6 Reasons Breitbart Is The Most Batsh!t Crazy Website Ever
A few weeks ago, Donald Trump decided his campaign team wasn't Legion of Doomy enough, so he added Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon. Now, a presidential candidate forming an alliance with a media website in itself is pretty weird, but Breitbart isn't just any media outlet. Breitbart makes Fox News look like the BBC. If websites were people, Fox News would be your friend who's casually thinking of voting for Trump because they can't stand Hillary Clinton, and Breitbart would be Donald Trump when he went on the WWE.
For anyone who hasn't visited Breitbart, the alt-right "news" site was started in 2007 by the late Andrew Breitbart, and to this day, it continues his tradition of being the absolute worst. We waded through its archives and found six "reporting" strategies that best exemplify their incompetence, before we left to take the longest showers of our lives.
They Make Up Obama Quotes For Their Headlines
Breitbart News has always had a shaky relationship with the truth -- most notably in 2014, when they added a correction to the bottom of an article saying that the entire thing was wrong.
"Correction: We earlier identified ourselves as a news outlet. We were, in fact, mistaken."
So when it comes time for Trump's new media partner to write an article bashing President Obama (1 p.m. Eastern, every weekday), instead of searching endlessly for an inflammatory quote from him, they'll merely assemble one out of other quotes like a grade-school construction paper project. For a fun game, read the original Obama quotes below, and then see if you can construct the bonkers headline Breitbart made up without peeking.
In July 2014, Barack and Michelle Obama issued a statement for the end of Ramadan, giving thanks for the "achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy."
And here was Breitbart's highly selective take:
Another example: While talking about Black Lives Matter, Obama said the following: "if police organizations and departments acknowledge that there's a problem and there's an issue, then that, too, is going to contribute to real solutions. And, as I said yesterday, that is what's going to ultimately help make the job of being a cop a lot safer."
The ever-resourceful Breitbart editors managed to take this quote and make it sound like a goddamned threat against police:
"Reports of Obama ashing a cigar while wearing a '30s mobster suit have not been confirmed, but feel free to assume so."
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. They'll also resort to putting words in his mouth that he didn't say. This headline ...
... was immediately followed by:
"On Tuesday, former Obama advisor David Axelrod informed an Israeli television channel that President Obama considers himself 'the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office.'"
Apparently, the Breitbart people confused the colon with the phrase "Someone on Obama's team said." Easy mistake. For example, by Breitbart logic, we could say "Trump: 'I Made a Poopy in my Panties,'" when we really mean "Trump's Grandkid Has a Dirty Diaper."
They Really Want To "Prove" That Hate Crimes Aren't Real
Like all politicians do when they see the full moon every four years, Trump is hard at work trying to act like he cares about minorities. Between complimenting Hispanics on their delicious taco bowls, calling only some Mexicans rapists, and awkwardly touching black people from as far away as possible ...
... it's no wonder that some polls are showing him getting a whopping 1 percent of the black vote. So how is Breitbart helping with this outreach? By telling minorities that hate crimes against them aren't real, naturally.
Even Breitbart users aren't depraved enough to use Google+.
This is a very bizarre fixation of theirs. They're not trying to prove that hate crimes are acceptable or free speech, but that they do not happen. Take this headline, for example:
Checkmate, liberals. Over 100 fake hate crimes were reported in the past decade. If our math checks out, that's ten hoaxes per year, also known as a whopping 0.003 percent to 0.005 percent of the 200,000-300,000 hate crimes reported annually. Perhaps if we were as brazen, courageous, and math-impaired as Breitbart News, we'd be able to face the truth that accusing people of hate crimes is the real hate crime.
You might think that their secret goal in downplaying hate crimes is to subtly give their readers "permission" to use hate speech, but you'd be wrong. There is nothing subtle about how they do that. Case in point:
"Oh shit! They said 'No takebacks!' Looks like we have to roll with it." -- every other gay person, presumably
This delightful piece, wherein the author implores their readers to Make America Middle-Schoolers Again by using "gay" as an insult, was penned by Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay man who is such a legendary piece of shit that he got Twitter to actually enforce their terms of service for once and ban him. And while a proclamation like that would appeal to the anti-PC crowd that Trump has married himself to, people who have stopped writing "80085" with their calculators probably aren't going to be too impressed.
