Fux Noise Is Moving From 'Just Asking Questions' to Full-On Anti-Vax Crapola

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Last week, we suggested that well-meaning liberal concern about the Delta Variant, fueled by obsessive media coverage, was beginning to verge on hysteria. The vaccines still work against the Delta Variant, so the way forward at this point is to keep calm, carry on, and get as many people as possible vaccinated as quickly as possible. It is not realistic to expect Americans to go back into lockdown unless a variant emerges that can evade the vaccines, and that emergence becomes more likely the more unvaccinated people there are around to spread the thing. All of this is to say that what appears to be a new kind of anti-vax push on the American right is, even by the standards of the American right, particularly grotesque. The swimming pool is finally reopening amid a head wave and they're taking a big dump in the shallow end.

Matt Gertz of MediaMatters spends a lot of time monitoring right-wing media, and on Thursday he reported that the babbling over there has moved towards more straightforward anti-vaccine rhetoric. (Up until now, the primary mode outside the true fever-swamp precincts has been Just Asking Questions—or, in Tucker Carlson's case, Just Asking Questions about why no one is allowed to ask questions, which in turn leaves the viewer believing there are not just questions to be asked but answers that are bad, even though we're still actually dealing in questions about questions.) Gertz provided four examples of this new shift from the last day of conservative infotainment programming.

Candace Owens, a star of the Trump era thanks to her overnight conversion to "conservatism" after running a blog of a very different persuasion, offered this to her 2.7 million followers Wednesday afternoon:

Link to tweet

Unabashed! Freedumb! Family! Infringed! Government bad! Meanwhile, there is no actual reason supplied for her choice. The fact that Owens is free to make this choice, which is true, somehow becomes the justification for making the choice. The subtext, as it always is in reactionary thought, is that The Enemies want you to make the other choice, thus this is the choice to make.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/fox-news-moving-just-asking-154100937.html

This response to Owens was great.

Link to tweet

[underpants]

1. Medical freedom

Wow

[East-A-Squared]

7. Medical freeDUMB.

[Escurumbele]

15. What is her stance on abortion? On the pill, on republican obsession to control women's bodies?

She talks about "Medical Freedom"? How hypocritical is that?

[underpants]

17. They think that's sooooo "Owning the Libs" they love it

It’s a big hit on talk radio.

[Javaman]

2. since their ratings are in the shitter, they have to pull out the big crazy. nt

[underpants]

10. Everyone's ratings are down but Fox News is battling extreme operations to keep their market share

to keep their share of the right wing market. You hear “legacy media” a lot on talk radio but that not just CNN, the networks and the Times/Post that’s new start ups trying to ween viewers away from Fox. Newsmax and OANN are the two TV operations but they have nowhere near the resources needed to really battle Fox. They are all setting their hair on fire daily to make noise and get attention. Fox oddly is following THEM down rabbit holes.

Trump was huge for everyone’s ratings.

[Mopar151]

3. Fox will kill for ratings!

Literally....

[abqtommy]

4. When it comes to anti-vaxxers, Lock. Them. All. Up. Except for the very few with legitimate

medical exemptions.

[Runningdawg]

5. Of course I don't watch but have they been sticking magnets to themselves on air?

[oldsoftie]

13. Still waiting on THAT video.

[PortTack]

6. Check back in Candice after a member of your stupid "unabashedly" as a family decision finds

Someone disabled or dead from covid.

I have no pity!!

[mnhtnbb]

8. Insurance companies could put a stop to this

All they have to do is put out an announcement that as of January 1, 2022 if you haven't been vaccinated, your premiums are going up. And if you end up with COVID and have to be hospitalized? Well, guess what? The cost of treatment is added to your deductible.

But they won't do it. Instead, they'll be raising premiums on everyone because they are going to have to cover the cost of hospitalizations of these anti-vax idiots.

[Yavin4]

9. [phone]

But first, the FDA needs to give full approval. There's more than enough data out there about the vaccines for them to do so. I don't think that any other medicine that they have approved in the past has more data.

Once the FDA does that, insurance companies can bring the hammer down on the unvaccinated.

[oldsoftie]

14. YES! The FDA needs to get this done.

If they know everything they need to know, whats the holdup?
I know there's no way to measure long term effects without actual time going by, but isnt there a way to skip that?
People are always saying the FDA takes far too long to approve drugs. I'm not up to speed on how it could safely be sped up but the vax seems like a good start

[Yavin4]

19. For all of the crap in our food and other medicines that the FDA approves...

they going to find religion all of the sudden?

Also, for all of the anti-vaxxers that eat gross shit every day from places like Taco Bell and Subway, shit that cannot even be classified as food, they're going to be pure when it comes to the vaccine?

[oldsoftie]

29. Preach!!

[Bernardo de La Paz]

35. They consume "food-like substances". . . . nt

[roamer65]

11. 🦠

Hey Candace,

Come out and play with me.

I don’t bite...


🦠

Delta.

[Scottie Mom]

42. 👆This!

[roamer65]

12. Let them die.

Seriously. Let natural selection run its course.

Don’t let people like her in the hospitals. Send them home with some aspirin.

