By the way the left drones on about disinformation, you would think that Trump-supporting boomer rubes were the only ones falling victim to inaccurate news stories. Alas, it would appear that even the beautiful people inside the Beltway are not immune to bad intel.
In the first week of January, during the oral arguments over the Biden vaccine mandate, Justice Sonia Sotomayor spread disinformation from the highest court in the land. “We have over 100,000 children, which we’ve never had before, in serious condition, and many on ventilators,” the justice said. The number of children hospitalized with Covid-19 at the time was 4,464.
This level of inaccuracy from a Supreme Court justice immediately garnered attention. Social-media users and Twitter blue-checks were perplexed. Did she actually believe this? Where did she even hear it? And why did she say it aloud?
Perhaps Justice Sotomayor spends more time watching Dr. Fauci hits on Morning Joe rather than reading reliable Covid-19 data. “It’s good our Wise Latina SCOTUS justice apparently got her legal expertise and degree from MSNBC University,” noted our own Stephen Miller. And that set me thinking…
Welcome to MSNBC U, with visiting faculty from CNN and little contact with reality! To keep up with other first-rate institutions, our curriculum is rigorously woke. Any time they like, students and faculty can gather round drinking oat-milk lattes at our permanent January 6 vigil on Ocasio-Cortez Quad.
Our professor of communications Joy Reid teaches to lecture halls packed with the future cancelers of America. Her freshperson course, “Blaming Your Old Homophobic Blog Posts on a Time-Traveling Hacker 101,” is a surefire way to learn why being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry. Later in the semester, advanced students can explored what to do if the “I’ve been hacked!” excuse doesn’t work. Professor Reid’s advice? Blame racism, misogyny or Donald J. Trump.
Our prestigious Law School is headed up by none other than CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. He teaches everything from civil procedure to constitutional law. There is only one law in Professor T.’s classes. Unlike a lot of other classes right now, his are all in-person. No Skype or Zoom allowed. Ever. An added bonus? Toobin’s associate dean is none other than almost-president Michael Avenatti. This lawyer-turned-convict has a unique perspective on the legal system that students won’t find anywhere else.
Over in the English department, MSNBC U professors don’t distinguish between creative writing and journalism: it’s all activism to us. The courses are designed by Brian Williams and Rachel Maddow. From seeing a dead body float by him in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina to coming under sniper fire in 2003 while traveling in a US army helicopter in Iraq, Williams is a master of make-believe. His Intro to Fiction course walks students through how he came up with some of his most memorable stories.
If you’re a first-year student who’s lucky enough to land a seat in one of Rachel Maddow’s classes, strap in! Professor Maddow drops freshpeople in at the deep end. First-years are asked to concoct a fake-news story involving Russia and the Trump family, then plan a four-year media barrage that’ll keep the story cooking and their careers on the boil.
Our all-profit university offers some of the country’s worst courses on media and technology. The coolest part is that the head of media studies, Brian Stelter, also moonlights as the campus’s chief hall monitor. Recently on CNN, Stelter joined a class of eighth graders to help them combat misinformation, and pitched it to their childish level of comprehension; if only Sonia Sotomayor could have taken a day off from the Supreme Court. Thanks to our pursuit of excellence, Professor Stelter teaches the same class to college students. After all, people can learn about the dangers of wrongthink at any age. Stelter explains fake news to his pupils simply by lowering the projector screen and turning on reruns of his show Reliable Sources.
Some students leave school without any common sense. Some of them are completely ignorant of how the real world works, and not all of them can get jobs at the New York Times. At MSNBC University, students study personal business and accounting with the one and only Revd Al Sharpton. The Rev knows this stuff inside-out. He once owed a hefty $4.5 million in state and federal taxes, but his prayers were answered.
Our theater program is overseen by two of the most accomplished actors in America today, Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo. Who can forget Cuomo’s award-winning performance in Man Pretending to Re-emerge from his Basement after a Covid-19 Quarantine? And let’s not forget Don Lemon’s tears over Cuomo’s Covid-19 diagnosis: comedy gold. These guys are committed to the craft. No one is better equipped to teach fake crying techniques and faux sanctimony to a new batch of wannabe thesps.
The faculty is fully staffed (and double-masked, triple-vaxxed and wearing hazmat underwear). The racial profilers are ready in the cafeteria (we serve food by race and ethnicity, to avoid cultural appropriation). The safe spaces are sanitized. And the best part about MSNBC U? So many of our most successful students and graduates never realize they were enrolled to begin with.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s March 2022 World edition.
