Fox News personality Jesse Watters has a juvenile sense of humor that he should long have outgrown. He is the kind of grown person who still thinks that childish pranks are funny.
At a gathering of young right-wingers organized by the group Turning Point, he took aim at Anthony Fauci, the highly respected infectious disease specialist who has become a prime target of anti-vaxxers because of his relentless urging of people to take safety precautions such as getting vaccinated, wearing masks, and avoiding large gatherings.
Speaking on Monday at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference, Watters encouraged attendees to rhetorically “ambush” Fauci with dubious questions about the National Institutes of Health allegedly funding “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Now you go in for the kill shot. The kill shot? With an ambush? Deadly. Because he doesn’t see it coming,” Watters said.
On one level this shows how ignorant Watters is. He is dreaming if he thinks that Fauci can be taken by surprise with questions about gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute, something that the NIH and the Coronavirus Task Force have looked into closely. Watters likely thinks that other people are like him, ignorant about important issues, and too lazy to study them.
Fauci responded by saying that this was reprehensible rhetoric and that Watters should be fired.
Fauci — who is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and has served for 37 years as director of NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — on Tuesday described Watters’ remarks as “horrible.”
“The only thing that I have ever done throughout these two years is to encourage people to practice good public health practices: to get vaccinated, to be careful in public settings, to wear a mask,” Fauci said. “And for that, you have some guy out there saying that people should be giving me a kill shot to ambush me? I mean, what kind of craziness is there in society these days?”
I knew what Watters’s defense would be. He would say that he was just being funny and that the ‘ambush’ and ‘kill shot’ he was talking about were metaphors not to be taken seriously. And sure enough, that is what Fox News said on his behalf.
Fox News defended Watters in a statement, saying: “Based on watching the full clip and reading the entire transcript, it’s more than clear that Jesse Watters was using a metaphor for asking hard-hitting questions to Dr. Fauci about gain-of-function research and his words have been twisted completely out of context.”
I accept that the language used by Watters were metaphors but that does not make them less reprehensible. As I wrote four years ago, it has long been the practice for white nationalists and neo-Nazis to use incendiary language but in way that they can defend as being ‘just for the lulz’. This way, they can attract young people with an immature sense of humor into their groups, and deflect accusations that they are fomenting violence. Fox News has adopted that stance.
That is not all. Another Fox News personalty Lara Logan even compared Fauci, who has spent his entire life in improving the health of people, to the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele who did experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz.
Fox host Lara Logan says that people tell her that Dr. Fauci doesn't represent science, but represents Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor known as the "Angel of Death" for performing medical experiments at Auschwitz: "I am talking about people all across the world are saying this" pic.twitter.com/fF2DAWfG7d
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) November 30, 2021
The danger is that all it takes is for one person to be deluded enough to think that Watters and Logan are serious, take the words literally, and actually try to ambush and kill Fauci, thinking that it will make him a hero. Recall the man who drove, heavily armed, all the way from North Carolina to Washington DC to ‘save’ children who were reportedly held in a pizza shop basement by a Satanic child sex abuse ring involving top Democrats such as Hillary Clinton.
Violent rhetoric has become commonplace in the US. Our political language is suffused with it. In that climate, using it even humorously is irresponsible.
From 60 Minutes to conspiracy-mongering on Fox. Logan has come a long way down.
It feels to me that the lunatic right-wing, and the Republican party (but I repeat myself), recognizing that demographics insist that their political power will only continue to diminish over time, are winding themselves up to reboot the Civil War. They will ultimately lose just as they did the first time, but I fear a lot of good people will suffer terrible losses while these pieces of shit self-immolate.
moarscienceplz@2:
And my fear is that you are being too optimistic.
“Violent rhetoric has become commonplace in the US.”
Not only in the USA. One extreme right “joke” made a couple of years ago is calling ebola a solution for African refugees, who are called “dobbernegers” -- floating negroes (punch line: they float because they have drowned). The jokester, Annabel Nanninga, has been member of the Dutch Senate since a few years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annabel_Nanninga
Remember when Sarah Palin put out graphics with sightmarks over Gabby Giffords’ face, and one of her lunatic followers immediately afterward shot Giffords in the head? Palin bleated “blood libel!” against her and the entire rightwing media circled around her screaming about how she was being “persecuted” and for liberals to stop believing their lying eyes and instead shut up and accept the lies.
Well, now the rightwing media is screaming “Fauci wants to cancel Watters!”
