The NYT’s Tara Parker-Pope has a great fact-checking post on the misinformation about the H1N1 “swine flu” vaccine being promoted by Bill Maher on his HBO show:
The talk show host Bill Maher is best known for his pointed political commentary. But lately he has been dispensing surprisingly unscientific medical advice about flu and the vaccine that prevents it.
Mr. Maher recently told his Twitter followers that people who get flu shots are “idiots.” On his Friday HBO show “Real Time With Bill Maher,” he explained his opposition to the flu vaccine during an interview with Bill Frist, a heart surgeon who was a Republican senator from Tennessee.
Mr. Maher questioned letting someone stick “a disease into your arm,” wrongly implying that the flu shot contains a live virus. The flu shot is a killed vaccine.
He said he did not believe that healthy people were vulnerable to dying from the new H1N1 virus. This contradicts statements from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that young, healthy people from ages 5 to 24 appear particularly vulnerable to this flu. About a third of the 76 children who have died of H1N1 since April have had no underlying health problems.
Mr. Maher also discouraged pregnant women from getting vaccinated. Studies show pregnant women are among the most vulnerable to serious complications from H1N1.
To his credit, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a surgeon, tries to stand up to Maher and explain why he is wrong (though far less forcefully than he should have) — here’s video of the exchange:
It’s important to again emphasize how awful this is. Political misinformation has no direct consequences for members of the public, but many people are likely to die unncessarily as a result of misinformation about the H1N1 vaccine.
Update 10/13 4:15 PM: Here’s the HHS myth-busting FAQ on the H1N1 vaccine (via Christopher Beam at Slate, who notes the left-right convergence on vaccine misinformation).
Things are looking grim on the H1N1 “swine flu” vaccine misperception front. Know-nothing pundits like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill Maher are already suggesting that the vaccine is unnecessary or dangerous. These beliefs are apparently widespread — fewer than half of all parents are currently planning to vaccinate their children, and many of them tell interviewers that they are not worried about H1N1 (which is more dangerous for children than seasonal flu) and/or concerned about side effects (which should be no worse than any other flu vaccine).
There have been some efforts to correct these misperceptions — for instance, the New York Times ran a FAQ on the vaccine yesterday and a myth-busting op-ed today — but much more is needed. It’s especially important to distribute correct information now before Internet sites and cable news start hyping misleading claims about reactions the vaccine.
The sad reality is that it is going to be hard to change people’s minds in time to get everyone vaccinated. This outbreak is likely to be be much worse than it should have been, and it’s going to cost lives. If there were ever a better case for why it’s important to study how to correct misinformation, I haven’t seen it.
Back in May of last year, I recommended a This American Life episode on the financial crisis titled “The Giant Pool of Money”. Let me do the same with part one of their new health care primer, which is titled “More is Less” (part two is coming next week). The portion I’ve listened to thus far does an excellent job explaining why the American system often provides too much health care and why more care is not always better for you.
In a rejoinder to criticism of Obama’s Nobel Prize by RNC chair Michael Steele, DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse smeared the GOP as having “thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas”:
“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists – the Taliban and Hamas this morning – in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize,” DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told POLITICO. “Republicans cheered when America failed to land the Olympics and now they are criticizing the President of the United States for receiving the Nobel Peace prize – an award he did not seek but that is nonetheless an honor in which every American can take great pride – unless of course you are the Republican Party.
“The 2009 version of the Republican Party has no boundaries, has no shame and has proved that they will put politics above patriotism at every turn. It’s no wonder only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore – it’s an embarrassing label to claim,” Woodhouse said.
It’s another example of how Democrats and liberals are increasingly comparing their political opponents to terrorists or other hated figures, a popular post-9/11 tactic that until recently was used primarily by Republicans.
As Talking Points Memo documents, various conservatives then reacted by comparing Obama to other terrorists and hated figures. It’s an endless cycle of vitriol that is only going to get worse now that both sides are playing.
