Stephen Colbert went on the attack Wednesday over the latest manufactured scandal by Fox News over a new Xbox feature. In a recent software update, Microsoft, the gaming system’s owner, has designed older models to go into an energy-saving mode when not in use. This is an effort by the company to cut down on carbon emissions—and because it negatively affects no one at all, Fox News hosts lost their collective minds.
Fox & Friends host Ainsley Earhard claimed the company must be “going woke, too, because of climate change.” As if climate change is some made-up thing, and the temperature on land and sea hasn’t gone up at a rate of 0.14 degrees per decade since 1880 and up 0.32 degrees per decade since 1981, according to Climate.gov.
On the company’s website, it explains that “instead of your Xbox waking up during the nightly maintenance window at a random time between 2:00 a.m. – 6:00 a.m., your console will wake up at a time when it can use the most renewable energy in your local energy grid … this decreases fossil fuel dependency and CO2 emissions, and could potentially save you money.”
“They want us to turn off our Xbox?” Colbert said sarcastically. “What’s next? They’re gonna tell me to turn off my car engine when I pull into the garage? How am I supposed to fall asleep now?”
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But of course, the Fox News hosts didn’t stop at just calling Microsoft “woke,” no. They went on to say the company was “grooming” kids, adding that Microsoft, through its Xbox consoles that now save a little energy, was “trying to recruit your kids into climate politics at an earlier age. Make them climate conscience now. ”
“You’re right, I didn’t think about that. They’re going after the children,” Earhardt chimed in enthusiastically.
Colbert ripped into the hosts with, “Yes, why are they corrupting our kids’ innocent activities, like Italian plumbers taking mushrooms and killing turtles, or driving a stolen ice cream truck through a crack house,” he said.
But Fox didn’t stop at faux outrage over an Xbox update. Throughout the day, the broadcast was on a tear over today’s most vital topics—like M&Ms and gas stoves.
Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted, “First gas stoves, then your coffee, now they're gunning for your Xbox.”
Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen piled on, agreeing with Cruz and launching his own grenade for Fox’s culture war.
“They want to tell you how to live your life. We’re gonna say ‘No, you will not drive a gas-guzzling truck and no, you’re not gonna have a gas stove, you will have an electric stove,’” Thiessen said. “Because every building in New York City cannot have gas anymore, right? This stuff is actually happening. If the climate radicals want to alienate Gen Z, the best way to do it is to take away their Xbox!”
Anyway. This all makes sense. Just another day of manufactured outrage at the Fox News machine.
