Someone Maybe Should Explain To This Fox News Show Host What The Hell Catalytic Converters Actually Do

Cat Theft Wrong Top
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Now, I know this is going to be a tricky thing to point out without getting too political, but I’m going to try, because fundamentally we’re an automotive site, and when hilariously wrong information about cars is bellowed out from someone seemingly in a position of authority and trust to at least some segment of the population, we should probably make note of it, and do what we can to clear things up. In this case, the someone is one of the hosts of Fox News’ show Outnumbered, Emily Compagno. And even though she has no fucking clue what a catalytic converter on a car does, that doesn’t stop her from pretending like she does, and in the process manages to be just about entirely wrong. And it all started with the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.

You may recall that just recently America’s premiere sausage-based vehicle, the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, had its catalytic converter stolen. I don’t know how I missed covering that here, and I apologize for that. Anyway, catalytic converter thefts are a huge problem in America right now, and the fact that our favorite hot dog car isn’t immune hurts, and it hurts bad. Of course the media was talking about this, with varying approaches and angles.

Over at Fox News, we got this angle:

Oh jeez. Okay, even if we put the absurd and ham-fisted attempt to make this into a highly political issue aside, we have to address what Compagno says about catalytic converters, specifically this remarkably confident-sounding stream of bullshit:

“The reason everyone is stealing catalytic converters all across America is because under Biden’s watch, then gas is so expensive everyone needs the part that makes cars run more efficiently. This just shows that no one is immune to it, including Weinermobiles.”

Wow. Okay, so, none of this is true. A catalytic converter is absolutely not the part of a car that makes it run more efficiently, as though that was even somehow possible with a bolt-on part. A well-maintained cat should not affect fuel economy at all, though if you have one in poor condition it’s possible it may contribute to increased exhaust back pressure and cause your engine to be less efficient, but if it’s in good shape, a cat has just about nothing to do with fuel economy at all, certainly not improving it in any way.

Nobody is stealing cats to put on their cars to get better fuel economy. There’s no one out there with a Geo Metro and nine cats bolted to each other in line getting 174 mpg. It’s not a thing, and it never was a thing, and it never will be a thing. People steal cats because there’s valuable platinum, palladium, and rhodium inside that can be sold for currency, which can then be exchanged for other goods and services.

Also, catalytic converter theft isn’t a new thing that just now happened as a direct result of relatively high gas prices. People have been stealing cats for years and years, though there seems to have been a spike around 2019, and grew a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What’s especially funny is that this is not the first time I’ve seen complete bullshit about catalytic converters used to make some half-assed political point. I wrote about one particularly insipid example a few years back, if you’re curious about the history of how morons willfully misunderstand parts of the exhaust system to make questionable political statements.

I think it’s the tone of assurance that really gets me here, the unwavering sense of confidence that comes through as an absolute fabrication is uttered, loudly, to make some sort of political point. I get that not everybody knows or even cares how cars actually work, but does nobody fact-check this stuff? I mean, clearly not, but holy shit, people, this is just stupid.

 (thanks, BoingBoing!)

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137 thoughts on “Someone Maybe Should Explain To This Fox News Show Host What The Hell Catalytic Converters Actually Do”

  2. What a clueless dipshit. You’d think she would know that the demand for platinum, palladium, and rhodium has gone through the roof since they are putting these elements into vaccines. And, yes, all under Biden’s watch.

    1. [citation needed]

      While it’s possible rare earth metals are used as catalysts in production, I can’t find any mention of them actually being in the vaccines. Is this a Q thing?

      It’s primarily Rhodium. Platinum and Palladium prices aren’t all that high and didn’t spike as hard. And it’s not an increase in demand but a decrease in supply. Mostly due to the Amplats plant shutting down for a while during Covid.

  3. If you don’t know already cable news is bad and most people in positions of power are horribly uninformed about subjects that they speak about while they have power to influence public opinion.

    People who like guns as a hobby have seen this happening since before the NFA was enacted in the 30s.

    At this point it’s quicker and more informative to do your own research into the news than to listen to the incorrect garbage being spouted by figureheads and politicians.

    1. The media panic in the 20’s about Maxim silencers (complete with bs drawings of revolvers with them) really puts my opinion in perspective: the media has always subsisted on lies and misinformation. Now they can just spread it faster, to the point that redactions or corrections are effectively useless.