Their Stance On Women's Health Issues Is A Mysterious Riddle
Over the past few years, the left has attacked the right for waging a "War on Women" through a mix of policies, condescension, and always leaving the damn toilet seat up. Trump himself is accused of waging his own personal war by calling everyone from Heidi Cruz to Rosie O'Donnell to Ariana Huffington to German supermodel Heidi Klum fat, ugly, or "not a 10."
While you might hear the phrase the "War on Women" every now and then from liberal sites, Breitbart is OBSESSED with the war. Which is weird, because they say it doesn't exist.
That is, unless it's the left doing it. Then the War on Women is totally real.
It's like they've dedicated half a dozen headlines angrily debunking the existence of someone's Canadian girlfriend, even after they met her.
Quantum War on Women aside, Trump's campaign could really use an injection of traditional conservative values to help win voters back to his side. Perhaps he could kick it old-school by appealing to the right's strong feelings about abortion. After all, there is still a large population of religious folks who are deeply pro-life, who take the conversation about abortion very seriously, whose entire faith system rests on the sanctity of human life. Surely, Trump's best chance of appealing to heartland Americans is by respectfully meeting them on anti-abortion common ground. So let's see how Breitbart handles this sensitive subject.
GASP!
OK, abortion is a rough topic no matter how you slice it. At least we can all agree that abortion wouldn't be such a tough subject if everyone had more pre-conception options on the table and in the vagina. Even you don't want women to have wanton sex, you can at least agree that baby prevention is a good thing ... goddammit Breitbart.
Which are coincidentally the same effects that reading Breitbart has on it's audience.
Breitbart has an absolute obsession with painting birth control as the devil, turning women into smaller, emotional mini-devils. Not only does birth control make women ugly, but it also destroys female brains and make women hyper-emotional.
Worst-case scenario: Birth control is a murderer.
Cosmo.
Well, if the pill is turning all our women into Sasquatches with mood swings, surely condoms are the saviors we are looking for, right?
OK, so then ... what sort of reproductive advice can you offer us, Breitbart?
Trump, you uh ... you might have better luck winging it on this one, big guy.
They're Terrified of "Big Gay" and "Big Trans"
Trans issues are the hottest, sexiest button in American politics right now -- one on which Donald Trump has taken the hard, definitive stance of someone with a Magic 8-Ball. His exact position changes depending on the weather, the time of day, and which of his advisors has spoken into his ear last. Meanwhile, Breitbart's position on transgender issues is as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar.
For the record, the above is a tag, indicating that they have plans to write more articles about trans cults.
After the whole Target bathroom kerfuffle, Breitbart jumped on the "trans people will peep on us in bathrooms" train with gusto, with headlines like this one:
The story was debunked by Snopes, by the way.
Another headline was quick to point out a FOR REAL incident of a man spying on women in the bathroom:
As the prophets foretold, a bad man dressed as a woman spied on innocent women in the most private and holy of spaces, the craphole. Except Breitbart didn't publish that headline as it happened -- they published it three years after the fact, right in the middle of the North Carolina transgender bathroom controversy. You had to pay close attention to the date as you read the opening paragraph:
"Jason Pomare, 33, was arrested over the weekend of May 11, 2013 after mall security officers learned he had been hanging out in a Macy's department store women's bathroom."
This was published in April 2016.
Hell, Breitbart even put together a CliffsNotes version of all the times the pro-transgender bathroom policies backfired on innocent pee-ers.
It turns out the list was almost entirely made of cis men using devices to film women and children in bathrooms, which ... proves that trans people are gross? If you look at their overall output, the real message here is "Sometimes people are perverts," which anyone who has ever joined a dating website could tell you already.
