The Tyson Zone

Bill Simmons coined the term "the Tyson Zone" to describe a person who's ridiculousness has reached a point where you can't tell which stories about them are made up and which are 100 percent true.

I think it's safe to say Donald Trump has reached the Tyson Zone.

Did he call Mexican immigrants murderers and rapists? Yep. Did he attempt to win over Latino voters by posting an image of himself eating taco salad with the caption "I love Hispanics." Oh, yeah.

One of my favorite columns from the now-defunct Grantland was titled, Unreality TV. The author came to the realization that it's difficult to see the distinction between parody sites like The Onion or political news like The Daily Show, from actual news sources like Fox News. (I spent a long time trying to think of a progressive equivalent. While there are many mediums as transparently biased as Fox News, nothing quite reaches its level of absurdity.) To quote the author:

"But who gets their news from real news anymore? We get our news from morning-after viral videos attacking the real news, or from videos attacking the videos. Our entertainment becomes a kind of horror. Our horror becomes a kind of entertainment. The lines between irony and truth blur in ways we barely notice...So many Facebook users mistake Onion links for real news that the social network is testing a “satire” flag."

After watching a Seth Meyers bit about how underpaid teachers are, and a John Oliver segment on how often scientific studies are misrepresented in the news, something struck me: This is what real journalism is supposed to look like. There was actually a lot of work behind these stories, and it wasn't just writing jokes.

It's easy to brush the two hosts off for a lack of seriousness but the topics are so tragic that they're actually funny when someone points out the absurdness of it all. And I would argue that it takes more work to deliver the story in a way that makes us laugh. How else could we take it?