Exploring the ‘Liberal Bias’ of Reality
A short history of the GOP embracing and promoting lies
During the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, host and satirist Stephen Colbert said, “We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in ‘reality.’ And reality has a well-known liberal bias.” The tag line was part of Colbert’s ongoing mockery of conservative extremists, his facetious embodiment of a right-wing talking head. We can understand the remark on two levels.
First, it is an in-character assertion that empirical reality is a lot more in line with modern liberal and progressive opinions than conservative leanings. This coincides with what many Republicans are saying today. For example, they attack organizations like Snopes, Media Bias/Fact Check, and Pew Research Center because these initiatives consistently reveal that conservatives believe false information.
