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43 thoughts on “Fox News Is a Cesspool

  1. Austin

    “The only winning move is not to play.”

    Don’t watch Fox News. There is absolutely no intellectually or socially redeeming reason to ever watch it. You watch it simply if you want to be entertained by news-like shows.

    1. Iridium

      How does Faux News benefit if it ends up killing all of its viewers? I’m trying to understand the point of their efforts here.

  2. iamr4man

    Israel is known for its high vaccination rate. One month ago its 7 day average for cases was 2,425 per day. Its current 7 day average is 184.

  3. DFPaul

    About a month ago I read a story in the Real News that Russia had a disinformation campaign aimed at vaccines — spreading the idea that western vaccines didn’t work and/or were dangerous — and intended to help Russian vaccines in the world market.

    Perhaps Fox is still pro Russia?

    1. Midgard

      Fox is financed by the Bank of Russia which is owned by a consortium of de Rothschild heirs. One member is/will be "was" soon enough Rupert Murdoch. Let's also be clear, when the media talks about right wing, extremists, they are talking about the de Rothschild lineage that came from permindex and morphed into Beach's con in 1969 in Oregon. A black ops from the elite to brain wash and control white men for servitude to the house of de Rothschild. It's mixture of Israelism and Jewish Libertarian philosophy was one of the greatest hoaxes created in modern times.

          1. KawSunflower

            "would have" - tried to press area outside of text box to edit & sent, instead.

            In addition, replies to replies always fail on both cellphone & laptop. WordPress has sent me 2 offers to change my P/W ' but I was obviously logged in, having received the WP "Howdy."

  4. Midgard

    Carlson is a homosexual and tied to foreign money. Start conspiracy theories of why he mutters dialectical nonsense until lone nuts start hunting him. He will die soon enough.

      1. JimFive

        Maybe because: in public no one knows whether you've been vaccinated or are just a nutjob. It can't be left up to retail clerks to police everyone's vaccination cards which aren't made to be secure anyway.

    1. Joel

      A somewhat longer answer is that there is some evidence that vaccinated folks can still carry the virus asymptomatically for a few days and infect others who may not be vaccinated. That evidence is controversial.

      There is no question that the vaccines work. The data from the phase III trials demonstrate that. For Carlson to suggest that they don't is just obscene.

      1. Clyde Schechter

        I don't think it's accurate to say that evidence is controversial. There are by now well documented cases of vaccinated people being infected and shedding virus and strong evidence that they have in turn passed it to others. What is controversial at this time is the frequency with which this happens.

        Unfortunately, during the clinical trials of the vaccines, they did not monitor the participants for asymptomatic infection. They only evaluated people who became symptomatic. So the opportunity to learn about that in well-controlled circumstances was missed. Now we have only observational data to go on, with all the vagaries that implies. So it isn't clear whether this is a substantial problem or just a rare occurrence.

        And it bears noting that, although it is very rare, there are cases of vaccinated people developing serious illness, and there are some fatal cases as well. The vaccine is not 100% effective--but no vaccine or other medical treatment is. These particular vaccines are among the best! And if enough people get vaccinated, the epidemic will recede to a low-level endemic problem, or, less likely but possibly, disappear altogether.

        1. JonF311

          Re: I don't think it's accurate to say that evidence is controversial.

          Yes it is. I have seen speculation and uncertainty as to whether vaccinated people can be carriers, able to infect others. I have seen confirmation that they can exactly no where remotely mainstream. Stop spreading disinformation!

    2. bbleh

      And a more general answer is, Carlson isn't really complaining about public health measures to limit the spread of COVID; rather, he's expressing the emotionally immature Oppositional-Defiant-Disorder-like reaction of Fox viewers to ANY guidance or requirements from ANYONE with knowledge (or political affiliation, or religious affiliation, or heritage, or skin tone) different from their own. That is, he's behaving like a dimwitted adolescent screaming "I don't wanna, you can't make me, you're not the boss of me!" which has a deep and visceral appeal to the typical Fox viewer, which in fact is the main reason they watch Fox in the first place.

  5. jte21

    There is no more conservatism, only trolling. The point isn't to engage, debate, critique -- it's simply to "get a rise out" of your political enemies by insulting them or something they care about (like equal rights or public health) and then yuk it up over how clever you are. Limbaugh -- may his fat, bigoted ass be getting the eternal pitchforking it so richly deserves -- pioneered this, but it was perfected by Fox and its (now) many imitators.

    "We got mild-mannered lib-weenie Kevin Drum to call us a 'cesspool'! Har! Score!"

