The Grift is On Part II
I originally wanted to fold this over into my last post, but instead decided it needed its own space. Tucker Carlson is at it again. Of course, it is all too predictable as Carlson has made a career of throwing bombs just for the attention. Yet, even for him this is completely outrageous and he knows it.
For those that don’t watch his program and don’t want to click on the link, Carlson suggested that if you see children wearing a mask outside that you should immediately call CPS because of the obvious child abuse. Yup, people being extra careful are guilty of child abuse. The problem is plain to see when you peruse the headlines. Carlson is obviously acting in bad faith because he wants the ratings. Other idiots don’t know any better.
While these stories are not directly related, Carlson seems to allow and encourage others to get their crazy on. Anti-maskers don’t necessarily directly relate to anti-vaxxers, but there is definitely a Venn diagram at work here. The ties that bind are the emotion involved in the grift. It entices those that already feel this way to act on their feelings no matter how ill conceived or clearly wrong.
Right on cue, a private school in Florida has decided to ban teachers that have previously gotten the vaccine. The apparent stated reason was related to the anti-vaxxing line of thinking. On the one hand, I suppose a private school can do whatever it wants to do, but the tale has to be the most ridiculous thing anyone has ever heard. That’s of course only true until you listen to Carlson’s clip. Hold my plant based beer I guess.
As I implied in the last piece, there is a special place for those that know better and inflame the passion of idiots anyway. He knows exactly what he is doing and he’s been doing it for years. I can’t even begin to address his argument because it is beneath us to do so. All I can do is sit back in shock at the unmitigated gall.
Tucker Carlson, by his Wiki bio (and admitting that Wiki bios are hardly 100% accurate) appears to be the classic overprivileged white US male. I wish his biological parents hadn’t given him up for adoption and he’d had a less affluent early life, because he sure didn’t profit morally, ethically, or mentally from the one he had. Piece of work is the kindest way to put the result. His adoptive parents appear to have been every bit as overprivileged and selfish as he is.
How what he says connects logically to Florida private schools deciding not to hire teacher who’ve been vaccinated is impossible to know, since there really isn’t a logical connection. Vaccination against COVID should lessen the chance a teacher will get COVID and thus be out sick during the year…an advantage to any school is a teacher who shows up every day. So why the ban on hiring someone who’s been vaccinated against COVID? I can think of reasons but it’s pure guessing. Do they think it’s a sign of being liberal? Of being a (gasp) Democrat? Or are they totally into foil-hat fantasy and thinking it means that teacher’s carrying Bill Gates’ nonexistent microchips in his/her head? Is infective of nanotechnology so advanced that by merely being in the same room with children, the teacher can breathe out those Gatesian horrors and infect the children with them? Are they going to ban children of vaccinated parents? Children vaccinated later in the summer? Or is it to punish people for taking the vaccine?
Who knows. Possibly not even those making the decision know why it suddenly seemed like a good idea. The logical murk swirling around in the Florida right-wing makes it impossible to figure out what they think they’re thinking.
1However, Tucker Carlson (which I meant to come back to but didn’t…the Florida “short cut” to illogic is an entire hill full of rabbit holes to fall down)…is heading for some rough times if he himself starts calling parents out for abusing their children by having them wear masks. The mood on Twitter about that is that if Carlson calls out their kid, the parents are ready to consider THAT abuse and react accordingly. Chances of Tucker showing up anywhere near me are minimal but if he did and hollered at our adult autistic son (or me, but more at our son) he would meet Mama TigerBearLioness in the flesh and he would not enjoy the rest of the encounter.
2Thanks Elizabeth. I went back and added some missing context. You were right, the connection between the two stories was in my mind and not on the page.
3The school owners were cited as saying that because they were paying the teachers “$30,000 a year” they could demand they not be vaccinated.
Two points: based in 2080 hours (standard in my day at 8hrs x 5days a week but – two weeks out of 52 in a year) they are paying $15 an hour. that;s what you should be paying the unskilled labor.
Second: that first estimate is likely high. No teacher I know only does eight hours in a day. Ten seems to be the minimum for teachers.
Low teacher pay is a pretty good indicator of low quality.
4More “reasons” by the school. From the NYT:
In an example of how misinformation threatens the nation’s effort to vaccinate enough Americans to get the coronavirus under control, Ms. Centner, who has frequently shared anti-vaccine posts on Facebook, claimed in the letter that “reports have surfaced recently of non-vaccinated people being negatively impacted by interacting with people who have been vaccinated.”
“Even among our own population, we have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated person,” she wrote, repeating a false claim that vaccinated people can somehow pass the vaccine to others and thereby affect their reproductive systems. (They can do neither.)
5The school in question was the Centner Academy, founded by David and Leila Centner. The Centners are a couple of anti-vaxxers who moved to Florida from New York to start a school that offered “medical freedom”, according to the Associated Press. Ms. Centner justified their directive by claiming that unvaccinated women have suffered miscarriages by simply standing near vaccinated people. You can probably deduce from that statement what the rest of the school’s scientific training is like.