Katydid @5:
What happened to Giffords was atrocious. But that doesn’t mean we should descend to the level of the right wing media and spread misinformation. The Washington Post has debunked that claim.
That said, the issue with Watters and Fauci is different. I agree that Watters should be fired.
@ 6 file thirteen
I agree that Watters should be fired.
I’d go for arrested and charged under the Criminal Code.
Aside from the violent rhetoric, does he explain what this “kill shot” is? What question does he think Fauci going to be completely unprepared for?
This is like saying, “I have a joke, and the punchline is really really funny” but then not giving you the punchline.
Conclusion: Watters doesn’t have anything that would constitute even a metaphorical ‘kill shot’.
@file thirteen; you deny that Palin was widely advertising the poster with Gabby Gifford’s face in crosshairs? Then you don’t remember what actually happened. A lot of people from Alaska were all over it, screaming to the masses that someone was going to get killed. Gabby Giffords survived, but many others--including 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green--were also shot and killed.
Katydid @9: The crosshairs were on maps, not faces.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/01/political-insiders-split-over-palins-crosshairs/69461/
@katydid, I don’t deny anything, I’m just pointing out that the Washington Post debunked the claim, and that’s mainly information for others who read your comment. If you don’t like the WP’s debunking, I’m not stopping you from explaining why. if you don’t want to argue against it, or even read it, I won’t attempt to make you.
Maybe. After all, it’s embedded in the language.
“he took aim at Anthony Fauci” “who has become a prime target”;
“Watters should be fired”
file thirteen @11,
Arguable. It most certainly does not “debunk” the claim it actually quotes.
John @13:
They use the word “debunked” in the article. Are you hoping that if you quote the word that it might seem spurious? Your lack of argument is somewhat deafening.
file thirteen, you want argument? Sure.
Here is the claim they supposedly debunked:
So…
1. Is the claim that this attack was probably evidence of how vicious American politics has become debunked? (Y/N)
2. Is the claim that Jared Lee Loughner opened fire grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people debunked? (Y/N)
3. Is the claim that at the time, [they] and others were sharply critical of the heated political rhetoric on the right debunked? (Y/N)
4. Is the claim that before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Ms. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized cross hairs debunked? (Y/N)
5. Is the claim that in that case no connection to the shooting was ever established debunked? (Y/N)
So… where in that piece are any of those claims debunked?
(Or: to which of those five questions do you respond ‘yes’?
John @15:
Whew, what a lot of strawmen. The very title of the article is The bogus claim that a map of crosshairs by Sarah Palin’s PAC incited Rep. Gabby Giffords’s shooting. I think from that, a reasonable person could be expected to infer that they’re saying it’s the claim that a map of crosshairs by Sarah Palin’s PAC incited Rep. Gabby Giffords’s shooting that is debunked when they use the word. If I were to hazard a guess about why they claimed the crosshairs did not incite the attack, it might be the offender planning such an attack back in 2007 (allegedly; I wasn’t there, I’m just reading what they say) that provides the basis for that belief.
file thirteen:
Sure, that’s the title.
Were it just the title and nothing else, I suppose so. But there’s an article.
Which begins with that very quotation that I quoted.
Who is the ‘they’ to which you refer? The NYT “But in that case no connection to the shooting was ever established.”, or the WP “As the corrected version of the Times’s editorial notes, no connection was established between this map and the 2011 shooting.”.
BTW, did you note this in the article itself?
“The Fact Checker is not a media critic, nor is it an opinion column that argues with other editorial opinions. We don’t play gotcha, and we appreciate when falsehoods are corrected. But this episode showed how pervasive this debunked talking point still is on the political left, and we wanted to set the record straight.”
They’re saying they are not being critical about media, that they are not arguing with the NYT’s editorial opinions, and that the talking point (presumably what they quoted at the very start of the article) was already debunked. In short, they’re saying they are not debunking it, unlike your own claim.
—
I quoted what they quoted; I separated the various claims therein. If those are straw dummies, then they’re not my straw dummies.
Anyway, point being, you are claiming WP debunked that claim, the WP’s own article (as I quoted) literally claims they are neither debunking nor critiquing.
Were I to believe you, I’d have to disbelieve the article you yourself adduced; conversely, were I to believe the article you adduced, I’d have to disbelieve you.
Heh.
