Monthly Archives: January 2021

Anti-vaccine groups are exploiting the suffering and death of people who happen to fall ill after receiving a covid shot, threatening to undermine the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history.

In some cases, anti-vaccine activists are fabricating stories of deaths that never occurred.

This is exactly what anti-vaccine groups do, said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious diseases specialist and author of Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science.

Anti-vaccine groups have falsely claimed for decades that childhood vaccines cause autism, weaving fantastic conspiracy theories involving government, Big Business and the media.

Now, the same groups are blaming patients coincidental medical problems on covid shots, even when its clear that age or underlying health conditions are to blame, Hotez said. They will sensationalize anything that happens after someone gets a vaccine and attribute it to the vaccine, Hotez said.

As more seniors receive their first covid shots, many will inevitably suffer from unrelated heart attacks, strokes and other serious medical problems not because of the vaccine but, rather, their age and declining health, said epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesotas Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

For example, in a group of 10 million people about the number of Americans who have been vaccinated so far nearly 800 people ages 55 to 64 typically die of heart attacks or coronary disease in one week, Osterholm said. Public health officials are not ready for the onslaught of news and social media stories to come, he cautioned.

The media will write a story that John Doe got his vaccine at 8 a.m. and at 4 p.m. he had a heart attack, Osterholm said on his weekly podcast. They will make assumptions that its cause and effect.

Public health officials need to do a better job communicating the risks real and imagined from vaccines, said Osterholm, who has been advising President Joe Biden on the pandemic since his election.

You get one chance to make a first impression, Osterholm said. Even if we come back later and say, No, [the deaths] had nothing to do with vaccination, it was coronary artery disease, the damage has already been done.

Anti-vaccine groups such as the National Vaccine Information Center and Childrens Health Defense, founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are already inflaming fears about a handful of deaths mostly in Europe that have followed the worldwide rollout of immunizations.

In a blog post, Kennedy scoffed at autopsy results that concluded a Portuguese womans death was unrelated to a vaccine. He cast doubt on statements by medical authorities in Denmark who said the deaths of two people there after vaccination were due to old age and chronic lung disease. In an interview, Kennedy said the post-vaccination deaths of some very frail and terminally ill nursing home patients in Norway are a danger sign. Norwegian officials have said the elderly patients died of their underlying illnesses, not from the vaccine.

Coincidence is turning out to be quite lethal to COVID vaccine recipients, Kennedy wrote. Kennedy described the deaths as suspicious, accusing medical officials of following an all-too-familiar vaccine propaganda playbook and strategic chicanery.

Here in the U.S., vaccine opponents have pounced on the tragedy of Dr. Gregory Michael, a 56-year-old Florida obstetrician-gynecologist, to sow doubts about vaccine safety and government oversight. Michael died Jan. 5 after suffering a catastrophic drop in platelets elements in the blood that control bleeding suggesting he may have developed immune thrombocytopenia..

According to a Facebook post by his wife, Heidi Neckelmann, doctors tried a variety of treatments to save her husband, but none worked.

A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency is investigating Michaels death, as it does for all suspected vaccine-related health problems. California authorities have recommended pausing vaccinations with a particular batch of covid vaccines made by Moderna because of a high rate of allergic reactions.

Were going to see these events happen, and we have to follow up on every one of these cases, Osterholm said. I dont want people to think that were sweeping them under the rug.

Many Americans were already nervous about covid vaccines, with 27% saying they probably or definitely would not get a shot, even if the shots were free and deemed safe by scientists, according to a December survey by KFF. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.)

These people may be particularly susceptible to vaccine misinformation, said Rory Smith, an investigator at First Draft News, a nonprofit that reports on misinformation online.

A Rare Condition

Seven experts in blood disorders interviewed by KHN said theres not enough information available to blame Michaels decline on a vaccine and that the demonstrated benefits of covid vaccinations vastly outweigh any potential risk of bleeding. Even if investigators conclude that Michaels vaccine caused his death, it would still be an incredibly rare event, given that more than 21.8 million doses have been administered.

It shouldnt give anyone pause about whether the vaccine is safe or not, said Dr. James Zehnder, a hematologist and director of clinical pathology at Stanford Medicine.

Michaels bleeding disorder could have been developing silently for some time, said Dr. Adam Cuker, director of the Penn Blood Disorders Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. It could be a coincidence that Michael started showing symptoms shortly after vaccination, he said. About 30 Americans are diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenia every day.

The timing of Michaels illness suggests it had another cause, doctors said. According to his wifes Facebook post, his bleeding problems began three days after his first covid shot. It takes the body 10 to 14 days after vaccination to generate antibodies, which would be needed to cause immune thrombocytopenia, said Dr. Cindy Neunert, a pediatric hematologist at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.

In most cases, the cause of thrombocytopenia is never known, said Dr. Deepak Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston.

Immune thrombocytopenia is linked, rarely, to certain vaccines, with about 26 cases for every 1 million doses of measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.

But it can also be caused by viruses themselves, including measles and the novel coronavirus, said Dr. Sven Olson, an assistant professor of hematology-medical oncology at Oregon Health & Science Universitys school of medicine.

Many patients with immune thrombocytopenia are now wondering if they should be vaccinated against covid, Cuker said. Cuker said he urges nervous patients to be vaccinated, noting that any problems could be managed by closely monitoring their platelet levels and adjusting medication if needed.

Even in patients with underlying bleeding conditions, its still safer to get vaccinated than to get covid, Zehnder said.

If you give a vaccine to a large enough number of people, there are going to be rare adverse events but there are also going to be coincidental events unrelated to the vaccine, Cuker said. If an anti-vaccine group uses a single case, where no link has been proven, to discourage people from vaccination, thats terrible.

Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, said her site provides balanced information from reputable news sources, including CNN, CBS and the Miami Herald, as well as Pfizer and the CDC.

In an interview with KHN, Kennedy said he questions why government officials have been so quick to dismiss connections between vaccinations and deaths. How in the world do they know if its a vaccine injury or not? he asked.

We dont discourage anybody from getting vaccinated, Kennedy said. All were doing is conveying the data, which is what the government should be doing. We print the truth, which is what the medical agencies ought to do.

Alternative Facts?

Opponents of vaccination have belittled concerns about the novel coronavirus for months, opposing masks and fighting stay-at-home orders and contact tracing, said Richard Carpiano, a professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California-Riverside.

They have come out against every public health measure to control the pandemic, Carpiano said. They have said public health is public enemy No. 1.

Recently, anti-vaccine activists have been so eager to discredit immunizations that they have blamed covid for the deaths of people who are very much alive.

Social media users selectively edited a video of a Tennessee nurse, Tiffany Dover to make it appear as if she dropped dead after being vaccinated, when in fact she simply fainted, said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the UC Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. Although Dover quickly recovered, social media users posted a fake death certificate and obituary. Anti-vaccine activists also harassed Dover and her family online, said Reiss, who chronicled Dovers ordeal in a blog post.

Anti-vaccine activists are adept at manipulating video, Smith said.

They are notorious for using videos and images purportedly showing the adverse effects of vaccines, such as autism in children and seizures in other vaccine recipients, Smith said. The more emotive and graphic the videos and images irrespective of whether its actually linked at all to vaccines or not the better.

In December, multiple Facebook posts falsely claimed that an Alabama nurse died after receiving one of the states first covid vaccines. One Twitter user went so far as to identify the nurse as Jennifer McClung, who worked at Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama. In fact, McClung died of covid. Social media posts spread so widely that Alabama health department officials contacted every hospital in the state to confirm that no vaccinated staff member had died.

