Nolte: BuzzFeed Spread Fake News About Smokey the Bear

SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, CA - JUNE 26: A Smokey the Bear sign is seen as firefighters battle the
Justin Sullivan/Getty
John Nolte

The far-left BuzzFeed News was forced to issue a correction after smearing Smokey the Bear for engaging in fire suppression.

In a tweet that proves hipsters make lousy “journalists,” BuzzFeed spread the fake news that “Most experts now agree that a decades-long policy of suppressing fires in forests, a campaign fronted by Smokey Bear, was a bad idea.”

BuzzFeed then went on to blame “Smokey Bear” for, “at best,” damaging “ecosystems that need to burn from time to time” and, “at worst,” creating “a tinderbox of unnaturally dense vegetation.”

There are, obviously, two things wrong with this tweet.

The first, obviously, is that Smokey the Bear’s name is “Smokey the Bear,” not “Smokey Bear.”

The second is that Smokey THE Bear does not advocate for fire “suppression,” he advocates for fire “prevention,” and those things are as different as hotdogs and donuts.

Before I go any further, allow me to make a larger point.

If BuzzFeed News gets the simple things wrong, the common sense things, the basics, the stuff everyone knows — imagine how wrong these (as someone writes below) these credentialed but ignorant “journalists” are when it comes more complicated things, like economics, Global Warming, and health care.

Smokey THE Bear, one of the most iconic of American icons (that is, if you’re not a smarter-than-thou hipster raised on pretension, soy milk, and coffee table books) has nothing to do with the stupid policy of putting out natural forest fires; Smokey THE Bear is only about preventing man-made forest fires caused by the careless cigarette or unattended campfire.

An hour later, BuzzFeed News was forced to retract its smear of Smokey THE Bear, but continued to insist the name “Smokey Bear” is correct — which only proves a childhood filled with clove cigarettes and bad jazz makes you stupid.

“We’ve deleted this tweet,” BuzzFeed wrote, referring to that nonsense about Smokey THE Bear being a fire suppresser. “Smokey Bear fronts a campaign for wildfire prevention, not wildfire suppression. (And yes, his name is actually Smokey Bear).”

The ratio was glorious:

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

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