Christopher Blair is a pretty funny guy. From his little house in the woods of Maine, he comes up with crazy little fake news headlines – headlines that rival this all time classic National Enquirer beaut:
Famed psychic’s head explodes!
Of course, conspiracy minded folks are no longer interested in stuff about famed psychics they’ve never actually heard of. No, they want infowar-style info – fake info about the real people they hate. They want to know about the pedo ring that Hillary Clinton ran out of a D.C. pizza parlor. About Sasha and Malia becoming Isis brides. About George Soros drinking the blood of Christian children.
In the last two years on his page, America’s Last Line of Defense, Blair had made up stories about California instituting sharia, former president Bill Clinton becoming a serial killer, undocumented immigrants defacing Mount Rushmore, and former president Barack Obama dodging the Vietnam draft when he was 9. “Share if you’re outraged!” his posts often read, and thousands of people on Facebook had clicked “like” and then “share,” most of whom did not recognize his posts as satire. Instead, Blair’s page had become one of the most popular on Facebook among Trump-supporting conservatives over 55. (Source: WaPo)
And, as Blair has said, “The more extreme we become, the more people believe it.”
Blair launched America’s Last Line in 2016 as a joke to share with his liberal friends. But then those who aren’t in on the joke found their way there. 6 million of them each month. And even though his site is clearly labeled – “Entertainment Website”, “Nothing on this page is real. Not a bit of it.” – a lot of those 6 million folks take it for real. And they share, and share, and share, egged on by Blair’s “traitors” and “lock them up” exhortations. All this has translated into a full-time job for Blair, earning him as much as $15K per month.
Among the credulous is Shirley Chapian, a 76 year old retiree who lives in a trailer in the Nevada desert. Chapian spends much of her day consuming, commenting on, and sharing stories that strikes this coastal elite as pure cra. Such as:
“Iowa Farmer Claims Bill Clinton had Sex with Cow during ‘Cocaine Party.’ ”
Now there’s a headline that could make a famed psychic’s head explode!
One of Blair’s headlines also managed to capture Chapian’s attention.
It showed a picture of Trump standing at a White House ceremony. Circled in the background were two women, one black and one white.
“President Trump extended an olive branch and invited Michelle Obama and Chelsea Clinton,” the post read. “They thanked him by giving him ‘the finger’ during the national anthem.”
Chapian looked at the photo and nothing about it surprised her. Of course Trump had invited Clinton and Obama to the White House in a generous act of patriotism. Of course the Democrats — or “Demonrats,” as Chapian sometimes called them — had acted badly and disrespected America. It was the exact same narrative she saw playing out on her screen hundreds of times each day, and this time she decided to click ‘like’ and leave a comment.
“Well, they never did have any class,” she wrote.
Except that the white woman in the picture was the dear departed Hope Hicks, not Chelsea Clinton. And the black woman in the picture was the dear departed Omarosa, not Michelle Obama. I didn’t see the picture, but I suspect that, whatever was going on in the minds of Hope Hicks and Omarosa, neither one of them was actually giving the finger.
Sorry, Christopher Blair. Maybe you can get a job writing for Stephen Colbert or someone. Maybe you can write for The New Yorker. But by putting your material out there, no matter how fun your inventions are, you’re pouring fuel on the fire.
But Blair and his fans take it one step further.
Rather than just commenting on a comment, and gently pointing out that a story is fake, they go on the attack, calling those gullible gulled folks “taters”, “stupid,” “moron,” “trailer trash.” They try to bait them into making racist comments – which probably isn’t all that difficult – in hopes of getting them banned from Facebook. (On the brighter side, he has been successful in getting FB to 86 a couple of dozen “new” sites that have grabbed Blair’s content – minus the disclaimers that they’re BS – and republish it.)
But the Shirley Chapians of the world fight back at those attacking them as moronic trailer trash. In Shirley’s world, those attackers are “nasty liberals.”
She’s got a point.
Let the believers like Alex Jones put out this nonsense. We don’t need my liberal fellow travelers adding to the heap of misinformation out there, entrapping ever more dupes into spreading utter (and dangerous) nonsense. And it’s really not helpful to then go after them as morons and idiots. I don’t really think this approach works convincing them that they’re wrong. True believers are true believers, even when presented with the truly believable truth.
Humorous as Blair’s imaginings are, they’re not really helpful – at least not in this day and age.
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