  6. ey81

    If you're trying to increase vaccine acceptance, telling people that you can't abandon any of the lockdown measures even after you're vaccinated is the wrong way to go, especially when it's coupled with dire warnings about how dangerous the vaccine is. The rational course for any person faced with a dangerous vaccine of dubious effectiveness is to let others get the vaccine and reap the benefits of herd immunity (if it happens) without any of the risk. If you want people to get vaccinated, promise them individual freedom, not a chance to get sick for a possible greater good.

    1. ey81

      P.S. I got vaccinated, and at that point I pretty much stopped wearing a mask, started traveling, going out to dinner, etc. Otherwise, what would be the point?

      1. realrobmac

        I understand your position from an emotional perspective, but here's what you're getting wrong. The Covid vaccines are something like 90 to 95% effective in preventing you from getting sick with Covid. But there is still a 5 to 10% chance that you could get sick with Covid even if you've been vaccinated. And obviously you can still spread it to other people.

        The point of a vaccine campaign is to reach a critical mass of vaccinated people. That's when the disease will really stop spreading. If 75% of people are only 5% vulnerable, then the infection rate will drop and everyone can go back to normal. Till then, if you are vaccinated, the proper thing to do is to still wear your mask in public but you can gather in small groups with other vaccinated folk so the risk of transmission is very low.

        Your behavior in public should be driven not by whether you personally are vaccinated, but by the infection rate. If the infection rate in your area is very low and dropping then your behavior is reasonable. If it's high and climbing (as it is in many parts of the US currently) then it's not reasonable.

        If you chose to ignore all of this there's not much anyone can do about it, but you should at least be aware of what you are doing.

        1. bbleh

          Just to avoid confusion, a 95% group average efficacy rate for a vaccine does not mean that it is "95%" efficacious for every individual in that group (whatever exactly that would mean for an individual). For some individuals it may be extremely efficacious, while for others it may be materially less so, perhaps because they have other conditions or characteristics that make them more vulnerable, or perhaps because they're pretty much invulnerable in the first place so the vaccine makes very little difference for them. The 95% figure is an average across a wide spectrum of individuals.

          It's important for all individuals to continue to wear masks to prevent spread of the virus -- which even vaccinated individuals can do -- until enough people are vaccinated that the virus has almost "nowhere to hide" from which to spread in the first place. We're not there yet.

      2. Joel

        I got vaccinated in August and September of 2020 as part of the Moderna phase III trial and still wear a mask and social distance when I'm indoors. Because I'm not selfish and understand that this isn't just about me.

    2. aldoushickman

      "If you want people to get vaccinated, promise them individual freedom, not a chance to get sick for a possible greater good."

      Well, why stop there? Why not promise people "individual freedom" plus, like, increased sexual attractiveness, telepathy, and the ability to predict lottery numbers? We can promise people all sorts of things if the goal isn't to accurately convey information about what needs to be done to end a pandemic!

      In all honesty, though, it might have been smart to promise everybody $50 cash when they get their vaccine. I'm betting the number of people with "principled" opposition to vaccination who value their principles more than 50 bucks is probably pretty small.

  7. NotCynicalEnough

    The good news is the only people that really pay attention to a half bright white male like Tucker Carlson are other half bright (or less) white males. They will reap the reward.

  8. akapneogy

    Carlson is relying on the 'eternal sunshine of the spotless MAGA mind' to have memories of his lying completely erased.

  9. pack43cress

    The real problem is two-fold: 1) American culture has come to be based on selfishness; and 2) the problem is to complex for general understanding.
    To clarify #1: The USA began as several colonies of people with different cultural backgrounds, but for each colony, survival in the "new world" required skills of self-reliance. Over the centuries this cultural origin has morphed into radical self-interest ("I don't need anybody else to thrive"). What got lost in the evolution was the understanding that those colonies relied heavily on community to survive. Now it's all just me, me, me. The impact on our society dealing with a pandemic is that those who understand what needs to be done have to sell it to members of society by framing it as being in their self interest, when it actually requires understanding that the solution requires community action for community benefit.
    Part #2 is this: What is known so far is that vaccination does NOT demonstably prevent me from being infected (technically "inoculated"). It prevents illness or at least serious illness. That is a self-interest. There is both a positive and a negative implication of this. The good news is that when a significant portion of the population gets vaccinated, the hospitals will not get overwhelmed. That is a public health interest, less often perceived as an individual self-interest. The bad news is that every time a person gets infected, even if the illness is mild or asymptomatic, the virus creates multitudes of factories in the host pumping out new replications of the virus, and each replication is an opportunity for random mutation. Numbers are huge and mutation is not super-rampant with this virus, but every opportunity we give it to mutate is giving the enemy a chance to get more infectious and more deadly. So just making sure people don't get really sick is not good enough, if you look at it from the POV of an epidemiologist. The human race is in a war; why help the enemy? Problem is, in our culture, a very small percentage of the population is both able and willing to look at it in this way. We want to get to where the virus is not circulating in the community.

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