Anti-vaccine groups often build fables around a tiny, tiny grain of truth, Smith said. This is why misinformation, specifically vaccine misinformation, can be so convincing. But this information is almost always taken completely out of context, creating claims that are either misleading or outright false.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity twisted a news story about the deaths of 24 people at an upstate New York nursing home, incorrectly blaming their deaths on covid vaccinations. The original article noted, however, that a covid outbreak at the nursing home began in late December, before residents received any vaccines. Covid vaccines, which require two doses for full protection, did not arrive in time to save the residents lives.

Kennedy repeated the misinformation again incorrectly blaming the residents deaths on vaccines in his blog, although he linked to a local news station that reported the information correctly.

Distorting facts to discourage vaccination, Cuker said, is very irresponsible and damaging to public health.

Liz Szabo: lszabo@kff.org,@LizSzabo

Excerpt from:
Anti-Vaccine Activists Peddle Theories That Covid Shots Are Deadly, Undermining Vaccination - Kaiser Health News

If you evidence that the GOP has fallen is about the Oregon and Arizona parties, it seems to me to be a little soon to say that it has already fallen.

Its not great that we have a lunatic fringe, just as it wasnt when they were led by Buchanan, or Ron Paul, or Ted Cruz, or Robert Welch, Jesse Helms, or any of the other past eras of crazy.

Its a great, great, loss to the Republic that Rob Portman, one of the 21st Centurys most talented and honorable Republicans, whether as a Representative who did sterling work improving legislation and passing conservative reforms in a bipartisan manner, an OMB director who was able to send budgets that balanced to Congress in the last moment of fiscal hope before the 2006 elections, the USTR who was able to bring sufficient agreement around his FTAs that Obama merely delayed signing off on them rather than sacrificing them, and a Senator who continued the work he did as a Representative, finding areas of bipartisan reform that could pass a Senate where there was little interest in cooperation.

But its not new that maybe Ohio would select an enthusiast for the Senate. Its not new that that might cause a loss; its as much Josh Mandel as Sherrod Brown that has kept Brown in the Senate. The Ohio party in general is pretty strong; 2/3 of the house and 3/4 of the Senate, the governor, and a Senator, with the party infrastructure and the elected officials generally being fairly sensible people.

In general, if you look around the country, the Republican Party is in relatively healthy shape. Its not great at dealing with Trump, just as political parties generally arent good at dealing with their own bad members. But most of them are, for the most part, not Cruz or Paul. By and large the crazies arent totally without power (Cruz and Paul exist, as do the AZ and OR state parties), but even areas where the crazies dominated for a while are showing signs of hope. The California Republican Freshmen are generally pretty sensible. The party across the North East is flourishing with few conspiracy theorists. West Virginia is just killing it.

If you treat every example of a bad republican as indicative of the death of the party, the party will always disappoint. But take a step back, stop joining the media pile on that makes the worst person of the moment the face of the party, and the picture will become a lot brighter very quickly. Although it is sad about Portman.

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The Inmates Are Running the Party - The Dispatch - The Dispatch

Just after the sacking of the U.S. Capitol, a friend of mine sent me a typical post found on the MAGA45 page of the emergent social network MeWe:

Military arrests and takedowns begin this weekend and continue for the next 13 daysInternational raids have already begun. Italy has also been found complicit in our election fraud.DO NOT travel to any large cities (especially Philadelphia) for the rest of the month. Military operations will be taking place in many of the major corrupt cities. He only has 13 days to put this corrupt dog down.

This sounds like the ravings of a delusional fool, and it is. (The person must be deeply unfamiliar with the bumbling Italian government.) But its no less frightening for being so.

The online fantasies of crackpots can easily migrate into real life, shepherded across by reckless political operators and right wing media, as weve seen repeatedly in recent years. Recall the President Donald Trump super fan who sent pipe bombs to Democrats and media figures. Or the man who drove 11 hours to kill Latinos at an El Paso Walmart. Or the attempt to kidnap and murder Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Which takes us to the recent attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Some of the Trumpists looked feral, delirious as they smashed through windows, dragged a Capitol police officer down stairs and pushed ahead in search of the traitorous Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Once inside, they vandalized and stole and smashed and in one case smeared feces.

I get the political operators and right wing media and what they have to gain political power and money. But its the crowd that I havent been able to fathom. What would possibly motivate someone what grievance, what sense of injustice to travel to Washington to betray their own country, leading to their arrest and national shame?

Watching videos and looking at pictures, however, I recognized the look of euphoria in their eyes. They were drunk on the conspiracy disinformation they were fed, celebrating communally with other lost souls.

I use the word drunk purposefully here. If youve had a good drunk and I dont mean tipsy on your birthday you may understand my meaning.

Consider the similarities between intoxication from drugs and alcohol and from conspiracy-laden propaganda on display Jan. 6: Euphoria. Loss of judgment. And for many of them, alienation from friends and family.

I asked Mark Thomas, a professor of neuroscience and director of the Medical Discovery Team on Addiction at the University of Minnesota, about this analogy.

Thomas told me he tries to remain scrupulously in his scientific lane and avoid speculation. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought there may be something there, he told me recently.

The key neurotransmitter to consider is dopamine, which is widely misunderstood. Weve all read stories about the opioid epidemic, and dopamine as a chemical messenger of pleasure.

But thats not quite right, Thomas explained. Its actually more like the signal in your brain that says, Do this again it is important for survival!

The addicts brain might tell him to get more booze or dope because he needs it to survive, but there are other circumstances in which dopamine signals are induced: Theyre there for a reason from evolution, to motivate behavior that would bring natural rewards, like food, sex and social networks.

And a couple others, Thomas said. Solving puzzles and predicting the future, which are obviously important for survival.

That may be where conspiracy theories fill a neural need.

For people who are prone to going down this road, it is like solving a puzzle. They must think, Aha, Ive got it. The pieces all fit together. Its not hard to imagine a brain stamp of approval when that happens, Thomas said.

Then they go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole: If it happens again and again and its strong enough, it could promote seeking that activity over and over and lead to a sort of addicted state.

Whats particularly dangerous is that now its available at the click of the finger, like an open-air drug market outside your house. Conspiracy disinformation was once whispered from neighbor to neighbor, or maybe went out through former Rep. Ron Pauls newsletter. It was like moonshine. But Facebook, YouTube and other social networks have mass produced it, for great profit. And their algorithms are designed to encourage addiction, like tobacco companies maximizing nicotine delivery in their cigarettes.

The number of adherents has grown exponentially. Before the major social media companies finally purged QAnon which has been called a domestic terrorist threat by the FBI the conspiracy theory was booming on Facebook. As the Wall Street Journal reported last summer, Average membership in 10 large public QAnon Facebook groups swelled by nearly 600% from March through July, to about 40,000 from about 6,000. (Thats 40,000 times 10 groups.) Instagram followers quadrupled.

Although everyone is responsible for their own behavior and must be held accountable, thinking of conspiracy disinformation like drugs and alcohol forces us to empathize with its consumers, just as we do people suffering from whats now called substance use disorder.

In other words, our society is in some ways complicit in these lost souls staring at YouTube with their mouths open, trying to fill the hole in their soul.

Im unsure what or who is to blame: The radical individualism of libertine pop culture and the Ayn Randian right, the empty promises of dead-eyed consumerism, or the fraying of family and civic and religious bonds? People seek meaning, and America gives them none.

If we cant reach them, they will continue to be prone to the Dionysian frenzy, and tear our republic limb by limb.

J. Patrick Coolican is Editor-in-Chief of Minnesota Reformer, which first published this essay.

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What drugs can tell us about the delusions of the pro-Trump extremists who stormed the Capitol | The Progressive Pulse - The Progressive Pulse

Anti-vaccine groups are exploiting the suffering and death of people who happen to fall ill after receiving a COVID-19 shot, threatening to undermine the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history.

