Friday’s climate strike and Monday’s DC shutdown were a bonanza for the Daily Caller’s budding comedic empire, in that it gave them an opportunity to try and make a fool out of the protestors. But like the time they tried to attack Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for driving to work instead of walking, and literally “caught” AOC walking, the videos do more to expose the Daily Caller’s stupidity than their targets.
One video asked if people would forego having children to save the environment. It’s not clear what the punchline here was, other than the fact that people recognize adoption is an option. (And one would think an ostensibly conservative, pro-life outlet like the Daily Caller would be happy to see such consistent support for adoption…)
Another video asked people what specific policies in the Green New Deal they supported, an obviously bad faith question in that the GND isn’t a set of policies (yet) but an aspirational view of what future policies would need to accomplish.
Even still, despite the video’s framing that these nuts don’t know what they’re supporting, there were plenty of solid answers on the good a GND-type policy can do: shifting the Overton window, getting us off of fossil fuels, making agriculture sustainable, developing alternative energy sources, helping island nations deal with sea level rise, etc. Despite the video being framed as though protesters were clueless, many provided the right answer to what was obviously a “gotcha” question.
One video featured a guy in a polar bear onesie affecting a ridiculous Brooklyn accent who was “crashing” the climate strike. Though billed as “comedy,” there were no jokes, other than a couple tired and repeated transphobic “I identify as a polar bear” cracks. The video ends with the Daily Caller guy in a bear costume talking to the other Daily Caller guy doing interviews, who asked polar bear boy if had ever eaten “an Eskimo.” Apparently, casual transphobia and racism is what constitutes comedy at the Daily Caller. Hilarious.
On Monday, the polar bear costume was gone, as was the Brooklyn tough-guy accent. It was replaced by an effeminate, pseudo-British accent and thick black glasses--nothing’s funnier than a gay nerd, right? (Wrong.)
Another at Monday’s DC shutdown asked if “pissing people off” will “save the environment.” Responses were generally similar to what was laid out in this WaPo op-ed by one of the activists: the whole point is inconveniencing commuters because it brings attention to the severity of the issue.
Yet another video on Monday asked protesters if they have jobs, and if so, if they got permission to strike. And while a couple protesters did say they were self- or unemployed, most of the responses indicated that people at the climate strike had, in fact, left work to come to the strike. Others were skipping school. So to answer the title, “Do the protestors have jobs?” would be “yes.” Amazing journalism the Caller is doing.
For a video asking strikers to confess their “climate change sins,” the Caller talked to a woman in a dinosaur costume about the presumably plastic costume. The striker had the perfect response: “That’s why we have to change our systems, so it’s easy and accessible for people to not wear plastics.”
To the Daily Caller’s credit, the video included the response. Either the Caller’s reporters and editors are too dumb to see it completely debunked the entire video’s premise, or assumed their audience was too dumb to catch it.
So if someone there had a pea-sized brain, it sure wasn’t the protester in the dinosaur costume.
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