  6. As an aside, all the people that just constantly shit on Fox news (rightfully so, btw), don’t recognize that it all has nothing to do with informing the public. It’s about stock prices/dividends/buybacks etc. They all do it. Every media outlet.
    It just depends on whether you like pretty blonde ladies to sell you the story, or you like the “disenfranchised” pretty people that have a different take on the same topic, which ultimately ends with the same answer. The difference between something like the BBC and Fox can be separated into who gets a better table at the White House Correspondence dinner. That’s it. Who gets the Filet first and has a more attentive waiter…

    It’s a farce, anyone with a brain knows it’s a joke and they sucker people into believing it is true for their own agenda. Eat it up at your own risk to even pay attention to what the blowhards say.

    (thanks, rootwyrm for the angry inspiration to write this 🙂 )

    1. It seems a bit disingenuous to loop all media organizations together when Fox has literally gone to court and made the argument that no reasonable people would believe what they say. This is not something that all media organizations do. This is something that Fox does. Whataboutism is is an easy, but wrong answer.

      https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-believe-the-facts-tucker-carlson-tells-you-so-say-fox-s-lawye

      1. The NPR? Sorry, but that is also part of the hustle. lol. It’s a privately funded corporation that has very specific donors to fund them.

        I’m not saying that Terry Groos (ha) or the other “hosts” aren’t trying their best, but it’d be a mistake to think that they have independent freedom over their content.

        It’s not how any of it works. NPR claims to be the “Truth in American Journalism”, but they have to have some sort of friction to generate revenue. They are as far from altruistic as any other outlet that relies on clicks or ad returns. Don’t think that their Sirius XM and other plarforms are not a concern to keep the lights on. It’s a real thing.

        1. Man, people with your viewpoint are seriously a major part of the problem. Not quite as bad as the Trumpies and other international equivalents, but still awful and generally useless.

          1. Name a news network, and I will provide an example of an egregious lie they have told in the last sixty days in the name of sheer demagoguery, from any point of view along the political spectrum. It won’t be hard.

            I’ll tell you who the problem is. If you are the type of person who says “it’s those [fill in the blank] who are the problem,” then YOU ARE THE PROBLEM. You are the avid consumer of whatever particular flavor of bullshit you are being spoon fed by your particular favorite news source.

            It’s the same reason I don’t really get upset at telemarketers anymore. Instead, I get upset at the gullible people who buy what they are selling, which means there is still money to be made via their tactics. If nobody bought it, there wouldn’t be any money in it, and they would stop. Who buys this crap? There’s yer problem.

            1. Actually Lr0dy, I take back my reply to thank you for your reply.
              “…but still awful and generally useless.”

              Now I’m not gonna get into a pissing match here (because it’s the internet), but how is it a bad thing to understand and talk about the mechanics of Media, when I have a degree in Mass Media Communications from a (not in any way shabby) University?
              I don’t see how having an informed opinion of how the whole media landscape operates is awful and useless.
              Maybe it is? However, I doubt that wholeheartedly.

              With that said, now I will say thank you for your reply and I hope you have a nice weekend. 🙂

  7. With the release of their emails via the Dominion case, it should be clear to anyone that Fox lies, knows it lies and simply doesn’t give a crap about it.

  8. Wish I could be a fly on wall when someone tells the host (Emily Compagno) and all her compatriots that a catalytic converter is actually a SMOG device to protect the ENVIRONMENT and is required by government MANDATE to be on every vehicle.

    Whoa…Duuuude…maybe it is really all the anti-environmentalists that are stealing the cats.

  9. How could she be so ill informed? Everyone knows that catalytic converters are really used to pump marijuana into the air to make us more controllable. Everyone knows this. Everybody is talking about it.

    1. Wrong! They are stolen so the rare metals inside can be used to power Hunter Biden’s laptop. And the cases are used to build Jewish Space Lasers. Shit I am getting tired of educating you left wing ignorants…

    2. I keep a special catalyzing converter under my coffee table for just such occasions.

      Now that you ask, yes I have familiarized myself with the operation of a water pipe for tobacco

      1. Heh. Depending on where you are, those signs at the head shop seem quaint now, don’t they? After “recreational” passed when we lived in Oregon, my wife made a great show of walking into a shop and loudly saying, “I WOULD LIKE TO BUY ONE OF YOUR MARIJUANA-SMOKING PIPES, BECAUSE I PLAN TO SMOKE MARIJUANA WITH IT.”

        1. The aliens who invented the dang things don’t want you to know. I hear they’re building landing strips for extraterrestrial frogs in Ohio! That’s why the plants are dying and the train blew up! It’s the aliens! They’re in it with the trains!!!!

