Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center doesn't want anyone who refuses to get a COVID vaccine to face consequences for their behavior (outside the increased risk of hospitalization or death if/when they do catch COVID, anyway). Witness Mark Finkelstein's Dec. 15 freakout over political strategist David Frum's suggestion that hospitals move unvaccinated people to the end of the line for treatment:
Frum wasn't merely proposing that the unvaccinated be given emergency care last only for Covid, but for ALL emergencies. Gunshots, car accidents, etc. — unvaccinated to the back of the line.
There was pure malice and vindictiveness in Frum's suggestion that hospitals do this "quietly." If Frum actually wanted there to be a public benefit, he would have proposed that hospitals prominently announce their intention. That might encourage some to get vaccinated. His proposal reveals a malicious desire to covertly punish the unvaccinated with an inordinate death rate.
Brianna Keilar repeatedly expressed understanding, if not necessarily agreement, for his proposal. But when she expressed sympathy for his desire to to "shake someone into the realization of what they can do for themselves and for others," she conveniently ignored Frum's proposal that hospitals deprioritize the unvaccinated "quietly." So no one would be shaken. They would simply die in disproportionately greater numbers.
To her credit, Keilar did ask Frum to defend the morality of his proposal: "How is it moral to propose that?" Frum defended: "I wasn't writing a management treatise on hospital emergency rooms. This was a tweet where I was trying to give voice to the [inaudible] frustration that people who have been doing the right thing feel toward people who are doing the wrong thing..."
Frum also accused politicians and media figures who express doubts over vaccine of sending their followers out on "suicide missions." And he claimed that they also are intentionally trying to keep the pandemic going as long as possible to hurt Biden, and Democrats at large, politically.
[...]
Frum isn't some harmless mutterer. He is actively wishing potential death upon millions of people.
Note that Finkelstein doesn't criticize the defiantly unvaccinated for refusing to do their part to help the country during a health crisis or argue that they should face some kind of consequence for their refusal. No, he bashed Frum for suggesting that they do face consequences. He does not criticize the purveyors of COVID misinformation -- which include his fellow MRC writers -- for "actively wishing potential death upon millions of people" through their misinformation; he attacks Frum for criticizing that misinformation.
That's the way the MRC works these days.