In some cases, anti-vaccine activists are fabricating stories of deaths that never occurred.

This is exactly what anti-vaccine groups do, said Dr. Peter Hotez, an infectious diseases specialist and author of Preventing the Next Pandemic: Vaccine Diplomacy in a Time of Anti-Science.

Anti-vaccine groups have falsely claimed for decades that childhood vaccines cause autism, weaving fantastic conspiracy theories involving government, Big Business and the media.

Now, the same groups are blaming patients coincidental medical problems on COVID-19 shots, even when its clear that age or underlying health conditions are to blame, Hotez said. They will sensationalize anything that happens after someone gets a vaccine and attribute it to the vaccine, Hotez said.

As more seniors receive their first COVID-19 shots, many will inevitably suffer from unrelated heart attacks, strokes and other serious medical problems not because of the vaccine but, rather, their age and declining health, said epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesotas Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

For example, in a group of 10 million people about the number of Americans who have been vaccinated so far nearly 800 people ages 55 to 64 typically die of heart attacks or coronary disease in one week, Osterholm said. Public health officials are not ready for the onslaught of news and social media stories to come, he cautioned.

The media will write a story that John Doe got his vaccine at 8 a.m. and at 4 p.m. he had a heart attack, Osterholm said on his weekly podcast. They will make assumptions that its cause and effect.

Public health officials need to do a better job communicating the risks real and imagined from vaccines, said Osterholm, who has been advising President Joe Biden on the pandemic since his election.

You get one chance to make a first impression, Osterholm said. Even if we come back later and say, No, [the deaths] had nothing to do with vaccination, it was coronary artery disease, the damage has already been done.

Anti-vaccine groups such as the National Vaccine Information Center and Childrens Health Defense, founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., are already inflaming fears about a handful of deaths mostly in Europe that have followed the worldwide rollout of immunizations.

In a blog post, Kennedy scoffed at autopsy results that concluded a Portuguese womans death was unrelated to a vaccine. He cast doubt on statements by medical authorities in Denmark who said the deaths of two people there after vaccination were due to old age and chronic lung disease. In an interview, Kennedy said the post-vaccination deaths of some very frail and terminally ill nursing home patients in Norway are a danger sign. Norwegian officials have said the elderly patients died of their underlying illnesses, not from the vaccine.

Coincidence is turning out to be quite lethal to COVID vaccine recipients, Kennedy wrote. Kennedy described the deaths as suspicious, accusing medical officials of following an all-too-familiar vaccine propaganda playbook and strategic chicanery.

Here in the U.S., vaccine opponents have pounced on the tragedy of Dr. Gregory Michael, a 56-year-old Florida obstetrician-gynecologist, to sow doubts about vaccine safety and government oversight. Michael died Jan. 5 after suffering a catastrophic drop in platelets elements in the blood that control bleeding suggesting he may have developed immune thrombocytopenia..

According to a Facebook post by his wife, Heidi Neckelmann, doctors tried a variety of treatments to save her husband, but none worked.

A spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency is investigating Michaels death, as it does for all suspected vaccine-related health problems. California authorities have recommended pausing vaccinations with a particular batch of COVID-19 vaccines made by Moderna because of a high rate of allergic reactions.

Were going to see these events happen, and we have to follow up on every one of these cases, Osterholm said. I dont want people to think that were sweeping them under the rug.

Many Americans were already nervous about COVID-19 vaccines, with 27% saying they probably or definitely would not get a shot, even if the shots were free and deemed safe by scientists, according to a December survey by KFF. (KHN is an editorially independent program of KFF.)

These people may be particularly susceptible to vaccine misinformation, said Rory Smith, an investigator at First Draft News, a nonprofit that reports on misinformation online.

Seven experts in blood disorders interviewed by KHN said theres not enough information available to blame Michaels decline on a vaccine and that the demonstrated benefits of COVID-19 vaccinations vastly outweigh any potential risk of bleeding. Even if investigators conclude that Michaels vaccine caused his death, it would still be an incredibly rare event, given that more than 21.8 million doses have been administered.

It shouldnt give anyone pause about whether the vaccine is safe or not, said Dr. James Zehnder, a hematologist and director of clinical pathology at Stanford Medicine.

Michaels bleeding disorder could have been developing silently for some time, said Dr. Adam Cuker, director of the Penn Blood Disorders Center at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. It could be a coincidence that Michael started showing symptoms shortly after vaccination, he said. About 30 Americans are diagnosed with immune thrombocytopenia every day.

The timing of Michaels illness suggests it had another cause, doctors said. According to his wifes Facebook post, his bleeding problems began three days after his first COVID-19 shot. It takes the body 10 to 14 days after vaccination to generate antibodies, which would be needed to cause immune thrombocytopenia, said Dr. Cindy Neunert, a pediatric hematologist at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.

In most cases, the cause of thrombocytopenia is never known, said Dr. Deepak Bhatt, executive director of interventional cardiovascular programs at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston.

Immune thrombocytopenia is linked, rarely, to certain vaccines, with about 26 cases for every 1 million doses of measles-mumps-rubella vaccine.

But it can also be caused by viruses themselves, including measles and the novel coronavirus, said Dr. Sven Olson, an assistant professor of hematology-medical oncology at Oregon Health & Science Universitys school of medicine.

Many patients with immune thrombocytopenia are now wondering if they should be vaccinated against COVID-19, Cuker said. Cuker said he urges nervous patients to be vaccinated, noting that any problems could be managed by closely monitoring their platelet levels and adjusting medication if needed.

Even in patients with underlying bleeding conditions, its still safer to get vaccinated than to get COVID-19, Zehnder said.

If you give a vaccine to a large enough number of people, there are going to be rare adverse events but there are also going to be coincidental events unrelated to the vaccine, Cuker said. If an anti-vaccine group uses a single case, where no link has been proven, to discourage people from vaccination, thats terrible.

Barbara Loe Fisher, president of the National Vaccine Information Center, said her site provides balanced information from reputable news sources, including CNN, CBS and the Miami Herald, as well as Pfizer and the CDC.

In an interview with KHN, Kennedy said he questions why government officials have been so quick to dismiss connections between vaccinations and deaths. How in the world do they know if its a vaccine injury or not? he asked.

We dont discourage anybody from getting vaccinated, Kennedy said. All were doing is conveying the data, which is what the government should be doing. We print the truth, which is what the medical agencies ought to do.

Opponents of vaccination have belittled concerns about the novel coronavirus for months, opposing masks and fighting stay-at-home orders and contact tracing, said Richard Carpiano, a professor of public policy and sociology at the University of California-Riverside.

They have come out against every public health measure to control the pandemic, Carpiano said. They have said public health is public enemy No. 1.

Recently, anti-vaccine activists have been so eager to discredit immunizations that they have blamed COVID-19 for the deaths of people who are very much alive.

Social media users selectively edited a video of a Tennessee nurse, Tiffany Dover to make it appear as if she dropped dead after being vaccinated, when in fact she simply fainted, said Dorit Reiss, a professor at the UC Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. Although Dover quickly recovered, social media users posted a fake death certificate and obituary. Anti-vaccine activists also harassed Dover and her family online, said Reiss, who chronicled Dovers ordeal in a blog post.

Anti-vaccine activists are adept at manipulating video, Smith said.

They are notorious for using videos and images purportedly showing the adverse effects of vaccines, such as autism in children and seizures in other vaccine recipients, Smith said. The more emotive and graphic the videos and images irrespective of whether its actually linked at all to vaccines or not the better.

