The media is by and large biased against conservatives and Republicans. We’ve known that for decades. It’s not going to change any time soon no matter how much you tweet, how many memes you share on Facebook, or how much time you rant about it to the erectile dysfunction demographic on talk radio.

Such bias is by definition not fair. Nonetheless it is the political environment in which we live and since it’s not going to be changed by us or by some imaginary neutral authority the right has to navigate a mine field that the left doesn’t. As a conservative or a Republican you will be held to an entirely different (and usually hypocritical) standard. Accept it.

Hell, embrace it.

Accepting the unfair conditions isn’t surrender. It’s just the correct alternative to allowing yourself to be whipped into an angry mob by pundits and politicians who profit from your outrage.

It’s ok to be angry at the unfairness. It’s ok to acknowledge it and point it out whenever it comes into play. It’s ok to point out where media deliberately gets it wrong.

It’s not ok to believe the sheer force of your anger and indignation is going to change the reality that most of the media and the popular culture is against you. That’s magical thinking and unproductive. It’s not ok to be wrong and defend it by saying your opponent is also wrong.

The unfairness lies not in the right being held to a higher standard but with the left being held to none. It’s not really as unfair as you might think though. Being held to a standard is objectively a good thing that can be used to one’s advantage. It makes you better at whatever you’re trying to do.

Far too often I see people on the right who seem to believe that the most desirable outcome is having both sides held to the same lax—or non-existent—standards that the left is held to now. If there is a battle being fought to reclaim a representative amount of the popular culture for traditional values and to force the news media to spend more time on facts and less on agenda driven narrative, adopting the same sort of hypocritical double standards toward that end is only going to turn you into cannon fodder.

Take for example the hysteria surrounding Roseanne and Samantha Bee.

Roseanne never was a person of the right. Her political history is an unruly and self-contradictory mess often bordering on insanity and paranoia. Nonetheless, she became the poster child for Trumpism thanks to her real life and fictional support of the President. Anyone with a memory longer than a few months had to know how it was all going to end, but enough people still accepted her into the fold. She had been inducted into the tribe, so rather than just acknowledge that she shot herself in the foot (again) many decided they needed to rally to her cause and refight the Battle of Youtoo (again). Her fight became the tribe’s fight and it dominated the news cycle for days. People are still citing to me the disclosed side effects of Ambien to argue that Roseanne is blameless in her own demise. To believe that is to ignore her long history of doing stuff exactly like this.

Then an inconsequential comedian on a literally tanking cable TV show seemingly dropped a gift into the tribe’s lap by calling the President’s daughter a crass name. Let’s not pretend for a second that Samantha Bee wouldn’t have become the tribe’s newest inductee had she said exactly the same words about Hillary Clinton, Maxine Waters, or Nancy Pelosi. But she said it about Ivanka Trump, who herself is only a member of the tribe because she’s the chief’s daughter, not by any objective measure of her politics.

Samantha Bee’s was the scalp the tribe could try to take in retaliation for what had been done to Roseanne. Fox News hosts are still venting outrage over (read: milking for ratings) Samantha Bee not having her show cancelled also, as if two completely different networks making different decisions is evidence of a left wing conspiracy.  At this point I’m sure that far more people have heard what Samantha Bee said (or possibly have heard of Bee herself) via the angry tribalists calling for her head than ever would have via her show.

As RedState alum Leon Wolf points out today, your right to clutch your pearls over people saying mean things without consequence went out the door with the 25 bucks you spent on that red baseball cap.

This is where we are in 2018: Donald Trump is calling for someone to be fired for using coarse language. Seriously. https://t.co/W8ahG9Dpks

— Leon Wolf (@LeonHWolf) June 1, 2018

To be clear, I'm not here to defend what Bee said, I'm just pointing out that Trump doesn't exactly live in the right kind of house to be casting this particular stone.

— Leon Wolf (@LeonHWolf) June 1, 2018

And his loyal tribesmen live in the same kind of house as Trump (just smaller and with less ugly gold filigree).

In the end Roseanne’s statements should never have been defended beyond an acknowledgement that she has the right to say something self destructive and her employer has the right to hold her accountable (or not) if they so choose.  Samantha Bee’s comments weren’t worthy of any political response at all. There’s nothing to distinguish them from the rest of the garbage spewed by hack comedians who mistakenly think they’re being edgy and provocative.

The Fox News-driven outrage only serves to elevate Bee in the eyes of her peers and give her a publicity boost when her show was spiraling toward oblivion. It also shows that the MAGA crowd can hold its own with any MSNBC contributor when it comes to applying blatant double standards.

I can’t count the number of times someone here at RedState has argued that becoming like the left is no way to defeat the left. It is no less true today. Sliding into the left’s gutter is a constant temptation because the real work necessary to fix the problems of bias and double standards is difficult and will take a long time. It’s still a temptation that should be resisted.

It’s not weakness to cast off dead weight like Roseanne even though it would be far stronger to never have lashed it to yourself in the first place. It’s not productive to play scalp for scalp games at the behest of people who are the only ones to gain from them. That sort of behavior only affirms the false notion that we are called to defend an arbitrarily defined tribe instead of a set of truths and  principles.

There was nothing wrong with people liking Roseanne’s show. There is nothing wrong with people being disappointed at its cancellation. As others have pointed out, neither she nor her show should have ever been taken on as a cause. Rushing to get behind the Roseanne reboot only led to a little more of the right’s dwindling integrity getting sucked down with the show when it sank.

There is also nothing wrong with being annoyed or offended by Samantha Bee. That assumes you’re not only offended because her target was someone close to Trump. If you’re selectively offended for partisan reasons then you are definitely part of the problem because you’re no better than the left.

Pull the weeds when they sprout instead of arguing that they’re roses.

Just embrace the higher standard and apply it to those who you choose to believe or support.