But I agree the last couple of records weren't exactly radio friendly!
Probably never?
Reality is quite different. The people not getting vaccinated are the people who have dealt with the government the most. They have a certain distrust after years over years of dealing with the government.
Meaning, the vast majority of the antivax hate ends up impacting the most vulnerable in our society.
Hate is bad. It's anti-human and a huge step back. It doesn't make anyone, anywhere, morally superior and it definitely isn't a marker for intelligence.
In fact, swallowing wholesale the narrative by people who have a vast history of lying(or no history of any truth/intelligent ideas) is the least intelligent thing one can do.
This is no less true of the self-declared anti vaccination prophets, and their cousins the lab leakers. The one area in which "both sides" tends to be true is that there are condescending extremist never-shut-ups on every side of every issue, and even their allies often find them exhausting.
Reminds me of Inception. At least when I think of the overall outcome which I get to see daily.
These are weasel words. The antivax movement among progressive west-coast parents in the US has been covered frequently in the national media e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/us/measles-outbreak.html
> The people not getting vaccinated are the people who have dealt with the government the most.
This is also not true. They're mostly people with low educational attainment who are more susceptible to misinformation, but I can see the narrative you're trying to create!
> In fact, swallowing wholesale the narrative by people who have a vast history of lying(or no history of any truth/intelligent ideas) is the least intelligent thing one can do.
Good governments generally understand this, and the most effective health policy during the pandemic was to give the mic to the scientific community.
Even just the argument to support mandates has completely changed, and yet too late for those who lost their jobs.
There are billions of webpages that presumably say just about everything possible. The link to the NYT article that was never promoted doesn't do much in this regard
There are also plenty of scientists who have different opinions. Only scientists with certain opinions are given interviews/timeslots. This applies to Fox as it does CNN.
None of that matters though.
My points were not about vaccinations, they were about hate. The why isn't really important.
How is that creating a narrative? People with low education are also often people who deal with government programs a lot. Through medicare, social security, VA, police, public schooling, public housing and I can keep on going, these people are often dependent on government. And that combined with lower mental capacity really doesn't help.
> Good governments generally understand this, and the most effective health policy during the pandemic was to give the mic to the scientific community.
That's what they did in my country... And in my country, the covid anti-vaxxers are very relatable to the ones in the US. Hell, they get most their information from Q-anon.
I can see why you think that, but it's actually the reverse. People with a high level of education are more susceptible to misinformation because they have been conditioned to focus on credentials. They take the information on its face as long as the individual speaking has the proper title. This allows real misinformation and disinformation to spread rapidly and without pushback.
People outside of this have a much more skeptical posture and can see the narrative for what it is.
I'm the farthest thing from a fan of Kanye West, but this is false:
"West remains a considerable force in pop music. Every album except his debut, 2004’s “The College Dropout,” has topped the Billboard 200, including 2021’s “Donda,” which received a Grammy album of the year nomination. In the run-up to “Donda,” he held public “listening parties” at football stadiums in Atlanta and Chicago that were livestreamed on Apple Music (he was roundly criticized for bringing out special guests DaBaby and Marilyn Manson, who are each under scrutiny for bigoted language or alleged abuses). His sold-out December show with Drake at the L.A. Coliseum affirmed he’s still a formidable concert draw, one of few hip-hop acts who can credibly headline major global festivals." [1]
His continued popularity is precisely what makes his comments so dangerous.
There's no denying Kanye's words still have an impact, but his star is dimmer than it once was, and he knows it.
And isn't Kanye also still popular by those metrics?
However, measuring said relevancy is a very subjective endeavor (due to the fact that it’s hard to objectively evaluate things outside of our own bubble). In my view it’s whether the artist is “talked about” and whether they are influencing the current music (and a broader culture) - that’s what makes them relevant. Kanye is still doing both of those things, so he is very relevant.
Donda (and Donda 2 to a smaller degree) was a very noticeable cultural event. Listening parties, album guests, the controversy around his romantic relationships (scandalous IG posts, etc), merchandise (tied to his big fashion releases)…
Billy Joel has none of that. Nostalgic concerts are definitely not a sign of relevancy outside of his fandom bubble.
He's definitely lost his mind but to say he's lost his cultural relevance is a stretch.
Instead he's the brave truth-teller telling us things that the Man (who, it turns out, ia jewish) doesn't want us to know. You see a bunch of celebrities and regular people alike fall into this trap — think of the former popular kid in high school who ended up as a janitor who spends their time "researching" the connection between vaccines and autism.