Jim Acosta posted an image of himself getting vaccinated, wearing a t-shirt celebrating himself and drawing derision the way a phlebotomist draws blood.
Jake Tapper delivered a cringe-worthy music video, with Pat Benatar backing the images of his inoculation.
Across the media spectrum numerous outlets and journalists are engaged in similar acts, providing what they deem to be a public service while in reality we are being served something else. This is nothing more than the press reporting on their all-time favorite subjects – themselves. There needs to be a new category created for these mirror-born messages – Posing for the Pandemic, or maybe Self-Centered For Disease Control.
As insufferable as these examples get there is little surprise one person finds these aggrandizing medical reports absolutely vital. On his Sunday program, CNN’s media Hall Monitor Brian Stelter weighed in, telling us just how vital these anti-viral dispatches can be.
"I think it’s really important to see these TV anchors, personalities showing themselves getting the shot. We’ve seen a lot of vaccine selfies – from lots of folks from lots of different networks. It’s been real inspiring to see," he said.
But all is not proper and correct across the media landscape. In this time of reporters and journalists doing the correct thing and getting in font of the camera, Stelter has discovered a dark reality. The man obsessed with a rival has noted a distinct problem.
"Where are the biggest stars on Fox – getting vaccinated?!"
Then, just to show precisely how serious of a matter this is, Stelter brings on a neutered hamster from Media Matters to discuss this plight. We go from one Fox-obsessed drone to another, and we hear Matt Gertz come on to assess the gravity of this reality that Fox News personalities are not displaying themselves in an approved fashion. During a public health crisis, it is imperative, we are told, for Fox to promote the vaccine, because their audience does not listen to any other news outlets. Also, their audience is really dumb.
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Gertz then gives us this fabulous summation: "Steve Doocy should get vaccinated live, on Fox and Friends. It would save the lives of his viewers. I don’t understand why they won’t do that!"
This is a man who was brought on the show to supposedly provide expert opinion, and he is flummoxed as to why a network is not behaving like condescending kindergarten teachers. For this charge to hold up there must be the belief that there are large numbers of people who were completely opposed to getting vaccinated – but they completely altered their opinion 180 degrees once they saw the preening anchors on The Today Show stage a group segment of themselves getting stabbed.
Stelter made mention of how Rachel Maddow announced how fearful and worried she had been to get the shot – "…and there she is, talking about it on air." One can take this to mean, therefore, that Maddow’s audience is comprised of anti-vax reactionaries who previously had refused to be inoculated…until their heroine went before the cameras and saved their lives with her harrowing tale of a three-second vaccination.
The real amusement in all of this is how little thought these professional scolds put into their messaging here. While condemning the Fox News personalities -- and tearing a rotator cuff as they pat themselves on the back for their brave service of reporting on themselves -- these simpletons have not thought through their own narrative. The message here is clearly that Fox News does not want to save the lives of its viewers. Matt Gertz has said as much and there is Stelter, nodding along as if this is deeply trenchant commentary, stating the hosts should have done so back in February.
This is a cagey strategy for a network – kill off its viewership, in the name of…uh, better ratings? But this is the kind of thinking you can come to expect, when the elevated thinkers at CNN and Media Matters believe that their audience would not otherwise be compelled to vaccinate themselves, not until they see Jake Tapper in a baseball jersey getting stabbed to the tune of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot."
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