  13. I’ve been waiting for years to use this Archer nugget in conversation somewhere.

    “Oh no…my car is slowing down for some unknown reason! Must be…out of…carburetor?”

    1. This reminds me of 2 times auto jargon was used incorrectly.
      1. A Liberty Mutual commercial where the woman states she has looked at every detail before buying her new car including the “torque ratio”

      2. In one of the Transformers movies when Megan Fox states that a guy has an upgraded cam by looking at the engine.
      I do love when people try and talk car.

      1. I will not tolerate slander on the hottest women to ever appear in a Transformers movie. Sure, she is bat crazy (and I feel for her kids. That’d be a rough Mom to have), but Ain’t nothing wrong with a pretty girl doing mechanical work on a V-8. ha

        Isn’t everything plastic these days?

      2. 1. I have known people anal and annoying enough to do that kind of research on a family hauler.

        2. It’s a well established fact that the Autobots have exposed overhead cams. Decepticon camshafts are mounted in the engine block. I heard it on Fox News.

    3. Ray kind of mumbles that line. I always thought he said, “carburator … juice?” But I could never quite tell.

      Looks like I know what I’m watching tonight!

  14. The same shit happens when anyone talks about the railroad! It’s kinda a hot topic at this point.

    It gets me irrationally upset when people can’t even get the basic facts right. I understand that the terminology is different in different countries, but a Conductor is NOT an Engineer. That’s 101-level stuff. Same thing as saying Grand Central is a station. Technically, it is a station on the subway lines as a stop, but the “actual” Grand Central is a Terminal. As in, train lines terminate there. It’s a terminus if you wanna get a Latin about it, lol

    I don’t expect people to fully grasp how the railroad works, but when they don’t even do the basic research….

    2. I love it when people get this pedantic. On the one hand, who cares about Grand Central Terminal-Station? But the fact is, YOU care, you want to get it right and you want other people to also get it right.

      Cheers to you, Mr. stoneyII. Because accuracy matters.

  15. We’ve sadly reached the point where you can make up basically anything you want and spout it as fact. And even if you’re proven blatantly wrong, it doesn’t matter. No shame, no nothing. The next 10-20 years are going to be a thing to behold.

    1. Hey, as long as it’s not my (or anyone else’s stolen) cat, I won’t complain. Maybe it’ll get at least one coal-roller to have a shop fix their truck… yeah, maybe not, but we can hope, right?

  17. I’m not really surprised by this, it isn’t just a Fox News or automotive-related problem. A lot of so-called reporters (or others in the media) don’t understand the subjects they’re reporting about.
    I strongly suspect that almost everybody here watches or reads news stories about their pet subjects and just cringes at times.

    1. I had a brief newspaper career and a much longer stint as a trade journalist—same skills, just a narrower focus. At my first newspaper job, I received a high compliment from the subject of one of my articles (a fairly unflattering piece). He said, “You don’t write what you don’t understand.” I tried to live by that throughout my career. I wish more of today’s journalists would.

  18. The worst part is that even when the educated public watches that blatant misinformation happening live, just because of the network it’s on they would never call that out for whoever is watching around them, they dance around the lie and make sure the hate pass thru

      1. While you have a point, Fox News is a major news media organization. Sadly, it is even the most watched. Just because they spend a lot of time complaining about the “media” doesn’t mean they aren’t part of it.

        Though it may seem like an insult to the rest, I always like to see people reminded that Fox News is actually mainstream media.

        1. Yeah. There’s still plenty of folks in the media who care about getting things right and who own up to mistakes when they happen. Folks are human, deadlines are short, and sometimes even the most conscientious editors miss things.

          I hate it when everyone across an ENTIRE industry is lumped in with bad actors who’ll skew the facts of a situation to make a ham-fisted political point.

        1. To elaborate – I am not *defending* Fox, I think pretty much *all* the media are terrible at reporting these days. Every single one of them is biased and present options as facts.

      1. “Pretty much all of them”? Nope.

        Your “everyone is bad so we shouldn’t care” attitude minimizes this in a way that’s not at all appropriate, and simply excuses the stupidity as if it’s not at all unusual.

        Next time you think you see something so factually incorrect elsewhere, please point it out.

        I think we’ll be waiting for literally decades while you try to find anything nearly as stupid as an average week on Fox News.

        Your take on this is exactly why dumb shit like this is tolerated and is becoming more common.

