Pun Salad

As America slouches toward the 2020 presidential election, candidates and pundits will regularly tell you this about the other political side, followed by a list of its extremist beliefs, twisted motives and wicked desires.

But do you ever stop and ask how much you really know about the other side? Or whether the outrage industry in politics and media is telling you the truth about your fellow Americans who disagree with you politically? These questions are worth asking, because it turns out most of what we “know” about the other side is wrong.

Let’s start with how much Republicans and Democrats actually know about the lives of people on the other side. The authors of a 2017 study in the Journal of Politics revealed that the average Democrat believes that more than 40 percent of Republicans earn more than $250,000 per year. Meanwhile, Republicans believe that nearly 40 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ. How close are these estimates to reality? Not very. Just 2 percent of Republicans are doing that well financially, and just 6 percent of Democrats are LGBTQ. 

For Gillibrand: When Nike, buckling beneath the disapproval of a former NFL quarterback, withdrew its line of sneakers adorned with the 13-star Betsy Ross flag, you said that Nike was right to "admit when they are wrong." Presumably, then, you agree with the quarterback, who said why Nike was wrong: Because of the flag's connection to an era of slavery. So, Senator, should Americans "admit when they are wrong" when they sing the National Anthem, which was written in 1814?

On Friday, Joe Scarborough had me on Morning Joe and gave me a really generous amount of time. (Thanks for that.) It is always a little surreal to be identified as the controversial one at the table when I am seated next to the Reverend Al Sharpton. L’esprit de l’escalier: I wish I had turned to the Reverend Sharpton and asked: “Can you think of anybody who has said anything controversial but remains entirely welcome in so-called liberal media circles?” But I didn’t, which is why I am a writer rather than a television host.

Naturally, Twitter went ape after my appearance, which is the nature of Twitter, a place where people go to behave like chimps. (I do not exempt myself from that; social media never brought out the best in me, either, and my decision to stop using it is right up there with going to bed at 9:30 p.m. on the very short list of good choices I have made about my daily routine.) The usual banality and dishonesty were intensified this time around with the help of NARAL, which sent out a tweet claiming that I’d gone on Morning Joe and said some outrageous things about abortion and capital punishment, two subjects which did not in fact come up at all. (Here is the video. For those of you interested in my views on those subjects, here is an account of them I wrote for the Washington Post.) NARAL is of course not known for its honesty — it is a shill for the abortion industry that cannot even bear to keep the word “abortion” in its name — and neither are the rage-monkeys on Twitter.

Considering how often Prager has written and spoken about the importance of gratitude, he might be expected to brim with appreciation for YouTube. In one of his videos (985,000 YouTube views), Prager describes gratitude as having an "almost magical" power to improve human society. "Almost everything good flows from gratitude," he says, "and almost everything bad flows from ingratitude."

Prager's gratitude for YouTube, without which PragerU would never have achieved such spectacular success, should be boundless. If he practices what he preaches, Prager should regularly express his thanks to YouTube — and to Google, its parent company — for providing him and his ideas the biggest audience of his career.

Ah, but he doesn't practice what he preaches. Rather than voice appreciation for YouTube and Google, he accuses them of censorship.