If you’ve spent any time on Twitter — maybe you leave it up to us, the professionals — you’ve probably seen one of the few memes from the Left that doesn’t outright suck; it’s a black banner with the words “Let’s Go Darwin” on it. The gag, obviously, is that we should cheer on anti-vaxxers — all of whom are anti-Biden Republicans, apparently — killing themselves off by not getting the vaccine that doesn’t prevent you from catching or spreading COVID-19.
We’ve seen lefties cheer on the deaths of conservatives quite a few times now — Herman Cain comes to mind — but now Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik isn’t just giving the OK to the cheers … he’s arguing that they’re “necessary.”
From @hiltzikm:
Column: Mocking anti-vaxxers' deaths is ghoulish, yes — but necessary
Sign up to get an email alert each time Michael Hiltzik publishes a column: https://t.co/JECxMw1Tbihttps://t.co/nLn0UrsqoE
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 10, 2022
Beyond the clickbait headline, Hiltzik’s column is really about Kelly Ernby, a prominent Orange County Republican who died unvaccinated, and the vaccine mandates against which she advocated. (An obvious reminder: there’s a difference between being anti-vaccine and anti-mandate.) But still, Hiltzik looks into online ridicule of the unvaccinated who die of COVID and concludes:
It may be not a little ghoulish to celebrate or exult in the deaths of vaccine opponents. And it may be proper to express sympathy and solicitude to those they leave behind.
But mockery is not necessarily the wrong reaction to those who publicly mocked anti-COVID measures and encouraged others to follow suit, before they perished of the disease the dangers of which they belittled.
Nor is it wrong to deny them our sympathy and solicitude, or to make sure it’s known when their deaths are marked that they had stood fast against measures that might have protected others from the fate they succumbed to themselves.
There may be no other way to make sure that the lessons of these teachable moments are heard.
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If those “teachable moments” were enough to change the minds of anti-vaxxers, it would have happened a long time ago. No, this is just a case of people taking joy in the “enemy” getting what’s coming to them.
The unclean vermin have been cleansed! Hail Hiltzik!
— Orb Ponderer (@ponderer_orb) January 10, 2022
It’s actually just ghoulish
— Anne Stonebridge (@LAStonebridge) January 10, 2022
Disgusting
— Jose Rat 🔨 🍊 (@Jrat30) January 10, 2022
It's official. Journalism is now run by middle school mean girls.
— TopJimmy (@jp23mc) January 10, 2022
Michael looks real healthy. Just don't take his stapler he might burn the place down. pic.twitter.com/i0aqqM4isP
— TeaPartyTrumper🇺🇸 (@TeaPartyTrumper) January 10, 2022
Solid burn.
Wow, @hiltzikm is one of the most frightening extremists in the United States.
— a.bout.whati🖤 (@aboutwhatilike) January 10, 2022
You are disgusting human beings
— Theodore Gaffney (@TheodoreGaffne1) January 10, 2022
So you would have been okay with straight society mocking the gays who were dying in the 80s because it was “necessary”. Correct?
— Gaius Julius Caesar (@beautiful_man_) January 10, 2022
Y’all are literally HORRIBLE people… WOW!
— Bidens OFFICIAL Food Chewer 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@kristyC95786602) January 10, 2022
When people tell you who they are, believe them
Thank you, @hiltzikm, for being so open about who you are— They CALL me… (@MistahTibbs) January 10, 2022
This person has a Pulitzer Prize pic.twitter.com/WKzaKBvINO
— Jon Levine (@LevineJonathan) January 10, 2022
Yeah, we’re not impressed by Pulitzer Prizes anymore, but leave it in your bio if it makes you feel good.
Should we mock death due to vaccination? Or deaths of the vaccinated?
— Darran (@DStuck3y) January 10, 2022
Seriously — should anti-vaxxers mock the deaths of those who’d been triple-vaccinated and wore a mask alone in the car? Now that we know that most of them had four comorbidities like obesity?
Does he laugh at people that die from obesity? What about high risk groups dying from HIV? Does he chuckle about that, too?
— DustinNettnin (@DustinNettnin) January 10, 2022
Media: gee why do people hate us?
— Joe Papp (@joepabike) January 10, 2022
Mocking anti-vaxxers' deaths: 👍
Misgendering someone: Literal violence 😡
— NC Optimist (@NC_Optimist) January 10, 2022
One of those will get you suspended from Twitter.
Related:
MTV alumnus Chet Cannon busts Joy Reid for attempting to shame vaccine skeptics despite being one of ‘the original anti-vaxxers’ [screenshot] https://t.co/9dYb1QPUqB
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) December 28, 2021
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