Daily Show Targets Anti-Vaxxers As ‘Left-Leaning Idiocy’
You know left-wing propaganda has gotten out of hand when even “The Daily Show” calls it out. In a video segment June 2, correspondent Samantha Bee went on a quest to find out who is causing the outbreak of infectious diseases such as measles in the U.S.
She initially assumed the outbreaks were caused by “right-wing nutjobs,” opening the segment by saying, “Conservatives are fighting the good fight against something they think threatens us all. Science. This right-wing science denial has tragic real-world consequences.”
But then she realized the cases were being found in far-left states like California, New York and Oregon. “Because of these right-wing nutjobs outbreaks of preventable diseases are occurring in the red states of California, New York, and Oregon, wait, what the f*** is going on here?!” Continues after video.
Bee couldn’t hide her mock dismay after learning from infectious disease expert, Dr. Paul Offit, that anti-vaxxers are nearly all white liberals, like herself. “They’re communities which have large populations of caucasian, upper middle-class residents who are college-educated, graduate school educated, and believe simply by googling the term vaccine on the internet they can know as much if not more than anyone who’s giving them advice,” Offit informed Bee. Bee shockingly replied, “It’s happening in my community. People who juice?” Offit responded, “That’s exactly where it’s happening.” She exclaimed, “Oh my god. Wealthy white liberal enclaves are at risk. It’s an outbreak of f***ing misinformation.”
Bee then went on a humorous search for “Patient Zero” the host for the outbreak of misinformation. She honed in on Sarah Pope, an anti-vaxxer and blogger for Healthy Home Economist who went on a rant about the “toxicity” of vaccines and how medical consensus on vaccines wouldn’t change her opinion. Pope defended her views, “I’m not putting anyone at risk by not vaccinating my children.”
Bee told Pope she was “definitely infected.” and explained how the anti-vaccination movement has spread through bloggers like Pope, and celebrities like Jenny McCarthy: “I had to trace the spread of this left-leaning idiocy. It starts on blogs like Pope’s, goes viral on Twitter, and then replicates itself wherever progressives congregate. And then when it jumps hosts into a celebrity, it goes airborne, putting millions at risk. You can catch it from an iphone, soy lattes, even at a toddler dj class!”
Surprisingly, Bee noted how liberals were hypocrites for not calling out the anti-vaccination propaganda for what it is. “Progressives may love to sh*t on climate change denialists but terrifyingly the anti-vaccination community displays the same symptoms.”
Dr. Offit told Bee, “They have an amazing ability to ignore scientific consensus...If you spend millions and millions of dollars to answer the question. You show people these great data, they still simply deny its existence.”
But of course, this is The Daily Show, so conservatives couldn’t be left out of the mockery. Bee equated the unyielding dogmatism of anti-vaxxers with climate change skepticism. “So there is a cure for science denial. Once Florida is under water and we all have polio, it’ll be better.”
Yet unlike climate change, we have history as evidence that vaccines work. Offit told Bee, “Good thing about vaccines – they’re not a belief system, they’re an evidence system.”
— Kristine Marsh is Staff Writer for MRC Culture at the Media Research Center. Follow Kristine Marsh on Twitter.
