446
this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2026
446 points (99.8% liked)
politics
31043 readers
1557 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles. Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to US politics and contain quality and original content. Social Media adjacent hosts like Substack are allowed, but ONLY if they tie back to a company/subsidiary. No personal or friend group blogs and no self-promotion. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and re-hosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing other users of being bots or paid actors.
- No memes, trolling, misinformation, or low-effort posts/comments (including reposts). If you see posts like this that anger you, do not engage. Report, block, and live a happier life than they do. Any slap-fight is subject to comment removals. Fights full of rule violations will result in temporary bans to cool off.
- No manipulating votes via bots or alt accounts; this will result in permanent bans. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in an account ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be permanently banned.
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules and use critical thinking when reading, posting, and commenting. Users that repeatedly have comments or posts removed, weaponize reports, or violate the code of conduct, will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users. The reason(s) behind moderator action(s) are publicly available through the Modlog.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Its a combination of things and time.
First is name recognition. If you hear things from a name you know you are going to give it more consideration regardless of its insanity.
Second is Jenny McCarthy broke the brains of a lot of American moms, in the 2000s? I think it was going on her massive tour of talk shows saying vaccines cause autism. She was never an expert and the only study ever cited was debunked. Massive TV talk shows put her on to nation wide audiences including Oprah, known for giving us such awesome people as Dr Oz and Dr Phil. Saying she knew her child better and the causes of autism vs what those dorks in science were saying gave some people the idea you could know better than an expert in a field.
Next the internet became what it is... an awful place where you can find a number of people to agree to damn near anything. Yea maybe before there was one mom who was anti vax in your town and everyone thought she was a kook. Now she has friends online that can provide her with wild stories and made up statistics that you cannot counter on the fly. Mommy blogs and now influencers talk about all different ways to keep your baby safe from "big pharma" and their evil vaccines but you should totally buy this $250 a month bone broth, methalyne blue pill that will keep you healthy. Disregard the fact its never actually been tested and we wont tell you where it comes from.
I think anti intellectualism is the final piece to this. No longer do people feel ok saying "I dont know" when presented with hard questions or things they habe no basis in. We have fought against things science has shown us because it doesnt match our beliefs, evolution, or it isnt immediately obvious what it hurting, climate change, or we have never experienced the horrors of some diseases, anti vaccine.
RFK Jr ticks all these. He is a Kennedy and regardless of your political affiliation you know that name. He speaks to the same anti vaccine sentament McCarthy started years ago. Ignore all those deaths in American Samoa that were the cause of him preaching his anti vaccine bs. He is also clearly not an expert so he is not made bias by those evil intellectuals in their ivory towers. He studied this stuff and didnt need to do any of that stupid testing.
Long and short of it, RFK Jr is only the picture of health to those who want him to be. They see the same stuff we all do but it doesnt matter because he says what they want to hear.
Sorry this was longer than I expected it to be.
It's weird how she tends to get a pass on things, but how was she not the Joe Rogan for the daytime TV set?
Something you missed is that he has the entire "wellness" industry fluffing him up.
There are no YouTube channels with people saying "I got vaccinated and didn't get sick", but there's plenty of people making a livelihood out of demonizing vaccines.
I didn't know who Jenny McCarthy was when I started watching The Masked Singer. I don't keep up with a lot of pop culture, so I thought she was probably an actress who'd just been on shows hadn't seen before. (I didn't know Robin Thicke or Nicole Scherzinger were either, at first. And I often don't know who the celebrity contestants are, too.) Then one time a contestant thanked her for her work... and so I wondered and searched online.
Ken Jeong is a comedian, but he was a medical doctor first and he continues to work enough as an MD to keep his credentials. How can stand to sit at the same table as her? Especially when it was COVID and people were literally dying by the millions. (That's when I first saw the show.) I suppose the money is good enough for him to put aside his medical credentials and Hippocratic oath aside when he's not actually practising.
Depending on your age its entirely ok to not know McCarthy.
To show my age the reason I know her is she, along with Carmen Electra were popular Playboy models who parlayed that into mainstream appeal. Which is kind of wild to think about now. I have no idea if any other models ever did that as successfully. McCarthy also was a cohost on MTVs game show Singled Out that was hosted by of all people Chris Hardwick.
Same with Trump when all those people make pictures of him as someone with a 12-pack looking like Arnold.