In case you haven’t heard it by now, Fox News has been yammering for weeks about the “tyranny” of President Biden, and other rational politicians and pundits, advocating for the wildly popular (according to a Fox News poll) COVID vaccine mandates. They are doing that despite the fact that Fox News has imposed an even stricter mandate on their employees.
Last week Fox News host Neil Cavuto revealed on his program that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. He noted that he was vaccinated, but that he had health issues that made him more vulnerable to infection and severe outcomes. His situation was not mentioned again by anyone on Fox News after that until Sunday morning when he appeared on Fox’s MediaBuzz, where he made an impassioned appeal for people to get vaccinated for the sake of others:
“We’ve lost five million globally to this. We’ve lost nearly 800,000 in the U.S. Take the political speaking points and toss them for now. I’m begging you. Toss them. Think of what’s good, not only for yourself, but for those around you. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, if you think it’s a pain in the ass, I get that. But think of others around you. I dare say that people who experience this and see loved ones who’ve been affect by this or, heaven forbid, died from this, are not judging the wisdom of Band-Aids. They’re wishing they got vaccinated. And they didn’t. Don’t let that happen.”
Cavuto’s remarks are commendable and moving, and they are coming from someone whose personal experience could be persuasive. He is speaking for millions of Americans who are at risk themselves, and for their families and friends as well. There’s just one problem with this pleading. Virtually everything else on Fox News contradicts his point of view, an editorial mandate that has made COVID the Pandemic of Fox News. For example, shortly before Cavuto’s heartfelt remarks, Lisa Boothe, another Fox squawking head, told her Fox confederate, Dan Bongino, that this is why she was refusing to get vaccinated:
“I’m doubling down as a giant middle finger to Joe Biden’s tyranny, because now it’s a fight for freedom. Now it’s a fight against tyranny in America and that’s what this is all about.”
"It didn't make sense to get vaccinated for a virus that is not a threat to my life nor one that I fear. But now, I'm doubling down as a giant middle finger to Joe Biden's tyranny because now it's a fight for freedom." pic.twitter.com/i198rLcfN0
— PatriotTakes ?? (@patriottakes) October 24, 2021
That’s right. She isn’t considering the health risks for herself or those around her at all. She couldn’t care less about the human toll of the pandemic or how her obstinance will contribute it. She is just making a hyper-partisan political statement against her deranged impression of what constitutes tyranny. And Bongino nodded along approvingly throughout.
How is what Cavuto has to say on this subject ever going to break through to the audience of Fox News cultists when people like Boothe are spewing such hateful, ignorant nonsense? And it isn’t just Boothe. Cavuto’s commentary won’t be seen by the people who need to see it most. MediaBuzz doesn’t have nearly the audience as Fox’s weekday, primetime programs where anti-vaccine messaging is rampant. Fox’s top rated host, Tucker Carlson, is a rabid anti-vaxxer, as are his colleagues Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.
So while Cavuto is demonstrating compassion for his fellow Americans in the midst of a deadly pandemic, Boothe and the rest of the Fox News roster are flipping them a “giant middle finger” in order to stir up more partisan rancor, regardless of the cost in human lives. That has been Fox’s mission all along. They are convinced that whatever they lose in viewers dying from this virus will be made up by the blind devotion of the survivors. And, of course, the gratitude of America’s most fervent anti-vaxxer, and most divisive hate and fear monger, Donald Trump.
Watch the full segment of Cavuto on MediaBuzz here:
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How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.