Fake meat
Today is the day we learned that Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks Bill Gates grows fake meat in a peach tree dish.
“You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life,” Greene said.
“They want to know when you are eating, they want to know if you are eating a cheeseburger which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree dish.”
She’s both – stupid and ignorant. Win-win.
This took me a moment or two before it clicked.
I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t make fun of someone who mispronounces a word which they have only ever read.
On the other hand, is it okay to mock someone who mispells something they’ve only ever heard, and who mindlessly repeats it without knowing what the fuck it actually means or refers to?
“WATCH OUT! THE GUVVERMINT’S COMIN’ FER YER GUNS AND YER MEAT!!”
Like “rolling coal” as a response to concerns about climate change, you can bet that there will be people who will eat even MORE meat than usual in response to calls for cutting back on meat consumption. It’s like a reflex. “NOBODY’S GONNA TELL ME WHAT TO DO!!! FREEEEDUM!!! I’LL GIVE YOU MY CHEEZBURGER WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY PUDGY DEAD HANDS!!!"
It’s a Georgia thing.
That would explain the peach tree dishes.
Sad thing is, she’s probably not even that ignorant but just playing to the rubes – and it’ll work.
Jordan Peterson et al.
The sad things are that she is that ignorant (wilfully so), she’s a congress critter, and perhaps sadest of all that she comes second in ignorance to another congress critter – Lauren Boebert.
Due to government surveilIance, I only use my peach tree dish for gazpacho, per federal law. :P
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=R2geqrT5W7k
The thing that gets me with conspiracy theorists, is how often they come up with stuff that would be pretty neat if it was actually workable.
I mean, lab grown meat would basically mean not having to go through the expense and ethical issues involved in normal meat, without having to sacrifice the flavor of meat.
Since I have to watch my sugar intake, I guess it would be healthier for me to eat meat from a peach tree dish than a peach pie.
Bruce Gorton,
Lab grown meat is coming. It is possible to produce animal proteins without animals. It will probably be available everywhere in ten years or so. And, yes, it will be great. So many vegetarians will be able to eat meat again and so many meat-eaters will be able to enjoy meat without moral doubts.
I don’t know why Greene is against it. I expect she will be won over in time. But why make fun of her for getting a phrase wrong? It is so snobbish. If she has any sense, she will gain mileage from this.
Re #1, why mock her for getting a phrase wrong that she’s only heard:
I think there is an expectation that people are literate, that words they have heard but not read are few. But this incident is not about misspelling, which would be the parallel to mispronouncing, but rather inventing a whole new nonsensical phrase based on misheard words, akin to a mondegreen.
I saw a video of a woman saying she only learned, at the age of 30, that it was “figure skating” rather than “finger skating”; that befuddles me, because the phrase is in writing all the time, and because “finger skating” makes no sense. But she found her error funny, and laughed along with her audience. Similarly, “petri dish” has been in writing a long time, and “peach tree dish” makes no sense, so I find it amusing and have few qualms about mild mockery over the error. Heck, there are whole collections of errors people have made through hearing but not seeing words, and I find them hilarious. (“Flaming young” for “filet mignon”? Ha! It’s amazing what people hear when they aren’t familiar with words.) An awful lot of humor would have to be discarded if we automatically rejected laughing at the mistakes of others or ourselves.
It is perhaps snobbish to think this way. I also to think it’s snobbish, in a different way, to ridicule people who actually are familiar with words and phrases, as I see happening sometimes. And MTG will probably do exactly this, using the incident as leverage against those awful snobby elites. But if we measured everything we said or did to avoid giving our opponents anything to use against us, we’d say nothing, and then be ridiculed for saying nothing.
@10 Not quite, the initial cells are taken from animals for synthetic meat, but it can be propagated either with or without animal byproducts. In the strictest sense it’s not completely without animal exploitation, but I’m sure, given the choice, the animals would rather have their cells taken than having their throats cut as soon as they reach their most profitable weight. Maybe they should make synthetic meat using human cells, at least humans could agree to having the procedure done. Morally justifiable cannibalism anyone? :P
Sack @11 She does seem to inadvertently invite ridicule pretty often, but here’s her tweet about the gazpacho comment, so at least she’s not entirely humorless about it. https://mobile.twitter.com/repmtg/status/1491550813273141253
I don’t agree that it’s snobbish to think people in Congress should be familiar with things like petri dishes. They should be broadly informed, because the work they have to do relies on being broadly informed. That’s not snobbery, it’s tools for the job.
Not to mention the ideas MTG espouses such as the answer to gun violence is more guns. Disturbingly wrong.
If you can dish it out…
I just read this morning a woman writing that her partner used to love that song about the witchy tall lion-man.
And he’s still on the lion.
The initial mistake is just a small part of this. It’s the repetition without really knowing what she’s saying that’s the greater sin. “Finger skating” is one thing, but if you make a big announcement say that “finger skating” is part of some sort of evil conspiracy without looking further into what exactly you’re accusing someone of doing. It’s different from using “communist” or “Nazi” to describe someone who is neither. You might not know what a communist or Nazi is or believes in, (and your listeners won’t know you don’t know either), but the unsavoury connotation is enough. Talking actual nonsense advertises the fact that you don’t know what you’re talking about, and that you don’t know that you don’t know it. (Normally, this would not be a good look for a public official. For MTG it’s a selling point.) It’s showing that you don’t really care what you’re talking about, so much as you care about pinning an accusation on someone. You don’t even know what it is, but because it sounds “bad” you’re going to pass it along and use it, understood or not, like some sort of malevolent parrot that’s pushed its way into a game of Chinese Whispers. That’s sloppiness and bad faith rolled into one.
This. Utterly this. I don’t expect my political representatives to know everything about everything, but I damn well expect them to be broadly and reasonably well educated, informed and literate. Where they are note nd there are always places where any of us is ignorant, I expect them to make an effort to become informed before wading in. And that’s just for local Council positions, or lowly NZ Members of parliament. “Leaders” of the most powerful (for now) country on earth I expect much better.