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Dying of COVID to Own The Libs

Slate News

Slate Podcasts

News, News Commentary, Politics

4.56K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2021

⏱️ 22 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Four conservative talk radio hosts have died of COVID-19 this summer, further revealing the consequences of a politicized pandemic. Why aren’t prominent right-wing figures doing more to embrace the coronavirus vaccine? 

Guest: Brian Rosenwald, fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Talk Radio’s America.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Can you hear that?

0:06.0

Yes, I can hear it, yep.

0:07.5

Okay, listen to this for a second.

0:11.5

There's a parody song that was played on a conservative radio show earlier this year.

0:16.3

I wanted to run it by Brian Rosenwald, a media historian specializing in talk radio.

0:20.9

Because I'm the Vaxman.

0:22.6

Yeah, I'm the Vaxman.

0:26.6

This song was released in June.

0:29.6

It turns the Beatles song Taxman, about a cheery, sadistic administrator who taxes everything

0:35.6

into Vaxman, about a cheery sadistic administrator who

0:39.2

vaccinates everyone.

0:41.1

This is what talk radio does.

0:43.8

They take these songs and they repurpose them for political messages and things.

0:48.7

And so the Vaxman is just like it fits perfectly with what you'd expect.

0:54.5

Vax Man was written and recorded by Phil Valentine, a Nashville institution and beloved talk

1:00.6

radio hosts since the 1990s. He was part of this post-rush limbaugh boom in right-wing radio.

1:07.1

Brian told me these hosts will proudly call themselves mini rushes.

1:11.1

It is Phil Valentine's show right here on the cusp of Independence Day weekend.

1:16.7

Valentine didn't deny the severity of the pandemic, really.

1:19.8

He just didn't think anyone should get pressured to get the vaccine.

1:23.0

On his show, he would spotlight alternative treatments for COVID-19, even as he acknowledged it was ubiquitous.

1:29.2

I've already had two kids who have had this, and then my third son is now in quarantine because

...

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