Go ahead and die if you wanna. It don’t bother me none, argues Brian Kilmeade of “Fox and Friends.”
The whole what you do with your body is your business flip-flop from conservatives has me seriously confused. They believe it’s the the government’s (police, military) job to protect you. Except when they don’t. They believe the government should keep its nasty fingers off your body. Except when they don’t. Not even Fox News’ morning crew can decide amongst themselves.
Eric Boehlert has a few choice words about how this Murdoch variant is killing Fox’s own viewers:
While a staff of fully-vaccinated hosts rage against an extraordinarily safe and efficient vaccine, Fox News is doing what no other outlet has done in the history of cable news, or even broadcast television has done — it’s deliberately getting people killed during a public health crisis by feeding eagerly gullible red state viewers a mountain of lies.
With the debate about masks now largely eliminated from the cultural war battlefield, as a majority of eligible Americans got vaccinated and no longer have to wear them, Fox News and the extreme-right media are left with only one target — the miraculous vaccine itself.
The same right-wing crew that this winter demanded Trump receive credit for helping develop the vaccines, has done a U-turn. They’re now urging loyalists not to get the vaccine, thereby prolonging the pandemic.
The Trump cult has taken partisanship to the next level … of hell:
And it’s not just Fox. “Republicans are getting the same message of skepticism about the vaccines and the vaccination campaign from other parts of the right-wing media apparatus, from digital outlets to talk radio to podcast shows to Sinclair Broadcast stations to the new generation of social media influencers,” Media Matters’ Matt Gertz noted.
In 2020, the crass political calculations were obvious — desperate to get Trump re-elected amidst a crippled economy and a once-in-a-century health crisis, Fox News knew the only chance was to downplay the virus and pretend Democrats were overreacting, even though Trump himself nearly died from the contagious disease.
But with Trump now out of office, and even making vague suggestions that people get vaccinated, what’s the political advantage of Fox News becoming a ghoulish hotbed of anti-vaccine hysteria? It’s pure nihilism.
And they want to govern with that.
Update: Someone at Fox must fear lawsuits.