        1. Really? Decades? I don’t want to turn this into a debate about the media, but did you miss the entire screwup on the Russian “collusion”, the Hunter Biden laptop, “fat is healthy”…I don’t have full time to point all the whole pile of BS coming from pretty much every media outlet. There’s a reason that people don’t trust any of the media these days. And I mean all of them. Fox is no better or worse than the rest of them, they are just right-ring. The left-wing media isn’t any better, just different. I miss the days of actual news, like we used to get, that was factual without a pile of opinions.

          1. Your acceptance of complete ignorance and deliberate stupidity is still an exercise in stupidity.

            Media screw-ups happen. So does misinformation based on “latest studies” that get breathlessly reported because they are news, but then a flaw is later found and the first is debunked.

            The difference between Fox News is that they simply don’t care at all about what they say, not a bit, as long as it fits their narrative. They don’t care what their hosts say, as long as they hit their ratings targets.

            The difference is that there is no moral core at Fox News. They don’t even attempt to discern the truth.

        2. This sort of stupidity isn’t unusual. It’s already ubiquitous. It’s in fact more often than not, taxpayer funded. There are people in positions of power, more often than not unelected positions of power, making decisions that cause such stupidity to proliferate by giving it a platform with an audience of tens of millions or more. Those in elected and unelected positions of power allow such platforms to exist by allowing corporate consolidation of the media, and place into said media individuals from or with ties to various government bureaucracies with their own agendas and for whom misinforming the public is routine.

          The fact is, a small number of corporations that can be counted on one hand control virtually all of the “news” media within the U.S., which has also been infiltrated at all levels by intelligence agencies. The result? Nearly everything the U.S. public believes about nearly every issue is false, and in many cases, falsehoods have even been peddled by so-called “experts” in their relevant fields in exchange for money(this is especially true of medicine). With the advent of social media, uncommonly known facts began to proliferate alongside the stupidity, but with modern AI technology and hordes of tech workers hired specifically to censor those people saying things on social media that the powerful don’t want said, the mass manipulation of the public can continue unabated.

          “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” ~Former CIA Director William Casey

          An interesting book that explains in part how all of this came to fruition:

          https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.126489

          Propaganda is now the norm, but is nothing new. In this instance portrayed in this Autopian article, it was so blatantly STUPID that virtually everyone with room temperature IQs and above can see it so obviously. The vast majority of bullshit presented by the media isn’t as obvious, and more often than not is presented in such a way so as to manipulate the majority of humanity into accepting more wars, erosion of their most basic civil liberties under the guise of “safety”, “the children”, “saving lies”, or any other concocted justification dujour, and a loss of living standard while simultaneously being convinced that things are better than ever with government manipulated statistics to “prove” it.

      2. I mean, other than being demonstrable hyperbole (Fox News lies or makes mistakes a significant percentage of the time, other news outlets lie or make mistakes some of the time; Fox News is also selective about what it “reports” on and how, while other non-opinion news isn’t), sure.

        1. CNN, MSNBC, CBS, etc. regularly lie and mislead about firearms constantly.

          This person on Fox is someone I’ve never seen before (I don’t watch Fox but I try to stay informed) and likely is someone who isn’t afraid to talk out their butt about a subject they know basically nothing about while their job is to influence public opinion.

          They’re perfect for cable news, which is to say cable news is just a waste of time that actively makes you less informed and kills brain cells.

          1. Oh, ok. Now I’m waiting for a billion dollar plus lawsuit from the firearms industry against the organizations you mention. The firearms industry could definitely afford to sue, the defendants could definitely afford to pay if they lost. What tort lawyer could resist getting a percentage of that? Remember, the standard for proof in a civil action is a “preponderance of the evidence” – https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/preponderance_of_the_evidence – if over 50% of the evidence proves your point, you’ve won. With thousands upon thousands of hours of recordings, plus who knows how many thousands of terabytes of reporters notes, it should be dead simple to come up enough evidence, 50.0000001% of the total evidence presented, that the firearms industry is being lied about.
            My guess is that they would if they had the the slimmest chance of winning.

  22. As if stealing catalytic converters is some sort of new phenomenon. Shit’s been going on for at least two decades.

    Blame the companies that targeted low income people and blue collar workers so they could get them hooked on oxycontin.

    God these people are so dumb to believe an entertainment channel.

    1. I once got my cat (along with the other 5 or 6 enlistees and all the government cars) stolen while I was away over night at MEPS prior to joining the Air Force. That was a REALLY loud parking lot on a Saturday morning when we all got back and started around the same time.

  25. “as though that was even somehow possible with a bolt-on part”

    Some of the Fox “News” staff overestimate the utility of bolt-ons.

    And this is roughly #4,392 on the list of things those braying jackasses do not understand.

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