[Escurumbele]

16. This is a repeat of something I posted on another blog

Vincent Bugliosi sent Charles Manson to jail even though Manson had not committed the murders himself, but he was found guilty because he was the master mind of the criminal acts and thus he was as guilty, or more, of those who did.

In Bugliosi's book "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" he lays out a blueprint for prosecuting Bush and his cronies for the murders of Iraqi civilians and US soldiers because they knowingly sent them to their deaths, he is using the same rules that sent Manson to life in prison.

I wonder if the same rules Bugliosi used against Manson and those he proposed for Bush et al could be used against these republicans, and TV loud mouths at Fox, who some of them have been vaccinated, but are urging their followers to fight against the vaccine knowing they can and that many will die if they contract the COVID-19 virus, in other words, they are sending their believers to their deaths.

They should start with Tucker Carlson, he is the biggest spreader of lies about the vaccine and has a following who believe in the murderous rhetoric he spews night after night on TV.

[Rocknation]

18. Candace Owens Tweet Translated

"Not one person in my family will ever touch the Covid-19 vaccine because it would be tantamount to confessing that I've gambled 'all in' on conservatism in general and Trump in particular, and come up snake eyes. It would be impossible to survive the humiliation of such a gargantuan loss of credibility when I need to retain my place (AND my job) in their government."

Rocknation

[oldsoftie]

30. Or, "Not one person in my family will ADMIT taking it"

I know damn well some of these non-public people I see on FB yapping about it have damn well gotten that shot. They just wont admit it

[soldierant]

43. When I see a black person who is educated (or not terribly educated but likely for other reasons to

be aware of the Tuskegee syphilis project, and Henrietta Lacks, and a few other medical projects which can at best be called "exploitative," I can't consider that person paranoid. Nor can I as a white person, give her (or him) the assurance that the vaccine is a good idea.

I don't say they are not wrong, but I do say they are not stupid, paranoid, or irrational.

Another situation where people striving to be "color-blind" ends up putting people of color at greatest risk.

[seta1950]

20. Yea

Medical freedom to die, stupid people.

[seta1950]

21. Yea

Medical freedom to die, stupid people.

[Initech]

22. To paraphrase a quote from Marge Simpson:

"You know, Fox News morphed into a hardcore death cult so fast that nobody really noticed!".

[IronLionZion]

23. Fox News, Big Tobacco, Opioid drug makers, gun makers

all profiting from killing their customers. Good luck with that.

[ScratchCat]

24. The new Conservative meme

Is to co-opt "liberal" slogans as their objection to anything positive supported by "the other side".

Their thought process goes like this: "Hey, the libs defend abortion by saying "my body" and "medical choice", so we'll oppose vaccines and masks for the same reason and make them the hypocrites!".

They think they are clever.

Seriously; this is the game they are playing.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

34. Difference they don't see is that choice is PUBLIC HEALTH but women's choice is truly own body

It's not really their choice to make, or shouldn't be. It is for public health as much or more than personal protection. When a woman chooses to terminate a pregnancy, it is her body and only her body. She is not affecting the "body politic", not affecting anyone else's health.

In the racist Fifties that they adore, they would not have a choice. Children were either vaccinated or didn't attend school.

But of course logic is beyond people who were convinced emotionally, which is how propaganda works.

[DallasNE]

25. There Is No Right To Murder In The Constitution

Anti-government speech has its limits. And that is all this is. There are two Supreme Court decisions that says that. With this disease it is not a case of "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". It has no boundaries so whe you refuse the shots and get the virus and pass it on to others it is much like 3rd degree murder when the other person dies. Lock them up.

[AncientOfDays]

26. Except ...

... except if you're a woman - then your reproductive medical should absolutely be controlled by the government --- that's what she and other anti-vaxxers are saying.

[BlueWavePsych]

27. Yikes!

[BSdetect]

28. A reporter needs to ask if Rupert Murdoch and Klan are vaxed

[Aussie105]

31. A future history book quote about the 2019 to 20XX pandemic:

'Around the world, XX millions died (*)'

(*) Mostly in poorer countries where vaccinations were too low. Exception was America, where a lot of deaths were the result of certain sections of the media pushing an anti-science anti-vaccination propaganda line.

I guess you can't fix stupid. Especially if certain media outlets breed it and feed it.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

32. They can rest easy in their graves knowing they owned the libruhls to the very end. . . . nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

33. They will shout "Keep your gubmint hands off'n our Medicare" as they bury their mother dead of Covid

[Thrill]

36. Make up your mind. They want to give Trump the credit for The Vaccines

But want to discourage people from taking it. Can’t have it both ways

[GoCubsGo]

37. One has to wonder why they're so hell-bent on killing off their audience.

A cult is a cult is a cult, I guess.

[The Wizard]

38. Send for Dr. Kevorkian

[The Wizard]

39. I anxiously await the

crack Pox News medical team to prescribe hemlock.

[lonely bird]

40. OK, they get COVID

They don’t get treated. Actions have consequences.

[COL Mustard]

41. Candace, You're Free To Not Get Vaccinated

That’s your right.

I’m free to not give a flying fuck what you do or say, and to have no sympathy for you and your family when you contract one of the variants. That’s my right.

I hope that when you and your fellow losers get sick, you’re denied treatment. That’s what you deserve.

Have a nice day.