As I was scrolling through my newsfeed recently I came across a link to a CNN chyron that read “Fox’s Biggest Stars Have Not Shared Vaccine Selfies.”
Despite it coming from Brian Stelter’s“Reliable Sources,” my initial reaction was that it was parody. Even CNN, the network that shamelessly pushed the Russian collusion hoax, the Charlottesville “very fine people” hoax, and tried to make a story out of then-President Trump eating two scoops of ice cream, wouldn’t beclown itself this way, would it?
But, alas, beclown themselves this way they did.
Stelter, while speaking with Matt Gertz of Media Matters, said that "[I]t’s really important to see all these TV anchors, personalities, showing themselves getting the shot. We’ve seen a lot of vaccine selfies from lots of folks at lots of different networks. It’s been really inspiring to see. So, I say all of that to make the following point: Where are Tucker and Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham? Where is Ainsley Earhardt and Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade? Where are the biggest stars on Fox getting vaccinated?”
Gertz replied that Fox has a unique responsibility and called these Fox personalities “abhorrent” for “raising questions about [the vaccine’s] effectiveness, raising questions about whether it is dangerous.”
However, as much as this ridiculous bit deserves to be mercilessly mocked (and it does), Stelter’s perspective exemplifies an underlying principle of Leftism, namely, that the Left only cares about the empty signaling of virtue without actually carrying that virtue out.
What Stelter and Gertz are really saying here, whether they know it or not, is that the Fox personalities are showing themselves to be worse people by not using vaccine selfies to tell the world that they’re taking the coronavirus seriously.
Never mind that there have been Fox personalities that have gotten the vaccine, some of whom shared vaccine selfies, such as Janice Dean and Mike Emanuel.
This is nothing new, however. Leftists play this game in every area. This worldview is what causes woke celebrities to post black squares on their Twitter pages to show that they’re standing against “police brutality,” even though they share no ideas on how to help policing or race relations improve. It’s how you see Patrisse Khan-Cullors, a leader of Black Lives Matter and a self-proclaimed “trained Marxist,” immediately turn around and buy a $1.4 million home in an overwhelmingly white Los Angeles neighborhood. It’s why, despite having no scientific basis for doing so, people will still wear masks while walking alone outside.
I could go on and on.
Stelter, Gertz and the rest of the Left side of the political spectrum, whether they know it or not, do not care if the people they criticize for not proving they got the vaccine (a vaccine which, interestingly, Leftists lambasted at every opportunity they could before the November election) actually get vaccinated. Nor do they care whether these Fox personalities use their public platforms to talk about COVID-19 and raise awareness of the virus in rational ways, use data in their arguments, and go where the evidence leads, without screaming to the world, “Look at me!”
Because, Leftists, in reality, just care about the show. They just care about the intent of an action or idea, no matter its actual result. They just care about the feeling they get from telling themselves they’re doing good, even if their actions produce the opposite.
The biggest example of this phenomenon is that, despite the philosophy being responsible for over 100 million deaths and its leaving many millions more impoverished throughout the last century, Leftists in America still push Marxism. By lauding the principle of an equitable society run by elite masterminds, embracing Marxism gives them a feeling of making the world a better place by making it more equal, even if that equality is, to quote the great Winston Churchill, the equal sharing of miseries.
We can laugh at Brian Stelter and CNN all we want, and we should—they deserve it for the rest of time. But this segment, as ridiculous as it seems, unintentionally shows an insight into a major pillar of the Left’s foundation—the endless signaling of virtue, virtue never to be actually implemented.
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