In December, multiple Facebook posts falsely claimed that an Alabama nurse died after receiving one of the states first COVID-19 vaccines. One Twitter user went so far as to identify the nurse as Jennifer McClung, who worked at Helen Keller Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama. In fact, McClung died of COVID-19. Social media posts spread so widely that Alabama health department officials contacted every hospital in the state to confirm that no vaccinated staff member had died.

Anti-vaccine groups often build fables around a tiny, tiny grain of truth, Smith said. This is why misinformation, specifically vaccine misinformation, can be so convincing. But this information is almost always taken completely out of context, creating claims that are either misleading or outright false.

The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity twisted a news story about the deaths of 24 people at an upstate New York nursing home, incorrectly blaming their deaths on COVID-19 vaccinations. The original article noted, however, that a COVID-19 outbreak at the nursing home began in late December, before residents received any vaccines. Covid vaccines, which require two doses for full protection, did not arrive in time to save the residents lives.

Kennedy repeated the misinformation again incorrectly blaming the residents deaths on vaccines in his blog, although he linked to a local news station that reported the information correctly.

Distorting facts to discourage vaccination, Cuker said, is very irresponsible and damaging to public health.

(Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.)

2021 Kaiser Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Anti-vaccine activists peddle theories that COVID-19 shots are deadly, undermining vaccination - The Bakersfield Californian

The American Right looks primed to splinter. In the next election cycle, progressives and leftists should run candidates in red districts to exploit the divisions on the right.

Early into Obamas first term, the Tea Party gained prominence in Republican politics, while liberals sat back and watched the American right fight amongst itself. The winners of that infighting consolidated power and brought us President Trump.

Over the course of my own lifetime, the Republican Party has changed dramatically. The first time I realized that there was a thing called a President, the man in the oval office was George W. Bush.

The Republican Party of my early childhood was that of neo-conservatism and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 2008 was the first presidential election I followed, and its what sparked my interest in politics. After 2008, neo-conservatism was more or less dead and buried, but a new movement began to grow.

In the wake of the election of our first black president and the financial crash of 2008, the Occupy movement took America by storm. It is important to note that Occupy was not specifically ideological; for many on both the left and the right Occupy was a catalyst for political action and development.

In the latter half of Obamas first term, a new faction within the Republican Party began to pick up steam. The Tea Party was, on its face, a populist, fiscal libertarian movement against the perceived socialism of the Obama administration. In point of fact, however, the activism of the Tea Party was less populist and more of a corporate front for lower taxes and fewer regulations on the oil industry.

This movement culminated in Ron Pauls failed 2012 bid for the presidency. It is important to note that while the goals of the movement were largely a corporate sham, the anger of the movements marchers was real. That anger was something that would come to be molded into a weapon of hatred by Donald Trump in 2015 and 2016.

This is where we need to backtrack and take a look at the American far right. In his audiobook The War on Everyone, Robert Evans outlines the evolution of the American far right from George Lincoln Rockwell to Donald Trump. Prior to 2016, the high point for American fascists was in the early to mid 1990s, when American conservatism was gripped with an intense anxiety and loss of direction after the Cold War.

Following Ruby Ridge and the siege of Waco, Texas, Timothy McVeigh bombed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680. This act of terror, meant to inspire a right wing uprising against the federal government, largely ended what mainstream appeal the far right had.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the threat posed by the fascism of our current day could hardly be clearer. Ever since the Unite the Right rally in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, I have dedicated a sizable chunk of my free time to studying fascisms past and present and analyzing the best ways to defeat it.

A common through line in the study of fascism is the part that liberals and conservatives play in its rise. The part conservatism plays in the rise of fascism is plain enough the concept of socialism or even modest social democratic reforms scares them and their wealthy backers, and they fool themselves into believing that the fascists are the lesser evil.

The part played by liberals and liberalism is a bit more obscure, partially because American political terminology is so vastly different from the rest of the world. Liberals are, for the most part, socially permissive if not progressive and believe in free market capitalism with moderate restraints.

One of the core principles of liberalism is that of free speech, and in many cases, a near absolutist approach to freedom of speech. While in theory freedom of speech is great, when confronted with the challenge of fascism, that very virtue is used as a bludgeon by the fascist. By tolerating intolerance one perpetuates it.

Another key component to the rise of fascism is a growing leftist movement which causes the middle class to feel threatened. The majority of people who stormed the Capitol were undoubtedly middle class. We know this because they were there, from all over the country, on a Wednesday, in the middle of an economic crisis. These people were by and large economically comfortable. The middle class in America is made up of two primary groups: the small business owner and the educated professional. In the language of Marxists, these are the petty bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy, respectively.

This is not to say that fascism does not find support amongst the white working class, simply that the core of fascist support is drawn from the middle class. The Nazi Party billed itself as the party of the middle class, staunch opponents of the left and big business. While big business was at first hesitant to support Hitler and the Nazi Party, preferring less radical nationalist parties, they eventually saw which way the wind was blowing and sided with the Nazis.

If American fascism is to outlive the Trump presidency, then it will adopt what is known as the Third Position. The Third Position blends the bigotry of fascism with the economic populism of socialism to form a grotesque chimera of an ideology that poses a serious danger to us all.

The fascist gang of Proud Boys has already begun to call for an embrace of the Third Position. As the caustic effects of neoliberalism further degrade our society, economic populism will only grow increasingly appealing to those left behind in an ever globalizing economy. Some will find socialism, but the results will be biased in favor of the Third Position.

Decades of anti-communist propaganda has brainwashed generations of Americans into believing that anyone left of liberal is an agent of the devil working to destroy the country. Most people born before the 90s have been culturally conditioned to outright reject socialism, and of that group, a number of them will simply accept the bigotry of the Third Position as the price of admission.

In order to defeat fascism, we must all work together to build a culture of anti-fascism. From a very young age, all Americans learn that the Nazis are the bad guys, and this simple fact is perhaps the greatest advantage that anti-fascists have in the struggle.

When David Duke ran for Senate and Governor in Louisiana in the early 90s, one of the most damaging things to his campaign was not that he had been the leader of the KKK the Klan was seen as a part of the Southern political tradition. Instead, the piece of Dukes past that harmed him the most was a photo of him wearing an SS uniform in college.

Likewise at Charlottesville, the flying of Nazi flags and chanting of Nazi slogans shattered any mainstream support the fascists had. Since 2017, the fascists seem to have somewhat learned to keep the swastikas at home. The attack on the capitol featured a noticeable absence of Swastika flags, although plenty of other Neo-Nazi imagery was proudly displayed. This adaptation to the broadly anti-Nazi cluture that already exists in America poses a challenge for anti-fascists as new symbols take the place of the swastika.

Fascism draws its name from the fasces, a bundle of sticks with an axe head. Alone, fascists are weak and pathetic, relying on race or ethnicity to define themselves rather than actual personality traits. When put together, they pose a grave danger to any who do not conform to their hateful ideology.

The American Left must go on the offensive. Allowing the right to fight amongst themselves may provide some smug sense of satisfaction, but the winner of this conflict will consolidate the party and be stronger for it if left to their own devices. When liberals and progressives fight amongst themselves, much of that fighting is encouraged and stoked by the right wing media, thus dividing the Democratic Party.

This divide and conquer strategy is crucial to Republican success. There are 12 million more registered Democrats than registered Republicans. When coupled with nearly half of all independents leaning towards the Democrats. The balance of power is roughly 48% Democrats or Democrat leaning, with only 39% Republican or Republican leaning. As the smaller of the two parties, the only way that the Republican Party can achieve power is through a divided Democratic Party.

