Nearly four in ten American households own gas stoves, and many of them like their stoves. So, they and their elected representatives noted their displeasure. The widespread outrage prompted the media to claim that conservatives were having a “freakout,” starting a “culture war,” “pushing a narrative,” and feeding the “far-right perpetual outrage machine” over the prospective ban.
Never mind that a member of a federal agency empowered to regulate kitchen appliances had just said, out loud, that a gas-stove ban was on the table, and that less than one month ago, Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Don Beyer sent a letter to the CPSC highlighting the “cumulative burden” that gas-stove emissions putatively impose on “Black, Latino, and low-income households.” The story wasn’t the proposed ban, which would have outlawed an appliance owned by tens of thousands of Americans, but the fact that conservatives didn’t like it.
The media reaction was another example of an oft-deployed trope: progressives aren’t “waging a culture war” when they try to chemically castrate schoolchildren, deny life-saving medical care to abortion survivors, or ban popular kitchen appliances. Conservatives are “waging a culture war,” however, when they notice, and declare their intention to do something about it.
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