Glenn Beck suddenly coy about whether he鈥檒l get flu shot
Conspiracy-theorist-in-chief Glenn Back at Fox News has spent much of the week railing against the World Health Organization and the Obama administration, saying they've hyped the swine flu pandemic and the merits of a $3 billion vaccination program.
Bottom line from Mr. Beck: Perhaps Americans' safest option is to do the opposite of what the government wants them to do.
But the much-beloved/much-reviled host was uncharacteristically coy about his own vaccination plans during an hour-long show about the swine flu Thursday night: He鈥檚 refusing to say whether he will get the shot. 鈥淚鈥檓 trying to give you the facts tonight, with no opinion,鈥� Beck said at the top of the show.
That stance contrasts sharply with his statements on a show Sept. 29, when he said his inclination was to attend a "flu party" where people deliberately expose themselves to the virus. (The thinking behind that unorthodox idea is that in this way people will strengthen their immune systems -- what they see as a sort of natural vaccination.)
"People just feel in their gut, 'I don't trust these people any more', 鈥� Beck said Sept. 2 of the government and its representatives. 鈥淭hey think our government could be so incompetent that they don't have any clue as to what they are doing."
The to-vaccinate-or-not-to-vaccinate debate has been raging for weeks in the blogosphere, at water coolers, and among parents -- even causing the Centers for Disease Control to deploy "myth busters" to try to quell the public's concerns. It's a serious issue with serious implications about people's rights and responsibilities, but it's also become made-for-TV theater.
At Fox, Beck antagonist Bill O鈥橰eilly chided him during Thursday night鈥檚 鈥淏eck and Call鈥� segment, noting that it鈥檚 a rare day when Beck doesn鈥檛 say exactly what he thinks.
But he didn't stop there. Mr. O鈥橰eilly also suggested that Beck's intense focus on swine flu is somewhat ridiculous. Instead of spending an hour of TV time 鈥渄ebunking鈥� myths about it, as Beck explained was his intent, O鈥橰eilly said his own show "would spend two seconds debunking it [by saying] 'That鈥檚 nuts!' And that鈥檚 that, we鈥檙e finished with it.鈥�
Some suggest that Beck鈥檚 sidestepping of the question about his own vaccination choice shows a softer side to the fiery TV host.
Alex Koppelman at Salon鈥檚 War Room says Beck was, in fact, in a debunking mood, shooting down, for example, the fringe theme that the US government plans to use the shots to inject a tracking chip into Americans.
鈥淸W]atching the show, it seemed like there was something else at work: It seemed like Beck was leaning towards the pro-vaccination side, that he, for once, doesn't believe the conspiracy theories,鈥� Mr. .
In a rare realignment of the ideological stars, the conservative Beck seems to share the "antivax" views of several bloggers at the liberal Huffington Post, notes Gawker鈥檚 Ryan Tate. Several HuffPo bloggers have outright told people to say "No!" to the vaccine.
鈥淐ombine two dashes of the Huffington's culty, medicine-fearing 鈥楲iving鈥� section and one dash of Fox News' craziest host, and you've got 'Love in the Time of Swine Flu,' 鈥� .
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In the US, a pervasive wariness of the swine flu vaccine. What's up?
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