aliens of the digital universe.
It poses as an enemy of “fake news,” but apparently has no problem with a “news” site that note only uses an established network’s name, but uses Facebook’s implied imprimatur (“The FB Page) to seem credible. It would not be “censorship” for the company to stand up for the rights of its legitimate clients, like Fox News, by protecting its logo and image. It wouldn’t be “censorship” for Facebook to stand up for itself by protecting its own “FB” image.
A case like this is beyond satire, and beyond “humor” – as liberals might see it.
It comes down to hypocrisy.
Share this on Faceook and Twitter if you agree. (Maybe Facebook will get the message.)
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