As one of the Houston CHRONICLE’s columnists said today, the Constitution did not protect Typhoid Mary. It shouldn’t protect these loons, either.
6OK, so I checked out the school’s web site. Just to look at it, the place actually looks fairly progressive. That just goes to show that you can find anti-vaxxer nonsense all across the political spectrum.
Their stated reasons for being against vaccinations include a lot of data that (1) have been debunked and/or (2) could result from many reasons other than vaccinations, e.g., the rise in diabetes rates, obesity, etc. In other words, a pretty tenuous grasp on how science works and how to interpret the results. So, I still doubt the academic quality of the science they teach in their schools.
7Nick, accounting for Tucker or any of the on-air ‘talent’ at Fox Not the News is an exercise in original sin. Questions like who in Congress arranged to fast track citizenship for Rupert Murdoch and subsequent changing/bending of rules to allow Rupert to purchase a big chunk of American media.
Maybe the whoever(s) didn’t think through what they were proposing to its illogical conclusion. Start digging circa 1985; maybe this can be reversed or otherwise repaired.
8One might point out to anyone doing this that making a false report to child protective services is illegal in at least some states, such as Tucker’s home state of Florida. In Oregon, for instance, “Violations are charged as a Class A misdemeanor, which carried a maximum one-year jail sentence and a fine of up to $6250.”
Make their crime not pay.
9When I shared the Raw Story report about this Florida private school a few days ago (was a bit off topic at the time), I thought it was one of the nuttiest things I’d heard about the covid vaccines. Then this morning I read about an Orange County, CA elected official (repugnantican) grilling a health official about tracking devices being injected in covid vaccines. Seriously, how gullible can people be? Reminds me of a former president suggesting injecting bleach or sun rays as a cure.
10The funny thing about the Centner’s menstrual claim, of course, is that women who spend a lot of time together tend to cycle together anyway. (Probably goes back to our proto-primate ancestors is my guess.) And that’s going to happen, vaccinated, or not.
11Tucker Carlson’s diatribe about child abuse is a poorly disguised excuse for anti-mask adherents to inflict Trump-like retribution and retaliation on people who wear masks. The anti-maskers have been told for a year not to follow the science, that their freedoms were undermined, and therefore the Constitution was in jeopardy.
Now, according to Tucker Carlson, it’s payback time. Give as good as you got. Call it child abuse (close enough to child trafficking).
Never mind that it’s a logical fallacy, a false equivalency. Ignore that people in Japan have been wearing masks in public places for decades long before the pandemic, and nobody bats an eye.
12OT: I wonder if Rudy Giuliani is having a great day?
13What will put a stop to the vaccine nonsense is when insurance companies refuse to pay for medical care if folks can’t prove they got a vaccine. Hospitalizations and rehabs are VERY expensive and insurance companies are in the business to make money!
14I read some of these claims and immediately flashback to the wonderful experience of reading Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
“Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’
I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again!”
― Lewis Carroll
As an excessively focused high school debater, trying to get to “the truth” and the best arguments to convince everyone else of “the truth,” it was a shock to find others were not concerned about dividing possible and impossible. But as a wise advisor told me, not everyone wanted to be disturbed with my efforts to find and share “the truth” with them.
15Here in CT where the religious exemption for school vaccinations was removed just today, the airwaves have been filled with (nearly all) women decrying “the state” taking over medical care for their children. I noticed that not one of these outraged ladies is old enough to remember the terror of finding out a classmate is now in an iron lung with polio or that the baby Mom is carrying will likely have some disability because she went to a school concert where kids had rubella. The oddest case I’ve heard of is a relative who decided not to vaccinate her two children- despite the fact that her own mom is profoundly deaf as a result of rubella. Some quack doctor told her vaccines cause …. you name it. Fake expert syndrome strikes again.
16This is what we’re up against.
You.Cannot.Fix.Stupid. It is pointless to try.
“I Won’t Take the Vaccine Because It Makes Liberals Mad.”
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/4/27/2027892/–I-Won-t-Take-the-Vaccine-Because-It-Makes-Liberals-Mad-Wow-A-Trumper-Actually-Published-This
17“I Won’t Take the Vaccine Because It Makes Liberals Mad.”
I’ve noticed some Republicans regularly vote against their own best interests. Add medical decisions to their growing list of bad choices.
18Thanks for passing that along. What is amazing is that they seem to think it makes us mad. The real impact is somewhere between pity, laughter, and shock.
19So help me, everytime someone mentions Tucker I can’t help but recall his appearance on that dancing show where an almost clad young woman danced sensuously around him while he sat in a chair and produced enough sweat to water a damn desert!
20“Nearly 900 people reported abnormal menstrual cycles” after being exposed to tear gas last summer in Portland, Oregon. It’s not the vaccine.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/29/teargas-protest-menstrual-cycles-health-impact
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