By Toni Bologna

Have you ever been censored? In a lot of my videos, I go on and on and on about corporate corruption and how the powers that be are trying to woop-woop. I’m always like, blah, blah, blah. And sometimes the independent fact checkers will be like, “No, Toni, you and your pelvis need to stop. Shut your mouth!” Of course, when this happens, I feel like a bad girl. But then I start wondering… wait… who are these fact checkers that are sooooo independent?

They sound very Beyonce. Hey, you don’t need to put a ring on it because we’re independent… but are they? It’s not like these are citizens fact checking for the good of humanity. There is money being exchanged. They are funded by someone and when money is involved, how can they claim not to be influenced by that money? So when I looked up on the website of factcheck.org to see exactly who these funders are, they assured me that I had nothing to worry about. They’re all: “Toni, we are not impacted by our funders. We are non-biased. In fact, our only corporate funders are Facebook and Google.” Oh cool! So the only corporations that are involved in your fact checking are two of the most powerful corporations in the world. Why would they have an agenda? They’re not involved in protecting corporate interests at all.

So then Factcheck.org is like: “Relax. We’re also supported by The Annenberg Foundation (Bill Gates Funded).” They’re a non-profit so…” Oh right! Duh! My bad! They’re just a non-profit with a $13 billion USD endowment profile. It doesn’t matter that the vast majority of that money is invested in the stock market. They don’t have corporate interest on their minds at all. Fact checkers have corporate ties, and I know it’s easier to believe that those ties don’t tie them down, but I’m personally all knotted up.

It’s so hard for us right now. Media companies are intimately entangled with corporate interests. Because they are for-profit entities, they’re not going to do anything to sever that connection. The news will always be displaying a loyalty to the status quo – because that’s how the company survives.

So who do we trust for information? Your uncle, who insists that Queen Elizabeth is a time traveling vampire and she has Satanic rituals at the Denver airport? …I mean… I did hear it was the hub of all evil…

I don’t think we need anyone to tell us that corporations have nefarious intentions. We need to accept that corporate interests, not your interests, are the prevailing priority of the globe. Every event, every war, every pandemic, every tragedy, every environmental catastrophe, everything that happens will be exploited by that system of how or who will be making money from it. There will always be the pretense that something deeper, more honorable, more significant is happening, but there isn’t. In a capitalist society, where money is the ultimate goal, whatever the question… Money is always the answer. We already know the truth. We just don’t want it to be true.

Dude, wouldn’t it be hilarious if the fact checkers fact checked my video about fact-checking? That would be funny.

Toni Bologna is a comedian who uses comedy to raise awareness of important issues. This article was first published as a video. You can watch the video this article was transcribed from and follow her work at tonibologna.com