I acknowledge that the term antifa is optically poisoned. Part of that is because it obfuscates the fa, fascism, this is why I much prefer the term Anti-Fascist, or Anti-Fascist activist. The opposition to Antifa'' comes out of the destruction of property that can happen during black bloc actions. The combination of being in a crowd of people, the majority of whom would describe themselves as anti-capitalist as well as anti-fascist, and the anonimity black bloc tactics provide can lead to participants becoming excited and damaging property.

While protecting ones identity is important, I believe that black bloc tactics ultimately do more harm to the cause of anti-fascism than good. When a group of leftists get into a street fight with a group of fascists, if the leftists are dressed in all black then the corporate media has a far easier time labeling the story as a simple partisan street brawl without analyzing the nuance of the anti-fascist position. If, however, you have a bunch of normal people defending themselves against a group of fascists, the narrative practically writes itself.

With Trump reportedly considering the formation of a third party, Leftists and Democrats should seize the opportunity to widen the gulf between the main-line Republicans and the more fascistic elements of the party. With a Patriot party splitting the vote the Democrats could seize a commanding majority in the House and the Senate to push forward an agenda that works for the many and not the few.

When campaigning, Democratic candidates should highlight the ideological distance between main-line Republicans and the Patriots. Anything that can be done to stoke resentment between these two factions will help splinter the American right and allow Democrats to gain a healthier majority in both houses of Congress.

Nick Finan is a junior political science major. Reach him at nickfinan@dailynebraskan.com

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FINAN: Democrats must work together to break right wing factions apart - Daily Nebraskan

MLB Network has been ranking the top ten players at each position entering the 2021 season and along with each list, they have been ranking the top ten players at each position in the divisional era, or since 1969.

Colorado Rockies third baseman Nolan Arenado was ranked third on the active list of third baseman for the third straight year but he ranged from first to sixth among host Brian Kenny, former All-Star third baseman Mike Lowell, and the sabermetric panel of Sarah Langs, Vince Gennaro, and Mike Petriello.

But for the historical list, Nolan Arenado appeared on Bob Costas list as the seventh-best third baseman in the divisional era. Brian Kenny did not have him on his list at all.

Before you say Coors bias! this is a cumulative list. Arenado could top the list by the end of his career but Arenado has played parts of eight seasons. Many players on each of their lists ended up playing more than 2,000+ career games and Arenado is at half (or less) than that, as he has 1,079 career games.

So, with that do you think he is in the top ten since 1969? For me, I consider since 1969 as a player that played half or more of their career from 1969 on. Therefore, guys like Brooks Robinson and Ron Santo dont make the list.

By WAR on Baseball-Reference, here are the top20third basemen in the divisional era.

Notice, Arenado is not even in the top 20. Hes actually 23rd on the list. For WAR7 (which is WAR in a players seven best seasons), heres the top 20 in the divisional era.

Table

It should be noted that Nolans rookie season through 2019 was his seven best seasons (his first seven seasons). Some of those players would qualify as a DH if there was such a show for MLB Network, like Edgar Martinez and Paul Molitor. But either way, Arenado is, again, not in the top ten.

Lets look at JAWS, which is Jay Jaffes system that combines cumulative WAR and WAR7 but also compares to the average Hall of Famer at the position.

Table

Arenado squeaks in at number 20 on this list. Obviously, those three stats are not the be-all, end-all but is 23rd, 16th, and 20th, enough to overcome.

It should be noted that one of the other players on Costas list was Bill Madlock, best known for playing with the Pirates on their 1979 World Championship team and into the 80s. Is the four-time batting champion in any of the top 20 above? No.

Its obvious that at least entering 2021, Arenado is not the top nor is he in the top five or ten of cumulative stats but do you think that Arenados stellar offensive and defensive play warrant him being in the top ten since 1969, like Bob Costas, or outside of the top ten as Brian Kenny believes and as the numbers seem to indicate.

Let us know what you think on our Twitter page, @RoxPileFS, or elsewhere on social media.

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Colorado Rockies: Is Nolan Arenado one of the top 10 third basemen since 1969? - Rox Pile

With less than two weeks separating us from Super Bowl LV next Sunday, we will sadly have to manage without any televised games this weekend.

Luckily, RedBox recently released its Top 10 list of greatest football movies on its website/app -- and weve opted to re-rank them with our own take on it.

Check out the RedBox Top 10 (in our order) below -- and be sure to grab some popcorn and throw your favorite teams jersey on while watching these films this weekend!

10) Draft Day

Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner star in this modern film about the NFL draft and life in the 'war room'.

Film synopsis: One of pro footballs most important days, NFL draft day, is drawing near, but Sonny (Kevin Costner) has much more on his mind than just which players to recruit. His lover (Jennifer Garner) is pregnant, and the teams owner (Frank Langella) wants to fire him. After Sonny accepts a deal with Seattle that nets him that teams first-round pick, he immediately wonders if he has made the right choice for himself and the Browns.

WATCH IT HERE.

9) Varsity Blues

CAST PHOTO OF VARSITY BLUES. (CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM CENTER:) JAMES VAN DER BEEK AS MOX, AMY SMART AS JULIE, ELIEL SWINTON AS WENDELL, PAUL WALKER AS LANCE, ALI LARTER AS DARCY, RON LESTER AS BILLY BOB AND SCOTT CAAN AS TWEEDER.

Film synopsis: In West Canaan, Texas, high school football reigns supreme. When starting quarterback Lance Harbor (Paul Walker) turns up injured, the Coyotes ruthless coach, Bud Kilmer (Jon Voight), must promote benchwarmer Jonathon Mox Moxon (James Van Der Beek) to lead the team in its quest for a divisional title. Suddenly thrown into the spotlight, Mox must deal with the pressure of carrying the aspirations of an entire town on his shoulders, as he struggles to pursue his own very different dreams. WATCH IT HERE.

8) The Blind Side

Quinton Aaron and Sandra Bullock in "The Blind Side." (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Film synopsis: Future Super Bowl champion Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron), a homeless black teen, has drifted in and out of the school system for years. Then Leigh Anne Tuohy (Sandra Bullock) and her husband, Sean (Tim McGraw), take him in. The Tuohys eventually become Michaels legal guardians, transforming both his life and theirs. Michaels tremendous size and protective instincts make him a formidable force on the gridiron, and with help from his new family and devoted tutor, he realizes his potential as a student and football player.

WATCH IT HERE.

7) Little Giants

Rick Moranis and Ed O'Neill star in this family fun film.

Film synopsis: Ever since childhood, nerdy Danny OShea (Rick Moranis) has felt inferior to his brother, Kevin (Ed ONeill), a former college football star. Danny runs a gas station, while Kevin coaches the local youth football team. When Kevins team rejects Dannys daughter, Becky (Shawna Waldron), because shes a girl, Becky convinces her dad to start a rival team, though the city can support only one. To prove himself against his brother, Danny begins coaching his team of misfits for a playoff game.

WATCH IT HERE.

6) Jerry Maguire

Tom Cruise in "Jerry Maguire." (Sony Pictures)

Film synopsis: When slick sports agent Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) has a crisis of conscience, he pens a heartfelt company-wide memo that promptly gets him fired. Desperate to hang on to the athletes that he represents, Jerry starts his own management firm, with only single mother Dorothy Boyd (Renee Zellweger) joining him in his new venture. Banking on their sole client, football player Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), Jerry and Dorothy begin to fall in love as they struggle to make their business work.

WATCH IT HERE.

5) The Longest Yard

Quarterback Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler, center) and some of his fellow convicts and teammates (left to right) Torres (Lobo Sebastian, left), Turley (Dalip Singh, center left), Switowski (Bob Sapp, center right), and Cheeseburger Eddy (Terry Crews, right) prepare to take on the guards in the comedy, "The Longest Yard."

