I've seen some chatter on my Twitter timeline about whether Sean Hannity really told his audience to get vaccinated last week. Here's what he said last Monday:
Please take COVID seriously, I can't say it enough. Enough people have died, we don't need more deaths. Research like crazy, talk to your doctor, your doctors, medical professionals you trust based on your unique medical history, your current medical condition and you and your doctor make a very important decision for your own safety. Take it seriously. You also have a right to medical privacy, doctor-patient confidentiality is also important and it absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated. I believe in science and I believe in the science of vaccination.
For what it's worth, there's less here than meets the eye. "Research like crazy" is the giveaway. It's the fundamental dogma of redpillers who are forever claiming that they've "done the research," which is why they believe in QAnon or pizzagate or the Deep State or whatever. This is not even subtle enough to be called a dog whistle. It's right out there. "Do the research" is all but a demand to start googling every vaccine conspiracy theory out there.
As for the rest, Hannity spends most of his time talking about doctors and "your unique medical history," concluding with his advice that it makes sense for "many" people to get vaccinated. This is pretty thin gruel.
In fairness, Hannity is walking a tightrope. He knows that vaccines work and are a good idea for nearly everyone, but he also needs to maintain his cred with the nutball crowd. If they think he's caved in to the establishment, they'll tune him out instantly.
And apparently even the timid advice he gave on Monday was enough to endanger his standing as a true believer. On Thursday, after being denounced/praised for his unexpected statement, he hit back, telling his radio audience in no uncertain terms, "I'm not urging people to get the COVID-19 vaccine." All he had done, he said, was tell them to do the research and talk to their doctor and consider their unique medical condition. Presumably he is now back in the good graces of the wingnuts.
That's a big leap from his, "I'm just asking questions" while pushing total bullshit. Just saying.
I think FOXnews is exhibiting a bit of an Offspring career arc: started off in the fever swamps of the genre's truest believers (Roger Ailes's work for Dick Nixon; Offspring's early LP for Nitro Records); became too big to fail on the strength of events largely outside their doing (Clinton impeachment; releasing Smash on Epitaph just as Nirvana, & alt more generally, peaked with Kurdt's suicide, & punk broke with Green Day's set at Woodstock '94); succeeded against the odds (Bush-43 winning Florida by the skin of his brother's secretary of state; Offspring defeat Epitaph in court, go on to release Ixnay on the Hombre & Anericana on Columbia); became a joke as their ideology faltered (Bush leaves economy & foreign policy a wreck, resulting in Black president (even winning Indiana!), then the Pro-Trump, anti-JEB! whitelash; Offspring release Original Prankster).
For News was born in patriarchy and sexualization of women in Australia, and it came to young maturity in the UK in the same way: BIG PICTURES OF TITS ON PAGE THREE EVERY DAY, that's how they sold those newspapers and built that empire.
In their adult maturity in America and now in global late-stage capitalism, , the Fox Empire has shifted with he technology and become more sophisticated. They have realized that they can put out entertainment videos (and they'll do every format, broadcast TV, cable TV, movies, streaming, whatever), that seem to play up and glorify EVERY type of "sin" and cultural rebellion, nothing is off limits to them on the entertainment side. And then, they have taken their entertainment knowledge, and applied that to the news side, to craft alternative realities for the cultists.
Their long obsession with black on white criminal violence and spreading fear and promoting gun culture is just one aspect of it.
BTW, I've been reading your comments for a while now, it's clear you are just weird independent troll who pastes together s--t.
I do try not to reply to trolls, however your history of Fox was so ridiculous that I had to set the record straight.
Can you also set the record of straight? Your drug of choice is bath salts, and your hero is maybe John Wayne Gacy, or maybe Manson?
ClipArt practices Poe's law as an art form: Poe-try.
Trump, Hannity and others in the Republican party have been playing a deadly cynical game of lighting fires with matches so that they could later claim "We alone can fix it!" I used to think that voters were too smart to fall for it. I was wrong.
Who knew that Backdraft, & not Hillbilly Elegy, would be the Ron Howard film for this moment?
That's shrewdly observed! Hillbilly Elegy IS Backdraft 30 years on. Ron Howard must have realized it too.
Should have gotten Kiefer Sutherland to be an offscreen narrator for Elegy.
There's a reason there's a Nanny State..... and it's not liberals.
Remind me again, why exactly do we need to be all respectful of the numbwit “fuck your feelings” crowd on the off chance they might decide to protect themselves, their families and their communities against a serious epidemic?
Sean Hannity's audience may be suffering from a kind of pre-covid brain damage, a condition that seeks out stupidity as a confirmation bias because it's all dumber than people think it is.
Large study finds COVID-19 is linked to a substantial drop in intelligence,
https://www.psypost.org/2021/07/large-study-finds-covid-19-is-linked-to-a-substantial-drop-in-intelligence-61577
Longer than I want to blockquote and I don't know what to excerpt, read the whole thing.
I'm sure some will say these people are all malingerers.
If you get put on a ventilator, typically you're hypoxic and unable to move O2 and CO2 by yourself in order to sustain normal organ function, which is definitely going to cause multiple organ damage, including the brain.
There is evidence the COVID virus often enters the brain and nervous system. This may account for the myriad list of side effects that Kevin had listed. The problem with the nervous system is the recovery is not measured so much in days or months, but rather in years and tens of years.
Would Fox news be libel for spreading vaccine information?
The Atlantic spells out problems people still have with access to the vaccine:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/07/unvaccinated-different-anti-vax/619523/
"If they think he's caved in to the establishment, they'll tune him out instantly."
Do you really think Hannity's hold on his audience is that fragile?
*Some* Foxys are *trying* to sound good - although they are paid to lie .
"In fairness, Hannity is walking a tightrope. He knows that vaccines work and are a good idea for nearly everyone, but he also needs to maintain his cred with the nutball crowd"
Hannity chooses to walk that tightrope because he's committed to courting the nutball crowd. No need to be fair to him. He can walk away and enjoy his already-ill-gotten millions any time.
Sean Hannity = $200,000,000. How much is enough, Sean?
Hannity said "Enough people have died."
I'm wondering why 500,000 wasn't enough, why we had to get over 600,000.
I don't believe in eternal damnation in a lake of fire, but those people make me wish that I did.
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'I believe in science and I believe in the science of vaccination.'
Says the tool who propagandizes for a party that attacks science, interferes with medical privacy, and tells your doctor what they can and cannot do for you.
There really is a word that describes the level beyond simple Hypocrisy: Conservatism.