The newest Fox News hero is a conservative who attended a not-conservative political rally and lived to tell the tale. Virginia Kruta is a Daily Caller writer who attended an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez rally and who mustered up a few hundred words on the horror of the subject afterward; this was sufficient to get an interview with the paint-huffers of Fox & Friends because of course it was, but the odds of Kruta pulling everyone's leg on this one are extremely high.
Because there ain't no way her report from the too-liberal frontlines of St. Louis, Missouri, isn't satire.
Over the years, I have attended my share of political events: tea party protests, a Rick Perry speech on tax cuts, a Ted Cruz rally, and even a speech given by President Donald Trump earlier this year. But nothing prepared me for the stark difference in tone. [...]
[T]hen Ocasio-Cortez spoke, followed by [Cori] Bush, and I saw something truly terrifying. I saw just how easy it would be, were I less involved and less certain of our nation’s founding and its history, to fall for the populist lines they were shouting from that stage.
Hang on, we need to get our popcorn for this one. This, coming from a journalist who braved both the hyper-racist tea party movement and Donald Trump screamfests, is going to be good.
I saw how easy it would be, as a parent, to accept the idea that my children deserve healthcare and education.
Good: People with Lipton tea bags tied to their hats holding up signs accusing the then-sitting president of being a secret Kenyan in league with terrorists. Bad: Educating children.
I saw how easy it would be, as someone who has struggled to make ends meet, to accept the idea that a “living wage” was a human right.
Good: Donald Trump rallies regularly descending into demands that his political opponents be "locked up" for still-unspecified crimes. Bad: Employers paying employees enough money to allow them to continue living.
I watched as both Ocasio-Cortez and Bush deftly chopped America up into demographics, pointed out how those demographics had been victimized under the current system, and then promised to be the voice for those demographics.
Good: Constructing tent cities for ten year olds on the premise that elementary-aged students may in fact be hardened gang members for a gang with no significant presence on the southern border to begin with, giving speeches declaring that Europe and America are being undermined by non-white invaders; going on Fox News to sweatily demonize entire religious groups. Bad: TALKING ABOUT ANY OF THIS.
So it's obviously parody, and both Daily Caller and Fox & Friends let themselves get played, handily, by a political satirist posing as a "conservative reporter." And let's be honest, it's a fantastic bit of satire!
We'd be tempted to fall for it too, but the fear and astonishment of the supposed reporter when presented with the idea that our American children "deserve healthcare and education" is what gave it away. Nope; that bit is obviously far, far too silly to be real. You should have spotted that, Fox News: that hilariously, intentionally dumb sentence was the tell.