Film synopsis: Disgraced pro football quarterback Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler) lands in jail, where manipulative Warden Hazen (James Cromwell) recruits him to advise the institutions team. This turns into a lead role quarterbacking a crew of inmates in a game against a team of prison guards. Aided by incarcerated ex-NFL coach Nate Scarborough (Burt Reynolds), Crewe and his team must overcome not only the bloodthirstiness of the opposition, but also the corrupt officials trying to fix the game against them.

WATCH IT HERE.

4) We Are Marshall

Matthew Fox and Matthew McConaughey in "We Are Marshall." (Warner Bros. Pictures)

Film synopsis: In 1970, Marshall University and the small town of Huntington, W.Va., reel when a plane crash claims the lives of 75 of the schools football players, staff members and boosters. New coach Jack Lengyel (Matthew McConaughey) arrives on the scene in March 1971, determined to rebuild Marshalls Thundering Herd and heal a grieving community in the process.

WATCH IT HERE.

3) Any Given Sunday

JAMIE FOXX, AL PACINO and LL COOL J star in Oliver Stone's sweeping drama, 'ANY GIVEN SUNDAY.' BPI DIGITAL PHOTO 1999 WARNER BROS. CR: ROBERT ZUCHERMAN

Film synopsis: Four years ago, DAmatos (Al Pacino) Miami Sharks were at the top. Now, his team is struggling with three consecutive losses, sliding attendance, and aging heroes, particularly 39-year-old quarterback Jack Cap Rooney (Dennis Quaid). Off the field, DAmato is struggling with a failed marriage and estranged children, and is on a collision course with Christina Pagniacci (Cameron Diaz), the young president/co-owner of the Sharks organization.

WATCH IT HERE.

2) Friday Night Lights

"Friday Night Lights." (Universal Pictures)

Film synopsis: A small, turbulent town in Texas obsesses over their high school football team to an unhealthy degree. When the star tailback, Boobie Miles (Derek Luke), is seriously injured during the first game of the season, all hope is lost, and the towns dormant social problems begin to flare up. It is left to the inspiring abilities of new coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) to instill in the other team members -- and, by proxy, the town itself -- a sense of self-respect and honor.

WATCH IT HERE.

1) Rudy

Sean Astin in "Rudy." (TriStar Pictures)

Film synopsis: Rudy Ruettiger (Sean Astin) wants to play football at the University of Notre Dame, but has neither the money for tuition nor the grades to qualify for a scholarship. Rudy redoubles his efforts to get out of the steel mill where his father works when his best friend (Christopher Reed) dies in an accident there. Overcoming his dyslexia thanks to his friend and tutor, D-Bob (Jon Favreau), Rudy gains admission to Notre Dame and begins to fight his way onto the schools fabled football team.

WATCH IT HERE.

Original post:
Ten great football movies to watch leading up to Super Bowl Sunday - SILive.com

This week on The Ringer, we celebrate those movies that from humble or overlooked beginnings rose to prominence through the support of their obsessive fan bases. The movies that were too heady for mainstream audiences; the comedies that were before their time; the small indies that changed the direction of Hollywood. Welcome to Cult Movie Week.

As a Long Island kid in the late 1970s and 80s, Robert Siegel would lay under his covers at night and listen to sports-talk radio. He still remembers the callers thick accents. Always guys from Queens, always guys from Brooklyn, the filmmaker says. I was living my sheltered, suburban Jewish experience. Those people in other parts of New York were so exotic.

They were the kinds of memorably downtrodden minor figures that populated Siegels favorite movies: Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver, Saturday Night Fever. But hed never seen a film about the type of aging schlub whod phone WFAN and patiently stay on hold for hours just for a chance to air his grievances with pro athletes who werent even listening. So in the early 2000s, while serving as the editor in chief of satirical publication The Onion, he decided to write one himself. Those voices I heard were ingrained in my head, burned into my brain from my teenage years, says Siegel, who as a child shunned the mediocre Jets and Giants for the Steelers. It very easily translated into a 70s-style, gritty character study.

Initially titled Paul Aufiero, the script centered on a 35-year-old Staten Island man who lives for the New York Giants and with his mother. He sleeps on a bed covered in NFL team sheets; a poster of his favorite player, Quantrell Bishop, hangs on the wall of his bedroom; he spends too much of his time both listening and calling in to a radio show hosted by the Sports Dogg. He bleeds blue, but doesnt have anything else in his life. His allegianceand entire existenceis tested, however, when Bishop nearly beats him to death in a strip club.

There are plenty of movies about the underbelly of sports, but only a few about the underbelly of sports fandom. Siegels screenplay explored what can happen when obsession overtakes identity. Uncoincidentally, Pauls very first line of dialogue, part of a rant to the Sports Dogg, is: I cant tell you how sick I am

Ive never read anything like what Rob writes, says Capone, Fantastic Four, and Chronicle director Josh Trank, who collaborated with Siegel on the project. Its not super colorful. If anything, its ridiculously economical, to a point where its almost as if the author of the words that youre reading doesnt want to get in between you and the basic experience of just being there with these characters.

By the time Siegels script landed in the hands of Patton Oswalt, it had been floating around Hollywood for the better part of a decade. The story reminded the comedian of intimate 70s classics like Five Easy Pieces and Wanda. Instead of going into some convoluted plot or big concept, were going to hang out with this character, warts and all, he says. You go deep into one person, and that opens up the world in a weird way.

But like many other original ideas before it, what eventually became Big Fan took a circuitous route to the big screen. And when the dramatic comedy did get made, it was a flop. But since its release in 2009, Siegels self-financed directorial debut has gained a cult following for the way it predicted the dangers of toxic fanboyism, just as social media had begun to supercharge its ugliness.

Prior to Big Fan, pragmatism fueled Siegels screenwriting career. Hed written what he knew: comedies. Then, during his faux news organizations annual three-week publishing break in the summer of 2002, he stopped worrying about churning out a script that could sell and instead worked on one that actually interested him.

Like countless New Yorkers, Siegel loved sports and Martin Scorsese. The Long Islander knew that he wanted his homage to his idol to revolve around a laughably small-minded fan who lived in a laughably small world. Hes a far more gentle but just as obsessive version of Travis Bickle or Rupert Pupkin.

Before calling into the Sports Dogg, Paul has to write out his diatribes. His mother laments that the only woman hes dating is his hand and scolds him for the doo-doo stains that she sees while washing his underpants. He snarfs the edible photo of 50 Cent on his nephews birthday cake and retchingly pours sugar into his regular Coca-Cola. (My dad used to do that, Siegel says.) While following Bishop from a gas station to Stapleton, Staten Island, at 10:45 p.m., hes too naive to realize that the Giants linebacker is picking up drugs.

Before starting to write, Siegel had to visit an acquaintance at a hospital. Upon entering and later exiting the parking garage, he wondered what the cashiers life was like. At that moment, Siegel knew that Paul should toil as a booth attendant. Youre in the crosshairs of people who are just having the worst day of their lives, Siegel says. Sometimes you have an idea gestating and then theres some image that crystalizes it for you.

Siegel wrote Paul Aufiero in 10 days: Its never happened before or since where something just poured out of me. Without seeking any notes from development executives, he gave the script to his agent. Soon, there was an intrigued party: Darren Aronofsky. Over several meetings at coffee shops, the director of Requiem for a Dream and Siegel talked about the potential films direction. But then they had a problem. The NFL issue, Siegel says.

Unsurprisingly, the league doesnt take kindly to being associated with films and TV shows as raw as Big Fan. The ESPN series Playmakers and Oliver Stones Any Given Sunday used fictional franchises for a reason. The NFL is notoriously litigious, Siegel says. I mean, they have a rich history of lawsuits. Even if theres nothing really objectionable, they just protect the shield. They will sue you.

