Anti-Vaxxer Calls Jimmy Kimmel’s Pro-Vaccine Stance ‘Hate Speech’

vaccine vialDo you remember on Sesame Street when they used to sing a song called “One of These Things Is Not Like The Others?” Please sing it to yourself while evaluating the list below. Which of these things is not like the others–can you guess, kids?

A. Racism

B. Homophobia

C. Jimmy Kimmel telling people to vaccinate their damn kids

For most of you, the correct answer should be equally as apparent as it was when Big Bird was showing you three race cars and a toaster. But if you’re anti-vaxxer Mike Adams, things might get a little trickier.

Adams is the founder of the website NaturalNews, where he wrote a furious screed in response to Kimmel’s recent pro-vaccination video segment. If you missed it last week, here’s the bit from Jimmy Kimmel live where he complains about parents who are “more scared of gluten than they are of smallpox.” Give it a watch and see if you agree with Adams that it’s an “astonishing display of bigoted hate speech.”

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgpfNScEd3M]

Adams somehow construed that segment as “targeting children who have suffered brain damage from vaccines”, because Adams is a disingenuous jerk. No, you big dummy, he’s not making fun of vaccine-damaged children–he’s making fun of adults like you who refuse to take basic health precautions for their kids because of nebulous fears about ‘toxins’ and things that are ‘unnatural’ (such as not suffering through a case of the measles).

Adams’ post goes on to compare pro-vaccine sentiments to racism and homophobia, and suggests that Kimmel’s show is part of a concerted effort to dehumanize and incite actual physical violence against anti-vaxxers, and, oops, I guess I shouldn’t use that word because now I’m committing a ‘hate crime’ too:

Yet, astonishingly, it has now emerged in America that it is socially acceptable to use precisely the same bigoted hate-speech language against another group: children who are damaged by vaccines (and children who are unvaccinated). This group is now being widely and aggressively disparaged with the hate-based term “anti-vaxxers.”

Yes, the N-word, the F-slur, and “anti-vaxxer” are all precisely the same sort of ‘bigoted hate speech. To paraphrase comedian John Mulaney, if you have a list of three words and there’s only one of them you’re actually willing to write out without censoring it, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that one might not be quite as hateful and offensive as the other two. Besides, Adams, who has a history of comparing scientists to Nazis, doesn’t have a lot of room to throw stones from his sad little glass house.

 

The efforts of anti-vaxxers like Adams to associate themselves with real victims of racism and homophobia without actually dealing with the oppression those groups face is so mind-blowingly offensive that I had to lie down on the floor and think about trees while I counted to ten before I was calm enough to come back and finish this post. Anti-vaxxers are not oppressed. Anti-vaxxers are just wrong. And the condition of having one’s head up one’s ass is simply not a protected class in this country–sorry, but declaring yourself against vaccines is just not enough to immunize yourself against being told that your opinion is based on a foundation of scientific garbage.

(Image: luiscar / Getty)

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