Dog Whistle
gregladen | October 29, 2016How can you tell what a megalomaniac is really up to? You find out what the megalomaniac is accusing everyone else of. That's what they are up to.
While the just barely brighter than dim press and pundits are focusing on Trump's call for his followers to carry out voter suppression in African American and Hispanic neighborhoods on November 8th, or before at early voting elections, and accusing the Democrats of voter fraud (suppression and fraud are different, sort of opposite, things) something different is actually happening.
This is how dog whistles work. Dog whistles, usually used by…
oracknows | July 31, 2016During the political battle last year over the recently implemented California law SB 277, which eliminates nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates and then later during the campaign for the Republican nomination for President, I used a term regarding antivaccine views. That term was “antivaccine dog whistle.” In politics, as you probably now, a “dog whistle” is a term for coded messages that sound like advocating principles with broad acceptance but to a certain subgroup are recognized as code for something else. The analogy is obvious. Just as humans can’t hear much of a dog…
oracknows | July 5, 2016This weekend was the 4th of July, Independence Day. It’s the most patriotic holiday of all, at least for Americans. We celebrated it in the usual way, with parades, fireworks, the odd lost digit or two, and barbecues. Unfortunately, there’s another thing that the 4th of July inevitably brings on as well, and that’s the invocation of liberty to support dubious causes. Given what happened last year around this time in California, regular readers probably have an idea where I’m going with this. Yes, I’m referring to antivaccine activists invoking “rights” and “freedom” to justify their refusal…
oracknows | March 12, 2015How quickly things change.
If there's one thing I always feel obligated to warn my fellow pro-science advocates about vaccines and the antivaccine movement, it's that we can never rest on our laurels or assume that the tide is turning in our direction. The reason is simple: Antivaccinationism is a powerful belief system, every bit as powerful as religion and political ideology. It's powerful not just among antivaccinationists, but also because it taps into belief systems that are very much part and parcel of being an American. In fact, depressingly, yesterday I learned of a perfect example of…
oracknows | February 20, 2015
You remember Dr. Bob, don't you?
I'm referring, of course, to Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears, the Capistrano Beach, CA pediatrician who's arguably the most famous of the antivaccine pediatricians who have been spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about vaccines. (Sorry, Dr. Jay, but, regardless of your being Jenny McCarthy's son's pediatrician, I'd bet that more people have heard of Dr. Bob than have heard of you.) Dr. Bob has achieved this fame/notoriety based on his book, The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for your Child, which is chock full of exaggerations about the dangers of…