To make matters worse, all the major movie studios other than Sony were affiliated with networks that aired professional football games. Fox, NBC, and CBS each pay around $1 billion annually to broadcast the Sunday NFL slate; when the current rights deal is renegotiated next year, that figure may double. It makes sense that megacorporations wouldnt want to jeopardize their lucrative relationship with the league for a tiny indie flick with zero blockbuster potential.

Aronofsky, and Siegel for that matter, had little desire to make a movie about a disturbed fan of a fake team. Without the presence of Giants logos and paraphernalia, Pauls obsession just wouldnt feel real. And so the screenplay languished. Trank first came across it when he was in his late teens; a friend of Amy Heckerlings daughter, Trank had become an unofficial assistant to the Clueless director. I was getting deeper and deeper into reading scripts, Trank says. Amy said to me, You want to read a great script? Heres this.

At one point or another, Paul Rudd, Rainn Wilson, Jason Reitman, and Todd Field all expressed interest in Siegels script. But none ever fully committed. Aronofsky moved on, too, but was so impressed with Siegels work that he hired him to write another bleak sports movie. This one, The Wrestler, did get madeto great acclaim. Yet even after working on an Academy Awardnominated film, Siegel couldnt find any backers for his dream project. Finally, he took matters into his own hands.

I just wanted this movie to exist, Siegel says. I said, The only way Im going to do it is if I do it myself and if I self-finance it. So thats what I did.

Coming off of The Wrestler, Siegel was able to put up $250,000 of his own money. In hindsight, dropping a quarter of a million dollars on a passion project wasnt pragmatic. After all, his wife was pregnant. To my never-ending gratitude, he says, she was cool with it.

In search of guidance as to whether the NFL would actually sue him, Siegel sent his screenplay to Michael Donaldson, an entertainment attorney whos worked extensively with independent filmmakers on rights issues. To Siegels shock, the veteran lawyer told him, You can do this.

I said, Well, what can I do? Siegel remembers. He says, You can do anything. You can show the logos. You can have the jerseys. You can talk about the teams. You can make up fictional players. The only thing Donaldson advised against was using actual game footage. Beyond that, Siegel recalls him saying, everything is fair use.

When it was time to find his Paul Aufiero, Siegel immediately targeted Patton Oswalt. Back in the aughts, Oswalt was best known for his stand-up and for his role on the sitcom The King of Queens. And while the comedian had voiced Remy in Pixars Ratatouille, hed never carried a live-action movie. He also wasnt a sports fanbut Siegel thought he could still understand the concepts of arrested development and obsession. He just fit exactly what I wanted, Siegel says. Hes not a sports fan, but nerdy obsession is nerdy obsession, whether its the New York Giants or the MCU.

Oswalt was a cinephile, a comic book nerd, and a voracious reader. Hed also written extensively about his own geekdom. I understand wanting something bigger than yourself, Oswalt tells me. Everyone, I think, will find a different version of it, one way or the other. That same kind of nerdy passion for other thingsfilms, comics, booksI was just able to transfer to sports. Its the same spark, its just different fuel.

Even with barely any money, Siegel managed to assemble a small but talented cast of decorated character actors around Oswalt. Marcia Jean Kurtz plays Pauls exasperated single mother, Theresa; Kevin Corrigan is his best friend Sal; and Michael Rapaport appears mostly as the disembodied voice of the rival sports-radio caller Philadelphia Phil. (The main reason Siegel made the working-class Paul a Giants fan and not a Jets fan was because Gang Green didnt have a historical rival like the Eagles.)

It was a very human script, very deeply human, Kurtz says. [It] really cared for these lonely people.

I was a big fan of Patton for years, Corrigan said in an email. Id seen him perform. I had all his records. In the movie, Sal looks up to Paul. He loves listening to his friend. He loves Pauls act. I really felt that way about Patton.

Gino Cafarelli, who plays Pauls ambulance-chasing brother Jeff, remembers getting a phone call from Siegel about the part. He goes, I was scanning through YouTube and I punched in character actor and New York character actor, Cafarelli says. And he said every time he kept punching it in, my reel kept on coming up.

For the Sports Dogg, whom the audience never sees, Siegel needed a distinct voice. He found one in the gravel-throated, then-Sirius sports-radio host Scott Ferrall. He understood men like Pauland how to tee them up. Im like their shrink and Im like their lover, Ferrall says. Im like their dealer. Im like their best pal. And theyll tell me all their deepest thoughts.

Not that Paul even has any deep thoughts. His screeds rarely amount to much more than boilerplate talking points about Eli Manning. He has, Siegel says, a very low level of self-awareness.

Without meeting Oswalt, Ferrall recorded his part in his studio over two long sessions. I just started going crazy, says Ferrall, who was given talking points but ad-libbed most of his lines. And I remember just flipping out and screaming and yelling and arguing and doing like I would do a talk show.

The more Ferrall learned about Oswalts character, the more he felt familiar. What was strange about it, the broadcaster says, was that I think at least 20 percent of my callers are like him.

His movies micro budget may have necessitated a guerilla-style shoot, but Siegel vowed not to sacrifice realism or detail. Without permission to film in the Giants Stadium parking lots, he did it anyway, collecting B-roll and shots of Oswalt and Corrigan wearing team gear among throngs of tailgaters.

For a scene in which the two ticketless buddies watch the game on a box TV powered by Pauls moms beat-up car, the director got a permit to film at the adjacent Meadowlands Racetrack. Theyre like, You want to shoot something in our parking lot during a race? Go ahead. Knock yourself out, Siegel says. If you take your camera and you rotate it 180 degrees, Oh my God, look. Whats this? Giants Stadium!

Producer/location manager Nick Gallo, an Onion alum who worked at Auntie Annes Pretzels at the Staten Island Mall in the 90s, offered his familys homes as filming locations. Nicks grandmas parakeet was traumatized, Trank says. It was very sad afterward.

Unsurprisingly, the actors had few creature comforts. Not that it bothered them. I dont mind changing out of a car if its a great script, Cafarelli says. He means that literally: Cafarelli got into costume in a Nissan Sentra, while Oswalts dressing room was the back of a van. Catering was, they would go to Subway every day, Oswalt says. It was just the most basic, bare bones. Really cool, you know?

The DIY production fostered camaraderie. Between takes, Corrigan recalls, Oswalt would bring up his favorite Onion stories and headlines and Siegel would tell their backstories. (Our Dumb Century, everything about that book was just genius, Oswalt says.)

As both a director and a sports fan, Siegel paid close attention to detail. While talking about the Giants defense in one scene, Oswalt emphasized the second syllable of the word rather than the first. The mispronunciation seemed innocuous, but it was the kind of thing that the director wouldve flagged as inauthentic if he heard it in another movie. Im like, I dont think people care, Trank says. And hes like, Theyll care.

If theres one thing that Oswalts lack of sports knowledge prevented him from doing in Big Fan, it was improvising. For someone who once delivered an eight-minute Star Wars filibuster in an episode of Parks and Recreation, it was like being comedically handcuffed. Ultimately, though, that hindrance likely strengthened his performance. After all, Paul Aufiero is neither smart nor worldly. There were moments when I would riff stuff, and then I would stop and go, Hell, he doesnt have the inner resources to riff like that, Oswalt says. Me and Robert were very, very open about this guy not having clever things to say. Hes kind of a void. And Im glad we stuck to that.

By the end of a lesser film, Paul wouldve learned some lessons. Hed maybe figure out that blind devotion is dangerous. And possibly, hed realize that there should be more to a grown mans life than worrying about whether his team wins on Sunday afternoons. But Big Fan isnt a normal sports movie.

