Mixed Media Metaphors

AntiSemantic AntiVaxxers for RFK jr

Even with a Kennedy/Shanahan for President campaign sign in our front ditch, I’m not confident of victory. Obviously his campaign team is not following my advice in this series. Not that he’s a “spoiler”, but question his tactics and strategy. Mainly it’s the media. Death by a thousand jokes and epithets. They say there’s no bad publicity, but in his case?

However, as the only true-blue antivaxx mandate candidate, got to support him regardless of his chances. If only to prove to blue state Democrats that vaxx mandates are a losing issue, not just a fringe that can be swept away. Republicans have seized on that thread and may sew up victory with its trailing tendrils.

My fragile faith was bolstered by watching Kennedy’s selfie insertion into the Presidential Debate on X. Masterful irony in contrast with the CNN debacle-piped in as sidebar. John Stossel was the martini dry moderator with a real, live audience, unlike the showdown of octogenarian fulminators.

Theirs came off as expected by by anyone familiar with dementia sundowning. If Biden actually has a mask double, they sent out the wrong one, (unless it was deliberate). Trump was predictably bombastic and careless with facts- like most politicians, but Biden swung and whiffed from the Ladies Tee throughout.

Kennedy was given the same questions during their recovery breaks by Stossel, as they were tossed by CNN’s team of moderators. Bobby hammered home his platform points on rebuilding the middle class, reducing chronic illness, ending endless wars and cutting military spending in half to Cold War levels, dismantling corporate captured regulatory agencies, and destroying “public health” lies about covid events they reigned over.

At times veering off on tangents the other candidates introduced, Stossel kept him to the same time limits stipulated by Biden’s debate team before screening rights were authorized. That debate team should be packed off to nursing homes to train seniors how to wipe themselves.

Stossel, who moved from ABC to Fox News to Koch Industry funded Center for Independent Thought calls himself a Skeptical Libertarian. He judged RFK jr moderately better than the geezers on most issues, but “absurd” on others.

Stossel hews to that American fantasy of founding fathers carving out a country and constitution designed to reward strivers and straight shooters under the rule of law. This is the kind of idealized malarkey that leaves most Americans screwed by propellers that leave no wake, steered by “representatives” who profess populism, while greasing the skids for Billionaires’ Yachts.

CNN warned of lawsuits against any unauthorized usage of their copyright to a public (not really) interest event prior to broadcasting it. Kennedy and Stossel were violating this copyright, but claimed fair use. CNN would only provide more campaign coverage for Bobby if they litigated.

His candidacy has been eerily absent from discussion of relevant issues by media pundits. If it weren’t for brain worms he wouldn’t have been mentioned at all. Still better than no brain at all is my retort.

Bobby did get a hat tip from the New York Review of Books, 5/23/2024 as “the defiant, self righteous loner against the world, Robert Kennedy Jr. saving the world from the pollution of vaccines.” RFK jr wrote a preface for a modern revival of Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 drama, An Enemy of the People. Steven Spielberg sketched out Jaws from its thematic plot, where a brave scientist calls for closure of beaches due to shark attacks, rather than Ibsen’s tourist spa with deadly bacteria. Bobby described it as a “parable about the persecution of scientists and doctors who dare to challenge contemporary orthodoxies.”

Dr. Phil interviewed him for 90 minutes prior to the debate, but in all the “liberal” corporate media wailing and gnashing of teeth after Biden’s reveal, Kennedy’s performance was not mentioned. The “conservative” corporate media gave him some air time on Fox.

Both smelled the blood in the water from self inflicted wounds afterwards. Joe’s Gotta Go avalanched among panicked pundits, facing a first day firing squad. Bobby’s pariah status was lifted, signaled by a next day interview on NPR’s All Things Considered, (which didn’t mention his virtual debate).

Chris Cuomo, a former Democratic darling, brother of disgraced New York Governor, gave a full throated endorsement of Bobby, despite his checkered past, some of which they shared. Chris has publicly declared that he was injured by the covid vaxx, losing faith in the Pandemic Panic he’d been an altar boy for.

Doesn’t matter if he ate a dog or a goat and felt up his nanny. Trump trumped all that long ago. The jerked goat is the public, stretched out between opposing opinions. Bobby says it was GOAT, and “you are what you eat.” Whether he will remain the scapegoat or become the Greatest of All Time, depends on his rising above the media smog.

Brought up RFK jr’s debate alternative with a liberal, after agreeing on Biden’s dismal show. He dismissed Bobby as an anti-vaxxer. I said that’s a good thing, and reminded him the covaxxes didn’t prevent infection or transmission. He insisted they “reduced severity”, but telling him there’s no evidence for this, was dismissed as fake news.

At least he didn’t call him a Zionist puppet, a more frequent response to my evangelism among the pagans. Bobby hasn’t cautioned against Israel’s massive bombardments as I advised months ago to siphon off the youth vote. Kennedy has been twice burned by antisemitic charges from minimizing a sacred Holocaust metaphor- the hidden virgin betrayed to the Nazis, and linking Ashkenazi genetic immunity to Covid virus’ design.

Splitting the antisemantic hairs of “acceptable” criticism of Israel is essential for Bobby to attract non-evangelical youth and independent voters, especially among Black and Latinos, his hereditary constituency.

His debate answer to the Middle East conundrum to let the Israelis and Palestinians work it out among themselves was not quite as callous as Trump’s Finish ‘em Fast, or as tortured as Biden’s wobbling, but promised the same end game.

Have argued that his “antivaxxer” anchor was a permanent handicap, and he couldn’t afford a second horn being hung on him. Now I say, it’s better to gore with both when media matadors wave a red flag.