What a time to be alive. It’s not exactly a golden Age of Enlightenment here in the medieval 21st century, but there’s often black comic relief at the crossroads of ignorance and infauxtainment.
We know by now that Fox News looks at science the same way that flat-earthers dissed Galileo, and that, in the network’s zeal to kill off as many vaxx-averse Americans as possible, it will forage hither and yon for every last scrap of sustenance. I confess that until yesterday I knew very little about a Trinidadian rapper named Nicki Minaj, except for the fact that she had lots of Twitter followers (20 million!), but maybe Tucker Carlson’s taste in music is more expansive than mine.
But no, it’s a decent bet that Tucker never heard of Nicki until she tweeted something that was music to his ears:
“My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure ur comfortable with your decision, not bullied”
Tucker read the tweet aloud on the air. He said that her opinion “seems sensible.”
I know it dates me terribly to say this, but I have a hard time imagining Walter Cronkite, on his CBS broadcast, talking about engorged genitalia in his stentorian tone.
You don’t need to be Dr. Fauci to know that the Covid vaccines leave the male anatomy alone. It’s a well-established medical fact that swelling of that sort is caused by infection, most likely an STD, and it’s a well-established fact that celebrities exercise their thumbs on Twitter without having the faintest clue what they’re talking about – but hey, if it helps Tucker’s cause to say that Dr. Nicki’s friend’s cousin’s girl is calling off a wedding because too-big balls will spoil the wedding night and it’s all the vaccine’s fault…
Actually, Fox News couldn’t even get that right. Check out the chyron. It says that Nicki’s cousin got swollen testicles. C’mon, Tucker, you’re not entitled to your own facts. Nicki clearly said it was her cousin’s friend who got swollen testicles. Jeez, can’t Fox at least misinform its fans with accurate misinformation?
The so-called “liberal” media keeps faulting President Biden for failing to bring the pandemic under control – a recent passage in The New York Times: “Delta’s rise has been fueled in part by the inability of Mr. Biden and his administration to persuade millions of vaccine-refusing Americans to inoculate themselves against the virus” – but perhaps his ability to persuade is being hindered by tall tales like the swollen testicles and whatever else Tucker and his ilk can conjure for the credulous. After all, as Thomas Paine famously said, arguing with someone who has “renounced the use and authority of reason…is like administering medicine to the dead.”
But wait, here’s an idea. If we fiddle a bit more with the Tucker-Nicki narrative, and simply tell all the un-vaxxed males that the jab will give them bigger testicles, I bet we’ll get herd immunity in no time.