A shorter version of my latest column
-Hayes Brown, Bluesky
Transcription / Alt Text:
Panel one:
[off-screen] Fox News: Taylor Swift’s plane is emitting soo much carbon
Angry Goose: Why are carbon emissions bad?
Panel 2:
[Man labeled Fox News being chased]
Goose: Explain why carbon emissions are bad, coward!!!
This isnt a good argument. For Fox News carbon emissions are irrelevant or good or whatever. But since Taylor Swift is saying she cares about the environment and according to her carbon emissions are bad for the environment, it is hypocritical to use a private jet.
The problem Fox News have with Taylor Swift isnt her carbon emissions, it is her hypocrisy.
The problem I have with the “hypocrisy” argument is that, here, it’s used as a cheap attack on the messenger.
As in the old meme:
(poor peasant doing labor: “we should improve society somewhat”, grinning contemporary person: “yet you participate in society, curious! I am very intelligent.”)
I can accept it when influential people, even those that cause a whole lot of emissions themselves, advocate for climate programs. We won’t get anywhere if, whoever wants to talk about the environment, first has to become a cave dweller and give up their reach before they’re allowed to speak up.
On the other hand, when Fox News, a channel that generally panders to the coal lobby, car industry and oil barons, suddenly becomes concerned about someone’s CO2 emissions just to serve up another smear, that is hypocrisy, plain and simple.
This. Sorry, I’d give you Lemmy gold if that were a thing.
How would “Lemmy Gold” even work?
It might be something built using digital payments with no transaction fee (and a percentage for currency conversion)
Not possible globally, but in India and the Nordics, such standards are already in use. (No private apps like venmo which can’t inter-operate don’t count)
But where would the money go?
To the instance of the one paying or the one receiving the gold? What benefits would there be? Reddit gives 1 mouth free ads to the receiver, but we don’t have ads in the first place. Would the comment of the receiver be boosted and by how much? If someone has 100 upvotes on their comment and, someone else has 50 upvotes and a gold on their comment would that comment be be boosted above the 100 upvoted one?
Implementating this is more complex than one might think.
My idea is that you would as the recipient get to nominate a charity from a list of effective charities, as well as send a tip to whatever Lemmy instance you use. You get the little digital gold mark on your comment/post too naturally.
Interesting idea
Until now, Faux News were ridiculing people talking about climate change.
The problem we have with Faux News is their ‘reporting’ history and their hypocrisy.
Exhibit A of Republican pretending to care about hypocrisy or a Democrat that fell for Republican propaganda.
Nope. A lot of us see the problem as people saying “we need to do X, but not me”. So much of the issue is people admitting there is a problem but denying that they have any impact. It’s always someone’s else’s problem.
And some of us are sick of it from both sides.
Congratulations proving their point.
The sensible solution is dismantling corporations and getting rid of billionaires, whether by sword or by hammer. Senseless infighting and bothside-ism is the realm of useful idiots and ill-intentioned manipulators.
You mean billionaires like Taylor Swift too then, right?
Then let Faux News explain why hypocrisy is bad.
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When someone they don’t like does it. That’s how they’ve always been.
I mean, no. If she didn’t fly on a private jet, they’d find something else to ding her on. Their problem with her is that she’s not entirely on their side.
They’re good at finding dings. You know, like, how she’s super old and that’s gross.
When she’s on tour, the jet when she’s touring on serves the entertainment of lots of people, not just her. In the same way a venue does. When divided among lots of people it’s meaningless fraction of the transportation of the audience.
I also think worrying about a few people is a way to discredit climate change concerns.
Regulations and investing in better energy sources are what matters. I don’t give a fuck about a few rich fucks with yachts and airplanes. I care about policy and how society distributes resources and energy.
All aviation accounts for less than 2% of emissions. Private jets are a tiny fraction of that. But now we’re talking about that instead of the actual issue. This serves climate change deniers. This serves the Republican agenda, and the pertrol agenda. You’re doing that right now.
Yeah, but the strawman is nicer for me to believe cause I hate fox news
Its also funny because faux news caring about hypocrisy is funny af because they’re some of the most hypocritical mfers around.
Thanks for making that network seem even marginally more sane – truly not easy to do!
I would accept that as a rationale only if they also held regressives to the same standards that regressives are pretending to have. There are no Fox News segments like, “allegedly ‘pro-life’ Texas Repubs urge for entangling humans in razor wire, extrajudicial executions by drowning.”
But actually, what they’re doing is ad hominem. This is not, “Swift is behaving contrary to her message and needs to stop,” it is, “Swift is behaving contrary to her message and therefore climate change is a global hoax so that ‘they’ can force you to eat bugs and have an electric car with a remote shutoff.”
It is ad-hominem to start with and hypocrisy and propaganda all the way down to the core. Fox News in a nutshell.
And what about theirs?
You don’t get to pick and choose what Fox News has said in the past. Their position is that climate change is vastly exaggerated and largely a hoax, and depending who you talk to they might have a stronger view.
You don’t get to forget what they said in the past and present and choose a totally new position, where the main focus is on hypocrisy. Because if Fox News believes what it has said for the last 20 years, then the actual reasoning is that Taylor Swift is acting hypocritically but it’s irrelevant. In other words, if they want to have integrity they would need to undercut their own story.
You personally are free to have a position that purely focuses on hypocrisy if you haven’t already made public statements on climate change. But Fox News is stuck with positions it has already endorsed and continues to endorse. I mean we know that Fox News has no credibility but if you thought that they should, then this is something they can’t avoid.