If you haven’t seen this clip of Tucker Carlson railing against the evils of the metric system, have a watch. You will laugh, you will cry, you will question everything you know to be true in the world. It’s so unbelievably uninformed that if Saturday Night Live put it on, you would think it the laziest satire.
When I first saw this clip I laughed at how woefully uninformed these two talking heads could be. I took to my keyboard to correct all of their misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of history, and to cite the merits of the robust and cohesive system of measures that is the System Internationale.
Then I read a spam email and is saved me from wasting that digital ink. Let me elaborate.
The grammar in spam emails is universally terrible. This is not by accident. It is not poorly edited work written by google translate; the grammar is usually intentionally bad. Spam emails are fishing for a very specific kind of victim: ones that they can clean out thoroughly and repeatedly without risk of repercussions. They don’t want to accidentally snag a shark. The poor writing filters people out that recognize it.
This fox segment seems to have the same purpose. The people on the production staff are well-educated, intelligent, and successful people. And they are people with an agenda. I cannot imagine that they actually view the metric system as some form of global conspiracy. This is a disingenuous fluff piece meant to filter their audience. Anyone with a sense of science or history will see this, laugh at it, share it around, but not watch any more.
What I really want to know is what came next. What was the segment they put on after everyone engaging in any form of critical thought had turned the channel? I suspect that it is far less funny, and far more insidious.
Featured image:
“Shopping for Christmas dinner”by Robotclaw666 is licensed under CC BY 2.0
