Excuse me for not spending all my time attempting to bring down Oprah. I was too busy co-authoring a book on vaccines, lobbying congress to increase funding for vaccines overseas, writing numerous articles about this issue for publication, updating my Facebook page with good info about vaccines and spending hours debating this issue online.
FYI, I did in fact sign a goddamned petition calling for The View not to hire McCarthy and I have in fact boycotted both Larry King and Howard Stern.
Your point? Oprah is a woo promoter. The fact that other people do it as well does not provide her with an excuse, a shield or a defense.
And since we’re talking about vaccines, I would strongly encourage people who want to get involved with this issue to consider volunteering their time and money to help Shot@Life. Shot@Life is a wonderful UN sponsored organization that works to help fund four vaccines for people who cannot afford them: the measles vaccines, the pneumococcal vaccine, the rotovirus vaccines and the polio vaccine.
I had the honor of attending a conference in DC with them in March where we lobbied congress to increase funding. Please consider calling your local officials to let them know you want to see foreign aid to help make sure people have access to such life saving vaccines. The vaccines are cheap and incredibly effective. Polio is on the verge of total elimination. The same with measles.
Yeah, a couple points with regard to the proposed Stewart/Winfrey equivalence.
The argument phrased here has contrasted cosmetics ads with in-program product endorsements, as though they were necessarily mutually exclusive. The thing is, it’s not like you won’t see cosmetics ads if you watch Oprah (or Dr. Oz). You get the same kinds of ads that run during breaks on Stewart’s show and you get the in-program shill-of-the-day.
In regards to Stewart’s show, I’d submit that you have no fucking clue what I see in the ad breaks. That’s because when I (occasionally) watch The Daily Show, I do so via Sky TV and Comedy Central UK. Stewart apparently doesn’t have enough pull over here to foist his evil sugar-and-fat-and-cosmetics agenda on unsuspecting British and Irish rubes; the most common type of ad run during a break in a CCUK show is… for another CCUK show.
I chose John Stewart because he is beloved. I don’t have a clue what his commercials are like, I don’t watch the show enough. No matter how much folks try to play dumb, they know exactly what my point is. Celebrities rely on sponsors who sell us prepackaged trash that is truly bad for us. We don’t have to buy the shit though. Indirectly, entertainers are pushing bad shit. All of them, really.
Amid the inexplicable bullshit about network/local TV ads during Jon Stewart’s show somehow being the equivalent of Oprah and Dr. Oz promoting quacks/quackery on their actual programs - Stewart has actuallygone to bat for common sensewhen it comes to vaccination.
Stewart has somehow maintained a viable show without hyping sensationalist woo. If the others mentioned find it impossible to do so, they need to find another line of work.
Oh my god the hard on for John Stewart! Who cares? I just used him as an example to point out how hypocritical it is to ignore your favorite stars indirect effect on gullible viewers but hold Oprah’s feet to the fire. I get it. You guys really, REALLY like John Stewart. I chose him on purpose, but I think I overshot. I should have gone with Colbert. Haha, just kidding. You guys would have REALLY lost your shit, then.
You’re comparing behavior that is both illegal and criminal with the free expression of ideas on a daytime TV show. This alone makes it a bad analogy. Perspective is needed.
Oz’s interest in mixing entertainment with medical advice makes him an unreliable purveyor of scientifically valid health information. That to me is the extent of his “crimes”, so equivalences to bioterrorism or some such just don’t do it for me.
You’re the one who picked Jon Stewart! The actual person you could have chosen is irrelevant, as there is a distinct difference between the content of someone’s show and the content of the commercials surrounding it, and I’d say this for any show.
To focus the comparison more, the commercials surrounding even Dr. Oz’s show are not his responsibility, particularly since, as a syndicated show, they are almost certainly set by the local stations he’s broadcast on. It would take some extraordinary circumstances before I’d think of criticizing him for the commercials around his show. The content of his show is directly his responsibility and are more than fair game for criticism.
If you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, maybe you should - oh, I don’t know - shut your fucking gob? As I noted in my post, the entities most-promoted via Stewart’s show over here are other programs on the same network.
You really are a remarkable cretin if you think ad breaks and in-program endorsements are the same thing. By your rationale, I suppose when flood victims are interviewed on the local news, if an ad for Coca-Cola runs right after that segment, then the flood victims are promoting childhood obesity. :rolleyes:
Yes, the local news showing coca cola ads are promoting childhood obesity. Throwing in the flood victims is just taking your own absurd condemnations of Oprah one step further. Who gives a fuck if MOST of JS’s commercials are for other programming. Shut the fuck up with that irrelevant smoke screen. The point remains no matter how hard you suck JS off to cloud it. Celebs are indirectly connected to gullible viewers being suckered into shit that’s bad for them. If you condemn Oprah, condemn the rest of them.
But it’s *your *irrelevant smokescreen! No one has condemned Oprah for the commercials shown by tv stations during her show. *You *have condemned celebrities for it, not the other posters. People are condemning Oprah for the content of her actual shows and shows she produces, and rightly so.
You are coming off poorly in this thread, and it makes me sad.
I don’t give a fuck about ‘coming off poorly’. Please don’t be sad about it. I think the comparison is close enough for government work. She INDIRECTLY encourages gullible viewers to be suckered by shit that is bad for them. She is being condemned as if she DIRECTLY is knocking the vaccine needles out of children’s arms. If you disagree with me that she isn’t the worst thing since unsliced bread, fine. I do note, though, that the vitriol at her has certainly been back peddled as the thread has progressed. Heh.
I have no problem with the free expression of ideas. Sunshine is the best disinfectant. But that doesn’t give Dr Oz a free pass from criticism.
By putting quacks on your show, giving them a platform to spew dangerous ideas, and not calling them out on their nonsense means He is subject to justified criticism. As a doctor his job is to do no harm. By putting Dr Mercola on his show and NOT challenging his nonsense, Dr Oz is doing harm.
His show has some gavitas because he’s was a respected MD. It’s entertainment with a thin veneer of journalism. It may be good entertainment but it’s bad medical advice and it should be criticized as such.
At this point the only thing I can’t figure out is how you could be so fucking stupid and yet spell so many words correctly. If you are using some kind of voice-recognition software it’s doing a damn fine job of understanding you.
Which was my point at the outset; my first remark was regarding the disproportion of the criticism. Hard to find anyone immune to criticism, but wishing Oprah-the-cunt a miserable, lonely death seemed just a teensy bit excessive.
I know Stoid. I posted that so you can see it and take note too. The whole point was that the vitriol was disproportionate and then some folks tried to start changing the subject and back peddling at some point. Good work, Stoid, at putting your haters on the backpeddle cycle.