Update 10/9 8:45 PM: Jed Lewison at Daily Kos TV parrots the DNC talking point (via David Weigel):
Conservatives stand with Taliban against the President
So conservatives are so bitter over President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize that they are actually standing with the Taliban in attacking the President for getting the award:
Whatever happened to country first?
Update (10:46AM): The video has been updated from the original with the addition of a two clips from CNN, one with the Taliban reaction and the other with GOP Chairman Michael Steele’s reaction. Those clips appear between the 0:14 and 0:40 markers in the video timeline.
Update 10/10 3:00 PM: Via Glenn Greenwald and Salon’s Alex Koppelman, Media Matters is also on the bandwagon, producing a video that ends with the tagline “So if it’s not America, who are the conservatives rooting for?”:
Chris Harris of the Media Matters Action Network also explicitly aped post-9/11 attacks on critics of President Bush in a blog post calling the GOP “unpatriotic”:
The RNC Agrees With The Taliban
October 09, 2009 10:27 am ET by Chris Harris
Two Peas In A Pod
As news broke this morning that President Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the president’s adversaries quickly spoke out against the decision.
The Taliban, with which America is in the midst of an eight year war, condemned the award, saying:
We have seen no change in his strategy for peace. He has done nothing for peace in Afghanistan. He has not taken a single step for peace in Afghanistan or to make this country stable… We condemn the award of the Noble Peace Prize for Obama. We condemn the institute’s awarding him the peace prize. We condemn this year’s peace prize as unjust.
A few hours later, the Republican National Committee released the following statement:
The real question Americans are asking is, “What has President Obama actually accomplished?” It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain – President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility, or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.
That the domestic political opposition party would echo the sentiments of one of our nation’s fiercest enemies is truly striking. The global community honoring the American President with one of the world’s top awards should be a cause for national celebration, not cheap political games.
One could expect this reaction from our nation’s enemies, but it is unseemly and downright unpatriotic coming from American political leaders.
Via Talking Points Memo, Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) recently called Nancy Pelosi one of the “domestic enemies of the Constitution” shortly after saying that “[Second Amendment] gun rights are actually critical to prevent treason in America” (emphasis added):
We’ve lost a lot of freedom in America. People just don’t understand how much we’ve lost. I believe the First Amendment and the Second Amendment are the cornerstones of freedom, and we’ve lost a lot of our rights, the Second Amendment. In fact, I’m chairman of the Second Amendment Task Force fighting for Second Amendment rights. Those gun rights are actually critical to prevent treason in America, and we must know (applause). These First Amendment Rights, our freedom of speech and all the other things that are going on are just absolutely awful.
I’ve gotten to be good friends with Justice Antonin Scalia, who he and Justice Clarence Thomas are the only ones who have any concept of what the Constitution is supposed to be and, and do what they’re supposed to do as justices by upholding the Constitution. But, in fact every, when I was sworn into the Marine Corp, I was sworn to uphold the Constitution against every enemy, foreign and domestic. We’ve got a lot of domestic enemies of the Constitution (applause) and one of those sits in the speaker’s chair of the United States Congress, Nancy Pelosi. (applause)
I’ve added his statement, which was made at a Sept. 28 town hall meeting in Georgia, to my timeline of GOP attacks on dissent since Sept. 11.
CJR’s Greg Marx has a nice post up assessing the value of targeting professional health care dissembler Betsy McCaughey.
On the one hand, as he notes, she’s had a profoundly negative impact on mainstream debate and deserves to be “named and shamed” for her deceptions. For that reason, I’m happy to see TNR publishing a lengthy McCaughey takedown (especially given the magazine’s role in her rise to media stardom).
However, like Marx, I don’t see the value in bringing her on TV to berate her (as MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan did). At some point, it’s time to move past McCaughey and think about the larger problem she represents, as Marx argues:
[P]utting McCaughey on TV does imply a certain legitimacy. Against that concern, what is the corresponding benefit, other than giving the host a chance to take a scalp?
