Posted on February
18, 2023
Counterpouncing
Framing the reaction as the real story
by
Daniel
Clark
Since the start of the Biden administration, the
"Republicans pounce" story line has become a cliche throughout the liberal
media. Republicans pounce on Hunter
Biden photos. Republicans pounce on the
latest inflation numbers. Republicans
pounce on supply chain breakdowns. This
way, liberal scandals and shortcomings are never the things that are being
reported. Only the reactions of the
opposition are. What matters is not the
original outrage, but only the accusation that conservatives are "playing
politics" with it, in a cynical attempt to gain an upperhand.
Take the great M&M scandal, for example. In order to reflect a "more dynamic,
progressive world," Mars candies changed the two female M&M characters on
its commercials by giving them sensible shoes, in place of the brown
character's high heels, and the green one's Nancy Sinatra boots. This was obviously done to placate the
feminists, but after Fox News host Tucker Carlson criticized the remake, he
became the story. Obviously, he was
merely calling out the truly silly, outrageous behavior of the wokedy-wokes at Mars, but the way it has been reported is
that Tucker Carlson is infatuated with the green M&M, and demands that she
be given back her tantalizing attire in order to satisfy his libido.
To
use the trendy vernacular, Carlson "pounced" on Mars for its capitulation to wokeism. In
response, the liberal media deconstructed the narrative by making his behavior
the focus, and pushing that of the candy company to the fringe. That's the counterpounce.
In early January, Consumer Product Safety Commissioner
Richard Trumpka Jr. said in an interview with Bloomberg
that "a ban on gas stoves is on the table."
Naturally, Republicans pounced.
Their claims that the Biden administration was considering a ban on gas
stoves was subsequently deemed false by liberal "fact checkers," even though
the CPSC is a federal bureau within the executive branch. The media narrative has been that critics of
such a policy are either paranoid, or deliberately fabricating the controversy.
So how loony is it to expect that a gas stove ban is
in the works? Not very, to anyone who
has paid attention to what's been happening at the local and state levels. In 2019, the city of Berkeley, California
became the first of 99 localities to amend its building code to make it illegal
for new buildings to be equipped for gas appliances. That goes for furnaces, as well as clothes
dryers and stoves. Such a ban was passed
in New York city in 2021, and will actually be implemented this year.
Electric
heating is roughly 33 percent more expensive than heat from natural gas, but
the fact that eco-lunatics are driving people's home heating costs up by a
third has not been treated as relevant to the story. Instead, the obvious hostility that liberal
Democrats have toward natural gas is being characterized as a false impression
created by a right-wing scare campaign.
In 2015, liberal nonprofits began staging "Drag Queen
Story Hours" in ultra-progressive communities, but have since branched out to
libraries across the country, and even overseas. As you've surely already guessed, it is not
this outrageous attempt to rob children of their innocence, but the opposition
to it that has been treated as controversial.
A bill that was introduced in the Tennessee state senate would prohibit
"adult cabaret entertainment" from being performed in front of children,
something one might have expected to already be covered by laws against the
corruption of minors. Nevertheless, in a
26-6 vote, all six Democrats voted against the measure. Guess who the weirdos are.
A recent Forbes magazine article purported to
explain "How Drag Queens Became A Right-Wing Target." Bloomberg agreed that "Drag Shows Are
the Next Target for Republican Lawmakers."
The Daily Beast charged, "Arkansas Drag Ban Is the Cover for
Bigger Anti-LGBTQ Attack, Activists Say."
The people whose actions had precipitated the conflict are consistently
portrayed as innocent bystanders.
The aim here is to create a political atmosphere in
which nothing that liberals do can possibly be scrutinized. There are no genuine controversies, only
meta-controversies that focus on the process of the debate, instead of how it
came about in the first place.
Unfortunately for the rest of us, no problem has ever been solved by
refusing to discuss it. Once the
consequences are realized, no counterpounce will be a
sufficient response. When you're cranking
down your thermostat so you can afford to preheat your electric stove, for instance,
one thing you won't be thinking is, "What a crazy guy that Tucker Carlson is."
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Frontier of the Free Press