And yet trans people are small potatoes next to what Breitbart calls the Big Gay Hate Machine, and we have to say it is both hilarious and staggering how many times they have used this exact sequence of words. So as to not sigh yourself to death, read these next few headlines and imagine that the Big Gay Hate Machine is an evil robot created by a supervillain.
"GAY SKYNET SET TO BE ACTIVATED FOR JUDGMENT GAY"
Honestly, at this point, we're trying to picture what a BIG GAY HATE MACHINE looks like. The phrase is a Mad Libs of adjectives 1984's elementary schoolers would use to shock each other on the bus. Taking the phrase apart, we're going to go with a fat, homosexual, angry ... group(?) of agitators(?) who are marching across the country as one unit(?). It's a tough concept to dissect.
They Are Constantly Invoking Hitler And The Holocaust
Fun fact: Every politician elected to office over the past 20 years has been basically Hitler, according to internet commenters and Sharpie mustache artists everywhere. Invoking Hitler or the Holocaust is a lazy debate tactic, since you're equating your opponent to the Ultimate Evil of History. It seems nobody told that to Breitbart, though, because they bring up the Holocaust at least twice as much as the average news outlet ever should.
Here, they're defending the comments of famous evangelical Mike Huckabee, who suggests that Obama's nuclear weapons deal with Iran is going to lead to a second Holocaust, playing a sort of "Six Degrees of Hitler" game while skipping all the steps in between. They also leapt to the defense of famous mystery Ben Carson, who made similar comments:
To be fair, lots of people say crazy nonsense when they're asleep(-looking).
But both Carson and Huckabee are famous for having the wails of confused banshees come out when they open their mouths. Breitbart has taken a much more reasonable stance: using the Holocaust as a unit of measurement.
While failing to notice the irony of including Godwin's Law in their URL.
They also have attempted to preemptively paint Obama as a sort of time-displaced Holocaust denier, an accusation so baffling that it's practically unassailable from any angle. It's sort of genius, really.
We assume the follow-up headline is "OBAMA: HOLOCAUST SUPPLIER?"
But simply mentioning the Holocaust doesn't really give away your stance on it. If only there was some way to ... oh, here we go.
And finally, let's go ahead and bring this full circle with the article you all saw coming:
For the record, not all Hitler comparisons are unfair. On occasion, people do indeed act in ways similar to the evillest man in history. We at Cracked have done this ourselves in the past, comparing Hitler's rise to that of another well-known presidential candidate -- namely, Donald Trump. So between invoking Hitler and insulting the man, our chances of eventually advising Trump on his campaign are about 50/50.
They Are Utterly Obsessed With Hillary Clinton's Health
If you pay much attention to Twitter, you may have noticed the #hackinghillary hashtag trending some time ago. You'd be forgiven for thinking that this has something to do with the recent hacking of the Democratic National Committee's e-mails, or that Hillary Clinton made a career change after watching Swordfish late one night. In fact, this hashtag was about something much more serious: Clinton coughs sometimes, which clearly means she's going to die in office or something.
Unlike most of the items on this list, this one is particularly troubling, because its reach has become so broad. When Hillary Clinton, a 68-year-old person who has been campaigning nonstop for what -- 40 years? -- got sick with pneumonia in the middle of an event, everyone perked up. Little did the mainstream media know that Breitbart has been honed in on Clinton's health since January, pairing articles about it with the most hilarious photos they could find. And they have never, ever, ever let up.
The same Martin Shkreli who believes he can beat up Captain America.
For the record, despite claims from both Pharma Bro and Dr. Drew, this is all clear bullshit. As has been reported in the past, Clinton is perfectly healthy, and people just cough sometimes, we promise. But the bizarre focus on her health seems to imply something much more interesting, which is that Breitbart doesn't think Trump can win on policy alone. And now their chairman is part of Trump's crew, advising him on his campaign strategy and helping to craft the image that every American will see leading up to the November election. So if you see a campaign ad with Hillary in a swastika coffin, killed by her birth control, you'll know who was responsible.
When Jim Avery isn't throwing his money away on hopeless Kickstarter projects, he's tweeting out random crap on his Twitter account, or writing game news and reviews for GeekNifty.
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