The ongoing kerfuffle regarding Robert Kennedy Jr., Joe Rogan, and Peter Hotez MD is bizarre and ridiculous, but telling. In brief, Hotez castigated Rogan for interviewing Kennedy about COVID vaccines, and vaccines in general. The expectation, I guess, is that Rogan either not talk to a major party Presidential candidate or avoid his signature issue. Rogan made hay by inviting Hotez onto his show to debate RFK Jr. The doc firmly rejected this option.
The media has overwhelmingly taken Hotez's side on this, on the basis that scientists are serious people and shouldn't have to debate randos. This is not confidence. Almost everyone tacitly seems to know that Hotez is an empty lab coat. But the weak link in a chain is still part of the chain. If that link breaks, the chain is broken. So stopping this debate is a way to fend off future debates.
2 comments:
If you engage someone in debate you automatically offer them credibility; therefore, you can't debate that person. Seems simple enough, doesn't it?
Maybe it's my own lack of awareness but I'd never heard of Peter Hotez until the 'kerfluffle' with Rogan about debating Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Joe Rogan is such an instigator, a well known one, that anybody with any sense at all would understand he'd never miss a chance to troll this guy.. (who bears a remarkable resemblance to Pepe the Frog).
The media might take Hotez's side but an awful lot of the population has already got theit number and the willing audience is considerably smaller. It looks like there are enough weak links in that chain that make it look as though it could give way at multiple points. I wonder what they'll do then?
They believe that they have credibility to give, meaning they receive it whether they earn it or not. Within a certain segment of society they're right about this. Outside of that people are learning not to believe them.
I think for me I'd see his name pop up now and then but never had anything to connect it to and didn't really care. Until a bunch of Covidians started carrying out the absurd pretense that he was a serious person, that is. I don't know that he looks as wholesome as Pepe.
That's the dilemma for the media, the problem they're reluctant to face. Audiences are shrinking, and so is the number of believers. While some of this is structural, a lot of it comes down to telling transparent untruths. But those untruths are something our upper classes want to hear.
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