One might think that Fortune magazine would want to keep a sober reputation as a magazine for business executives. Then they made fools of themselves. They came out with a list of 50 “Greatest World Leaders,” and on that list was once-a-week, late-night TBS “comedy” scold Samantha Bee.
It’s one thing when a news magazine is hunting for cultural influencers, and the Left always picks their favorite people, whether or not they actually sway anyone outside the liberal bubble. But the fiercely feminist Full Frontal hostess isn’t a “leader,” unless you mean she’s one of America’s greatest Trump-era producers of rage and bitterness.
As might be suspected, the left-leaning Fortune editors selected Bee (and ranked her the #19 world leader, ahead of former vice president Joe Biden and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts) because they’re making quota picks. The hip-shaking Colombian singer Shakira also made the list. Bee was selected as a “rare female voice” in the gaggle of late-night liberals.
Writer Tom Huddleston Jr proclaimed that “Bee became an essential voice in late-night television in 2016 with the debut of her TBS show....the Canadian-born Bee used her show as a weekly platform for dispensing incisive and often provocative political commentary while standing out as a rare female voice in an overwhelmingly male late-night landscape.”
Huddleston also argued Bee triumphed over Trevor Noah’s Daily Show in the ratings, which isn’t much of a triumph (and ignores her show aires at 10:30, a half-hour before Noah). She loses routinely to Sean Hannity, and he’s not named a “Greatest World Leader.”
By the very nature of television, a vast majority of Americans have not defined Bee as an “essential voice” in their lives. Liberals call Bee “incisive and often provocative,” because those are the adjectives they choose for Bee mocking a man at the Conservative Political Action Conference for having “Nazi hair,” and then having to apologize because he has cancer.
The danger of naming Bee a “world leader” is she’ll actually think she’s doing something mature and serious, instead of scribbling hateful graffiti on the wall.
Bee and her writing partner Jo Miller gave an interview to Virginia Heffernan at Wired magazine, who hailed them because “they’re not trapped by the creaky machinery of equal time, false equivalency, and sham neutrality.”
Miller declared war on Team Trump: “It’s gonna be a long war. And we have to pull our head out of our American ass. This is a global shift. So it’s important that we tell real stories on our show.” Bee then added this beaut: “Everything’s grounded in research and journalism. We have a team of journalists working here, and a fact-checker. We care deeply about facts.”
Even Heffernan was wondering about that, asking if someone could think they’re speaking factually and not metaphorically if Bee says “they have their hands on our vaginas.” Bee’s blasts do not dwell heavily on facts. Ted Cruz is a “fish-faced horses--t salesman,” Mitt Romney was “soiling his temple garments at the thought of brokered convention,” and the actual GOP convention was a “rage-a-thon” featuring “a parade of hemorrhoidal has-beens.”
If Bee “cares deeply about facts,” there’s not much room for them in between the harangues. If this show is “grounded in research and journalism,” then journalism is dead and research is deader. The magazines that celebrate Bee the “world leader” are next.
