The Babylon Bee Hates Harriet Tubman

Conservative humor site mocks civil rights icons

By David Andrew Stoler, February 1, 2023

The Babylon Bee, the Right’s answer to The Onion, celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. day this year by proving yet again that the only thing it likes less than being funny is honoring civil rights heroes. The Bee, like your MAGA uncle at Thanksgiving on the subject of Hunter Biden’s laptop, apparently thought repetition alone was enough to prove whatever point it was trying to make, running three pieces within a week that took aim at either King, Harriet Tubman, or both.

While the Bee, a Christian Conservative satire site founded in 2016, tends to take its cues from The Onion — sometimes directly — it may be better known for having stories pulled from Social Media. That didn’t stop editors from taking aim at two of America’s most beloved Civil Rights icons during a week meant to celebrate them.

Desperately Seeking Laughs

The Bee began with a double dose on Martin Luther King, Jr. day itself. First it stepped into the controversy surrounding Boston’s new statue honoring King and his wife, Coretta Scott King, with a #buzzing piece entitled “GoFundMe Page Started To Help Complete MLK Statue.” The piece is standard “You Call That Art?” fare, and, in true conservative tradition, hides its hatred of the Civil Rights Era by pretending it’s not any statue, just this one. Toward that end, it “quotes” artist Hank Willis Thomas saying, “Anything you can put towards this is greatly appreciated, as it helps it not look like I made a disrespectful sculpture of arms holding some kind of mysterious fleshy appendage.”

And if you didn’t “get it,” the piece ends by announcing the GoFundMe campaign was, “the fastest-ever fundraiser to hit its goal in the site’s history as Americans of all races came together to finally make a beautiful piece of art to honor MLK Jr.” See what they did there? It’s not that they don’t respect King — it’s that they respect him too much.

If that was a little too subtle for its readers, the Bee made sure to drive home the point with a piece on Harriet Tubman posted later that same day. In “Harriet Tubman Honored With Statue Of Her Left Big Toe,” the Bee doubles down on the MLK, Jr statue, including another fake quote describing the Boston sculpture as “unspeakably creepy” and bearing “a striking resemblance to various human organs mashed together in an ungodly chimeric abomination from the pit of hell.” The story ends with pot shots at upcoming statues for Rosa Parks and Booker T. Washington.

Of course the Bee, whose editors did not respond to a request for comment, wasn’t done yet: they ended the run on Friday the 20th with a podcast whose punchline, as far as I can tell, is that honoring Civil Rights heroes is basically a sign of the end times for ’Murica. “Martin Luther King did not die for this,” said podcast guest CJ Pearson, making sure the Bee, like a good commercial’s toll free number, referenced the Boston statue for the third time. (That way, their readers will remember: Statue Bad.) All this from a website that has no problem giving a perpetual mic to former Hercules star and actual Four Horseman Kevin Sorbo.

Not Always So Lame

To be clear, the Bee is not a 100 percent unfunny blog. Recent pieces on Peloton, the overcorrection of Woke Culture, and even the Biden Docs controversy, have at least had pretty good, Onion-esque headlines, though the writing below lacks much guffaw power. What’s more funny than the Bee itself of course are all the times conservatives have, a la the Onion and the Chinese Communist Party, thought it was real news — particularly Donald Trump, who, like Charlie Brown and his football, can’t seem to resist falling for the same gag over and over again. To their credit, they’ve even fooled fact-heavy lefties like The Guardian.

Nor are MLK, Jr. and Tubman off-limits by any means — but if you’re going at the left by making jokes about two of the most important heroes in American History, they should probably be better than “Look, it’s Harriet Tubman’s Left Toe.”

David Andrew Stoler’s writing has appeared in the Guardian, Politico, and McSweeney’s, among many others. He is the founder of misanthropictures, an independent film company whose award-winning work tells the stories of the traditionally underrepresented.

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