Post by LFC on Apr 26, 2021 18:42:53 GMT
This is a classic tale of how one right-wingnut source just makes some shit up and the rest of the wingnuts latch on and run with it. The speed that lies and stupidity travel on the right is nothing short of amazing.
By Sunday afternoon, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) had dubbed President Joe Biden the “Hamburglar.” Pictures of steaks and hamburgers were rocketing around the rightwing media ecosystem, escorted by captions screaming that Biden’s climate plan would force Americans to cut 90 percent of red meat from their diets. We had entered the era of baseless meat fear-mongering.
But let’s rewind.
It all started on Thursday, when Biden delivered remarks during the “Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate.” During his speech, Biden sketched out his vision that the United States will cut its greenhouse emissions in half by 2030. His comments were short on specifics as his plan has not yet been released, more of a practice in goal-setting than a detailed outline of how to get there.
Enter: the Daily Mail. The British tabloid, known to compensate for its paltry fact-checking with all-caps sensationalism, shouldered the responsibility of filling in the blanks of Biden’s plan with shoot-from-the-hip speculation.
“How Biden’s climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH, cost $3.5K a year per person in taxes, force you to spend $55K on an electric car and ‘crush’ American jobs,” the pithy headline exclaimed, published the same evening Biden made his remarks.
In the article, the Daily Mail cited a January 2020 study from the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems that explored how various dietary changes would affect greenhouse gas emissions. The researchers ran a number of scenarios, one of which tested what would happen if beef consumption dropped by 90 percent.
“Further reducing beef by 90 percent of current levels while replacing 50 percent of other animal based foods results in a per capita decrease in [greenhouse gas emissions] of 51 percent,” they wrote.
The Daily Mail calculated that deprivation to total just one “average sized” burger per month for each American.
And with that, the GOP faux outrage Rube Goldberg machine was triggered.
By Friday morning, Fox had sunk its teeth in. Hosts slyly painted the study and Biden’s plan as related, implying that the one-and-a-half-year-old research exercise was actually part of some analysis of requirements to satisfy Biden’s plan, which has still not been released. The topic was introduced on “Fox and Friends” early that morning and hammered by Fox News and Fox Business Network throughout the day.
But let’s rewind.
It all started on Thursday, when Biden delivered remarks during the “Virtual Leaders Summit on Climate.” During his speech, Biden sketched out his vision that the United States will cut its greenhouse emissions in half by 2030. His comments were short on specifics as his plan has not yet been released, more of a practice in goal-setting than a detailed outline of how to get there.
Enter: the Daily Mail. The British tabloid, known to compensate for its paltry fact-checking with all-caps sensationalism, shouldered the responsibility of filling in the blanks of Biden’s plan with shoot-from-the-hip speculation.
“How Biden’s climate plan could limit you to eat just one burger a MONTH, cost $3.5K a year per person in taxes, force you to spend $55K on an electric car and ‘crush’ American jobs,” the pithy headline exclaimed, published the same evening Biden made his remarks.
In the article, the Daily Mail cited a January 2020 study from the University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems that explored how various dietary changes would affect greenhouse gas emissions. The researchers ran a number of scenarios, one of which tested what would happen if beef consumption dropped by 90 percent.
“Further reducing beef by 90 percent of current levels while replacing 50 percent of other animal based foods results in a per capita decrease in [greenhouse gas emissions] of 51 percent,” they wrote.
The Daily Mail calculated that deprivation to total just one “average sized” burger per month for each American.
And with that, the GOP faux outrage Rube Goldberg machine was triggered.
By Friday morning, Fox had sunk its teeth in. Hosts slyly painted the study and Biden’s plan as related, implying that the one-and-a-half-year-old research exercise was actually part of some analysis of requirements to satisfy Biden’s plan, which has still not been released. The topic was introduced on “Fox and Friends” early that morning and hammered by Fox News and Fox Business Network throughout the day.