John @17:
So you’re switching from even attempting to take issue with the article, to a position of pure pedantry. You’re saying that I was wrong to write (not adduce, this isn’t a court) that the WP debunked the claim; instead I should have said something like it was already debunked, as mentioned in the WP article. Geez, glad you set me straight on that John. Whatever would we do without you?
What? Whatever made you imagine I was or should be taking issue with the article itself?
I refer you to my initial post, #13:
It was your claim that the article debunked that claim which I adjudicated as arguable.
Indeed, that’s why we are arguing.
No. I just quoted what I initially wrote, which was not that you were wrong to write that it had done so, but that it was arguable. And I most certainly did not claim it was wrong to adduce the article, to wit, “the article you yourself adduced”. I mean, you don’t dispute it was indeed the article you yourself adduced, do you? It’s there on the record.
And no, I did not imply you should have said something like it was already debunked, though now that you bring it up you should indeed have made the more accurate claim that the article claimed that it was a debunked point (without any citation, mind you), and therefore you accepted that on the basis of its title alone.
No worries. Want more argument?
Anyway, though your paraphrase was incorrect and mistaken, you no longer dispute what I wrote, which is only appropriate. So, kudos.
John, John, John @19:
Not at all John. The statement “Arguable.” alone is insufficiently precise. I took it, reasonably, to mean that you considered the claim that it had been debunked to be arguable. Had I known you were merely on a quest to disappear up the inside of your own pedantic anus, I would have told you to drop dead, or words to that effect.
What kind of idiot would imagine the discussion was about anything else?
Sheesh.
Yep, that’s John Morales for you. He will now resort to increasingly narrow slices of wording in increasingly nested quotations, all out of a mulish refusal to admit that his point was silly. That last except you quote is a classic of his. “Whatever made you imagine I was or should be taking issue with the article itself?” he says, after pedantically taking issue with the article.
It was the salient part, and it is sufficient; but sure, which is why I clarified thus:
“It most certainly does not “debunk” the claim it actually quotes.”
And, as I’ve shown, it doesn’t — well, not unless you consider “this debunked talking point” to be a debunking. Which I’m pretty sure you don’t. Do you?
You didn’t know that then, and you do not know that now.
So those words will not be uttered under that criterion.
Again: your contention was clearly arguable, for the reason I expressed.
In fact, we are arguing about it (so I was correct there), and that article did not debunk the claim as I’ve established. And you dispute neither of those things, do you?
So, how making a precisely correct claim constitutes “disappear[ing] up the inside of your own pedantic anus” is left as an exercise on deciphering your aggrieved imaginary vindication.
The sort of idiot who is less idiotic than you. 🙂
Again: you made the claim that post debunked some claim, and the post itself says it neither critiques nor argues that claim, though it also claims it’s an already-debunked claim (which, clearly, is not itself a debunking).
Hey, just remedying your deafness!
Holms:
Welcome to the party.
So, you actually think it’s silly to claim that the claim that the WP article debunks that claim is arguable, do you?
<snicker>
Slow.
FWIW, I think there’s a good point being made in general.
(Keywords: plausible deniability, dogwhistle, stochastic terrorism)
I wasn’t joining in, just passing on an observation.
“He will now resort to increasingly narrow slices of wording in increasingly nested quotations…”
“So, you actually think it’s silly to claim that the claim that the WP article debunks that claim is arguable, do you?”
It holds up pretty well. Have a good one, Mr. Grumbles.
Holms:
Mmmhmm. An impression, even. From a kibitzer. Right.
That’s not an increasingly narrow slice of wording in increasingly nested quotations (#20 has the increasingly nested quotations, but it ain’t mine), rather it’s a question.
One which you have evaded, since answering ‘yes’ would indicate stupidity, and answering ‘no’ would be acknowledging my point. Alas, not answering it is not much better.
Mr. Triumphant, at this point. And thanks. You too.
I’ve used up my free articles in the Post and therefore I’d have to pay to read it. The Post is fairly right-wing, particularly in its editorial columns, and is not necessarily a good source for anything.
However, just like Watters whining for “a kill shot” and then denying he meant any harm, it was plain to everyone back in 2011 that Palin was egging on her fan base and stoking the flames of hatred against Giffords, who was a Representative of Arizona (a state Palin hoped to colonize) and who was in favor of putting some limits on guns--making her Palin’s sworn enemy. I was stationed in Alaska then and even the folks in Alaska were horrified and appalled by her recklessness.
I guess it was a simpler time back then when people could still be shocked by idiots calling for the deaths of important people. So sorry you appear not to be able to realize that.