The Other McCain

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Journalism 2021: CNN Fact-Checks Rapper’s Claim About Testicles

Posted on | September 16, 2021 | Comments Off on Journalism 2021: CNN Fact-Checks Rapper’s Claim About Testicles

Wow, I’m so old, I remember when CNN was actually a news organization, rather than a P.R. firm for the Democratic Party. In fact, I’m so old, I was old enough to be partying in discos when the first rap hit (“Rapper’s Delight” by Sugar Hill Gang) made it into the Top 40. Jimmy Carter was president, and the Ayatollah was holding Americans hostage in Tehran, but we were too busy partying to care. Is anyone else old enough to remember when most college kids were completely apathetic about politics? But enough about the Good Old Days . . .

Nicki Minaj is a 38-year-old hiphop star who was born in Trinidad and moved to Queens, N.Y., with her family as a child. When she was in her 20s, she was “discovered” by rapper Lil Wayne, and scored her breakthrough hit, “Pink Friday” in 2010. Her net worth is now estimated at $80 million, because America is a white supremacist country that oppresses women and people of color. Well, according to Democrats.

Minaj also has 22 million followers on Twitter, so when she told her tale about COVID-19 vaccine causing her cousin’s friend in Trinidad to experience testicular swelling and become impotent, this set off a panic among Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) who are trying to defend Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate. As Jim Geraghty writes, the establishment went to “DEFCON One”:

Do I believe that hip-hop star Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend in Trinidad received a COVID-19 vaccine and then developed swollen testicles and became impotent? Let’s just say I am going to wait for the full review in The Lancet medical journal before drawing any firm conclusions. I also might want a second opinions from the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Nature, Harvard Medical School, the Mayo Clinic, Sloan-Kettering, and Dr. Ruth Westheimer.
But there is something spectacularly hilarious about this absurd turn in the national debate about COVID-19 vaccinations, where no less a figure than Dr. Anthony Fauci felt the need to go on national television and say, no, there is no evidence that the vaccine will make your testes blow up like a pair of balloons . . .
There is also something hysterical and ludicrous about the fact that media fact-checkers at places such as USA Today and PolitiFact felt the need to “fact check” a tweet from a hip-hop star . . .
The White House apparently felt the need to reach out to Minaj and offered to connect her with a doctor with expertise. MSNBC’s Joy Reid did a whole segment denouncing Minaj, and there have been critical pieces about Minaj at CNN, Vox, CNBC, the BBC, and elsewhere.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Why this absurd journalistic panic over a rapper’s tweet about COVID-19 vaccine?

  1. She’s got what they call “clout” as a social-media influencer, particularly among young people. CNN’s audience is a tiny fraction of Nicki Minaj’s Twitter following, and so CNN’s “reporters” — who can’t be bothered to cover the disaster at the U.S.-Mexico border or the emerging hostage crisis in Afghanistan — found time to contact the health minister of Trinidad to deny anyone there experienced testicular inflammation as a result of the vaccine.
  2. The Biden administration has been lying through its teeth, blaming Republicans for the recent “surge” of COVID-19 infections. It’s not Trump voters who are responsible for spreading anti-vaccine “misinformation,” and Nicki Minaj’s tweet undermines the media narrative.

The fact is that vaccination “resistance” is a greater problem among blacks and Hispanics than among whites, but this is an inconvenient truth for the Biden administration (and its media apparatchiki), who are scapegoating Republicans as being “anti-science” on vaccines.

Why do Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) think they can get away with straight-up lying about the COVID-19 pandemic? Because they have been getting away with it right from the start. And they don’t plan to stop lying anytime soon. It’s their job description now, and if that means fact-checking testicle inflammation in Trinidad? So be it.




 

Category: Media Bias

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