An outbreak of measles has put a spotlight on the dangerous foolishness of anti-vaccine, liberal parents who tend to cluster together and buy into the pseudo-science that links autism with these safe and life-saving procedures.
Yet, as The Federalist's Mollie Hemingway shows in a bracing essay on media bias, the press has spun this vaccination "controversy" in hard-left California communities into an existential problem for the Republican Party based on the comments of Chris Christie and noted shusher Rand Paul:
For some reason, many in the media (as well as other liberal commentators) decided to try to make this story about a measles outbreak in California and a concern about vaccination rates in Hollywood, Marin County and Berkeley into an existential problem for — stay with me here because it makes zero sense if you’re not a hack — the Republican Party and conservatives.
Read Hemingway's piece. It will and should make you angry, particularly when you see the side-by-side remarks of President Obama and Christie in which both believe in vaccinating their children but also espouse parental choice. Guess whose comments created the media uproar. Hemingway adds that such publications as Salon and Mother Jones have published anti-vaccination pieces over the past 10 years.
This movement's most vocal proponent is former The View co-host Jenny McCarthy, who for years has spread the false idea that vaccinations "triggered" her son's autism. McCarthy, like almost all past and present hosts of the daytime spewfest, leans left. Her former boyfriend, actor and progressive activist Jim Carrey, also promoted lies about vaccinations in the form of an opinion piece at the Huffington Post. The Daily Beast noted that media mogul and Obama enthusiast Oprah Winfrey gave McCarthy a large microphone to spread her alarmist beliefs.
The Daily Show's Samantha Bee parodied "left-leaning idiocy" in the form of vaccine truthers last June in a faux news "report." Bee jokingly foamed at the mouth when one blogger, who believed vaccines are full of "toxins" and that herd immunity is a myth, stated she had 46,000 online subscribers.
In 2005, though, Daily Show host Jon Stewart had on Democrat Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for an exceedingly polite interview as Kennedy peddled more dangerous misinformation about the "link" between childhood vaccinations and autism.
"There is very, very strong science, really overwhelming science, linking those autism rates to the thimerosal that was in the vaccines," Kennedy said.
"So many passionate people on the case of it, it would seem that there must be something there," Stewart said near the end of the interview. "Where there's smoke, there's fire."
Yes, Stewart's logic was there were so many non-medical buffoons refuting established science with insane theories that there just had to be truth there. He has backed off since then.
Even HBO's far-left Bill Maher stepped in it with his past words about vaccinations. In 2009, Maher flatly told former Senate Majority Leader and physician Bill Frist he wouldn't get a swine flu vaccination or any vaccine because "I don't trust the government with my health." For the record, Maher is a supporter of government-controlled health care. In 2005, Maher told Larry King a flu shot was "the worst thing you can do," according to Mediaite.
"I had horrible allergies as a kid," he said in another 2009 show, defending his earlier remarks. "Was it because I was vaccinated as an infant? I don't know ... This is not settled science like global warming."
To his credit, MSNBC host Chris Matthews, a guest that day on Real Time, mocked Maher for those remarks.
Liberal columnist and CNN contributor Sally Kohn wrote this week about her regret in not vaccinating her child sooner. Apparently her mother, a mathematician, gave Kohn and her partner a very detailed and compelling report on the dangers of vaccines that swayed them to not inoculate their child.
"Fundamentally, I’m embarrassed to say that the idea that we might be putting other people at risk by not vaccinating our daughter never really crossed our minds," Kohn wrote, adding she now sees that was a mistake.