By this point, any media outlet that’s been paying attention has made a decision about McCaughey’s credibility… The campaign against McCaughey has been welcome, but barring radical changes in the media environment, if we’re talking health care again in 2025, she’ll surely find an outlet for her claims again. The key is how the rest of the media responds.
This is the other danger, one that both Nyhan and Klein note—the possibility that by focusing on McCaughey personally, we may overlook the deeper patterns she has been able to exploit. As Klein writes, the problem is that “McCaughey isn’t just a liar. She’s an exciting liar”:
That’s not very helpful in the policy debate, but it’s very useful in the media debate… McCaughey might be something of a uniquely deceptive individual, but she’s taking advantage of a structural weakness in the system.
The upshot is that we need to address that “structural weakness”—not, at this point, keep competing to see who can do the best job of filleting McCaughey.
Continuing my series documenting the turn toward postmodernism on the right, here’s a disturbing quote from a Fox News executive that was flagged by Jon Chait at TNR:
“The fact that our numbers are up 30 plus in the news arena on basic cable I’d like to think is a sign that we are just putting what we believe to be the facts out on the table.”
In Fox land, apparently, viewers imply truth (though, per Chait, note the hedging on “what we believe to be the facts”).
Did the world really need a Washington Post profile of almost 2500 words on the “charming but ferocious tenacity” of crazed birther activist Orly Taitz? It is, as the Washington Independent’s David Weigel points out, “possibly the least critical thing ever written about this severely disturbed person who’s encouraging the military to rebel against the elected president of the United States.” At several points in the latter half of the article, Post Style writer Liza Mundy obliquely raises concerns about the lack of factual support for Taitz’s theories, their appeal to extremist groups, and the racial dimensions to her rhetoric, but all are mildly worded and framed in “he said,” “she said” style. (Meanwhile, Weigel notes that Mundy fails to accurately describe Taitz’s most absurd claim about why Obama is supposedly ineligible for the presidency.) At this point, the only reason to cover Taitz is to debunk some new claim she’s made that’s received mainstream attention. She should otherwise be ignored.
Back on Sept. 9, I predicted that President Obama’s speech to Congress on health care was “not likely to change much in terms of public opinion” based on previous political science research. A few days later, I noted weak and inconsistent evidence of an effect (a claim that was disputed by Nate Silver). University of Wisconsin political scientist Charles Franklin subsequently weighed in, finding that “Opposition [to health care reform] has grown but is now slowed to a near halt” while “[s]upport reversed its decline sometime in August and has begun an upturn” which was “probably driven by the speech.”
To maximize the likelihood of seeing an effect, I’ve restricted the date range to July 1-October 5 and used the most sensitive trend line estimator. Nonetheless, the effect of the speech on Obama’s job approval is minimal — the graph shows a small upward blip after the speech but the series quickly returned to its previous trajectory. There was a small bounce in support for health care reform after the speech, but part of the effect dissipated. Meanwhile, estimated opposition to reform, which dipped in the wake of the speech, quickly rebounded toward previous levels and is now greater than it was before the speech. When Charlie Rangel said before the speech that “this level of involvement from the president could well be a game-changer,” I don’t think these were the results he had in mind.
I’m emphasizing this point because there’s a misperception among journalists that the president can easily move public opinion. As we’ve seen again and again over the years, it’s simply not true, but the lack of followup by the press means that the lesson is never learned. (At most, a failure to move poll numbers is blamed on some specific aspect of president’s message or strategy.) So we repeat the same cycle over and over again.
Dan Rather may have lost in court against CBS, but he can still toss off his trademark “Ratherisms”. Here’s what he told Lloyd Grove about the news that his former 48 Hours CBS colleague Joe Halderman had tried to blackmail David Letterman:
Frankly, I couldn’t be more astonished that this guy was involved in something like this than if you came riding through my apartment on a hippopotamus.
Unfortunately, he’s recycling material — here’s what he said back on Election Night in 2000:
“I think you would likelier see a hippopotamus run through this room than see George Bush appoint Ralph Nader to the Cabinet.”