RFK is an anti-vax fanatic. And he gives platforms to other anti-vax fanatics. Backed by his boss because the Necrotic Toddler apparently figures MAGA will give him more love for spreading plague than fighting it. Though he’s apparently wrong as even most Republicans know vaccines save lives. But the Felon’s made it clear he doesn’t care whether they live as long as they vote for him. And there are the usual array of think tanks that don’t think in his corner.
And so we get the government arguing, in the words of Wonkette, that “while no studies exist providing a causal link, some parents believe their child’s autism was caused by vaccines and no one can prove that they didn’t.” It doesn’t matter that vaccines work, we’ve got a critical mass of people who don’t accept reality and people in office with the power to distort the facts and change the rules. Jay Bhattacharya, who predicted a 20,000 – 40,000 death count from covid (ergo no need for lockdowns, vaccines or masking for most of us), hasn’t apparently learned anything from being massively wrong: as head of NIH he thinks the government’s solution to the next pandemic should be … nothing. Americans need to get healthier, then they can slough off those nasty viruses easily (I’m sure that as almost nobody does everything absolutely perfectly this will prove a shifting target that always points the blame at the sick, not at Bhattacharya for being wrong again).
Every Senate Republican voted for RFK. They own this, despite some of them insisted they had no idea it would get this bad. Or this bad. They knew. They either believe or they decided the personal consequences were worse for saying no — after all, it’s not like they’re going to have trouble getting vaccines, even if they have to fly overseas?
Equally to blame, the media’s sanewashing of Mr. Make America Dead Again. Like a recent Atlantic profile painting Kennedy not as someone completely and utterly ignorant about medicine but “a gadfly outsider” who still can’t get the scientific establishment to take him seriously. Or news media putting RFK’s bullshit in the headline (FDA Claims Covid Shots Killed 10 Children) and leaving the flaws or counter-arguments in the body of the piece. In the words of writer Gil Duran “it is considered neutral to spread a lie, but it is considered “biased” to call out a lie. So, there is a structural asymmetry that rewards colorful lies with virality.” I expect stupid toadying from Newsmax, but the mainstream media should do better.
Then there’s Olivia Nuzzi, the reporter who was covering Kennedy and writing critical pieces about Biden at a time when she was sexually obsessed with Kennedy (she says she wasn’t sleeping with him while covering him). That’s fricking unethical but it hasn’t stopped her getting a new gig, or a glowing profile tied to her new book about the affair (update: the blowback covered here has led to Vanity Fair telling Nuzzi goodbye, so long, au revoir). I read excerpts of the profile (not linking to it) and it’s very much a stereotypical celebrity-journalism piece, showing how even unremarkable things like driving her car or sitting at her desk (there’s a copy of Dante on it! Whoa!) are imbued with depth (she’s a “startling, complex person” and a “Lana Del Rey song come to life”). The book itself includes quotes such as “He desired. He desired desiring. He desired being desired. He desired desire itself.”
The Ringer has a lot of the details including some of Kennedy’s writing to Nuzzi about “your open mouth awaiting my harvest” god help us. If we go by her ex-boyfriend Ryan Lizza (who obviously has his own axes to grind) Nuzzi wasn’t simply reporting on the guy she was hot for but actively advising him on his campaign when he was running for the White House. And would do catch-and-kill operations (see here and here) where she would help either bury stories that made Kennedy look bad or at least guide him in countering them. As NYT’s Michelle Goldberg says, it’s not about the bad poetry, it’s not a sex scandal: Nuzzi was a massive failure of journalistic ethics.
The publications willing to fluff Nuzzi or hand her jobs at this point are also failing their readers and their duty.
