The Babylon Bee, which describes itself as “Christian news satire,” has been engaged in a running battle with Snopes.com, a liberal “fact check” site that serves mostly as a mouthpiece for the left. Snopes has repeatedly undertaken, with a straight face, to “fact check” Babylon Bee stories that are obviously humorous. This has given rise to considerable ridicule, but some suspect that Snopes has a more sinister purpose in mind: to give liberals at platforms like Facebook an excuse to downgrade or even ban the sharing of Bee posts. The humorless left has nothing like the Bee, and would like to get rid of it.

A few days ago, Snopes tried to justify its repeated “fact checking” of the Bee by reproducing an article about a poll that purported to find that a considerable number of people are fooled by satirical stories. Snopes headlined: “Study: Too Many People Think Satirical News Is Real.”

The poll was badly flawed. For example, the headline that the largest number of people said was true–28% of Republicans and 6% of Democrats–was “Most Americans believe that major media companies should apologize for pushing the now-debunked news story of collusion between President Trump and Russia.” I certainly agree that major media companies should apologize, and I hope that most Americans feel that way, although I am not sure that they do.

Today the Bee responded in its inimitable fashion with “Concerning Survey Finds Too Many People Believe Snopes Is A Legitimate Fact-Checking Website.” The findings of the Bee’s fictitious survey are summed up in this pie chart:

A troubling new survey released by The Babylon Bee confirmed Wednesday that too many people think Snopes is a real fact-checking website. The survey found that over 60% of people believe Snopes is a real website, while only 25% understand that it’s satire. The remaining minority thinks that Snopes is the name of a gangsta rapper from California, “one of those guys who makes the hip-hop about the devil’s lettuce and shooting people.” In the study, we went to a Walmart and grabbed random people by the arm and started shouting at them: “HEY, DO YOU THINK SNOPES IS REAL!?” The ones who didn’t run away screaming or call for security responded, and of those few dozen people, we got our results. Most said, “Sure, yeah, whatever, please just leave me alone and don’t hurt me!” while others said they thought it was satire site. A few people said, “Snopes Dogg? I loved his album, Straight Outta Compton.”

If that doesn’t sound scientific, consider this:

“This is clearly a threat to democracy,” said the head researcher we specifically paid to say “this is clearly a threat to democracy.” “Maybe people who read Snopes just aren’t as informed or educated as people who simply watch Jeopardy! to get their information or call their Aunt Carla and ask her what the latest gossip is.” Well, whatever the case, one thing is clear: democracy can’t long survive if people keep believing Snopes is a real fact-checking site. (Note: you do not need to criticize the methods for this survey, as we have a pie chart, which makes it 100% legitimate).

It is interesting that Snopes’s vendetta against the Babylon Bee has probably done more than anything else to alert people to the fact that Snopes is a liberal activist site, not a legitimate fact checker. Well done, Bee!