After his accidental provocation at a strip club causes Bishop to attack him, a traumatized Paul seems tortured. His lawyer brother wants him to sue. A detective wants him to testify against the linebacker. Adding insult to injury, Philadelphia Phil goes on the Sports Dogg and doxxes him as Bishops assault victim. But despite nearly dying at the hands of his favorite player, despite the fact that hes become a local pariah, he still doesnt want to mess up the Giants season.

He definitely feels the vice, Siegel says. He feels the screws are being put to him by his brother, by Philadelphia Phil. He feels like the teams fate rests in his hands. Hes definitely spending that middle stretch of the movie with just a sick feeling in his gut.

Yet instead of doing the logical thing, Paul calls a trick play. After Philadelphia Phil mockingly invites him to switch allegiances and watch the Eagles-Giants season finale with him and his buddies at a sports bar, Oswalts character heads south, stopping only to throw on a Donovan McNabb jersey and paint his face green and white. During Pauls drive, Siegel makes sure to include a shot of a pistol sticking out of Pauls pants.

For a few minutes, it truly feels like Paul from Staten Island might kill Philadelphia Phil. But his version of revenge is somehow even more warped than that. After cornering the Eagles fan in the bathroom, Paul empties a clip. At first it looks like Rapaports hands and Reggie White jersey are covered in blood. But after a moment, it becomes clear that the red splatter is mixed with blue. Paul has shot Phil with a paintball gun. To Paul, covering an Eagles fan with Giants colors is worse than killing him. But crucially, hes not quite a Taxi Driverstyle vigilante.

The way that Travis Bickle is portrayed is he is someone who is spurred to some kind of action because he has seen real violence and real pain, Oswalt says. Hes got that scar. He was in Vietnam. I just dont think that Paul has ever really experienced the world at all. So, when his so-called life force swells up, even the expression of the life force is just this weird, symbolic thing of just spraying his enemy with his teams colors. Hes so cut off from humanity, he doesnt even know how to do violence correctly.

The crushingly funny reveal ends with Paul telling Philadelphia Phil that the Eagles suck, running out of the bar, and getting tackled by the cops. Trank calls the climax of Big Fan one of his top-five favorite endings ever.

Pauls love for his team is tested, but in the end it never caves. You can struggle without ever actually being truly undecided, says Siegel. I mean the question the movie asks is, What do you do when this thing you love doesnt love you back? That could be a team. That could be a president. These are all forms of abusive relationships. Hes in an abusive relationship with the New York Giants. You reach a point when that thing you believe in punches you in the face. You have this moment where you have to decide, Do I take this as a turning point and turn my back on this thing? Or do I double down?

One way to answer those questions cinematically is via a romantic comedy like the Jimmy FallonDrew Barrymore movie Fever Pitch. But thats pure fantasy. Siegel was interested in real life.

It is one of those great movies where its realistic to a fault, Oswalt says. The character does not grow or change. He fights against change, and his victory at the end is that he doesnt change.

In January of 2009, Big Fan premiered to positive reviews at the Sundance Film Festival. But mid-financial crisis, a sports movie that featured no sports and no big stars didnt entice many buyers. Its like, Well, I cant fit it into this category, Trank says. So Im not going to risk it.

Late that winter, the film sold to a small distributor called First Independent Pictures. It opened on August 28, first in just two theaters in America, then eventually in 15. This was not going to be in 1,000 theaters, Siegel says. I can name the theaters it played at. At the box office, the movie ended up grossing just $234,540less than Siegel had sunken into it.

And even after Big Fan hit home video, it didnt find a wide audience. On the DVD [cover], they cut me and Kevin to make it look like were actually in the stadium, Oswalt says. But theres no actual football in the movie.

Still, Big Fan has its share of big fans. Its currently at 86 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. This isnt only, or even, a sports movie, Roger Ebert correctly pointed out in his review. Its about leading a life vicariously. Shortly after the movies release, Slates Dana Stevens wrote that it seems destined for a future in the cult canon. The cult never grew very large. But it exists. And its as passionate about Siegels film as Paul is about the Giants.

These days, watching Big Fan is an even more affecting experience than it was 12 years ago. People like Paul Aufiero have always existed. But theyve never been as emboldened as they are now. Imagining Paul, who in the movie can barely use the internet, on social media is both sad and scary. Maybe he wouldve been one of those guys that want to matter on Twitter, but he just doesnt, and all he does is troll celebrities, Oswalt says. The kind of guy that will send horrible things to celebrities, and then when they block them, he takes a screenshot of the block like, Got him.

To his relief, the litigious NFL never got Siegel. Nor did they try. After making a movie about pro football fandom, he went on to tackle other uniquely American phenomena. The Founder, the McDonalds CEO Ray Kroc biopic that he wrote, came out in 2017. Now the former Onion EIC is writing a Hulu limited series based on the Pamela AndersonTommy Lee sex tape scandal.

Siegel, who remains a Steelers die hard, looks back on Big Fan often. But not always fondly. I just remember the mistakes, he says. To this day, two severely irk him. First, the Eagles-Giants season finale in the climactic sequence is played on Monday Night Football. In reality, the last MNF game of the year is held in Week 16, not Week 17. And in the very last scene, when Sal visits Paul in prison, they go over the next years schedule. The Giants AFC opponents play in the North, South, East, and West, an impossibility due to the fact that a clubs annual out-of-conference schedule contains only teams from a single division.

It just gutted me, Siegel says.

Thats the thing about sports: You always remember the painful losses more than the big wins.

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The Cult Sports Movie That Tackled the Underbelly of Fandom - The Ringer

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV)

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and other Republican lawmakers are re-introducing a bill to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Called the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, the legislation would criminalize abortions performed after 20 weeks, "the point at which scientific evidence suggests an unborn child is able to feel pain," according to Romney.

According to CDC data, the legislation would apply to the 1.3% of abortions performed in the United States after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Health care workers, not pregnant women, would face criminal penalties for performing abortions after 20 weeks if the bill were to become law, with the penalty including up to five years in prison.

The legislation does make exceptions in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother.

The Pain-Capable Abortion Act has been introduced previously in 2015, when it passed the House but failed in the Senate, Vox reports. It was also on the table again in 2018, when it failed.

RELATED: Sen. Lee sponsors 'Abortion is not Heath Care', other anti-abortion bills as fed policy changes

Reports of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act exist as far back as 2015.

Whether or not an unborn child can feel pain at any point in the gestational process remains scientifically unproven, according to multiple scientific publications.

Evidence regarding the capacity for fetal pain is limited but indicates that fetal perception of pain is unlikely before the third trimester," beginning at 27 to 28 weeks after conception according to a 2005 synthesis of available scientific evidence published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

As recently as 2012, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists re-assessed available research and came to the same conclusion.

The Planned Parenthood Association of Utah issued the following statement to 2News regarding Romney and other legislators' re-introduction of the bill:

Health care decisions should be made by patients and their trusted health care provider, not by politicians in the Senate. These bills are designed by politicians to spread misinformation, distort the truth, shame pregnant people and doctors, and ultimately, ban abortion. The American people overwhelmingly support abortion access, and they want a U.S. Senate that works to expand health care, not take it away."

The legislation, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-UT) is also cosponsored by Sens. John Barrasso (R-WY), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Boozman (R-AR), Mike Braun (R-IN), John Cornyn (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Steve Daines (R-MT), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Bill Hagerty (R-TN), Josh Hawley (R-MO), John Hoeven (R-ND), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), James Inhofe (R-OK), Ron Johnson (R-WI), John Kennedy (R-LA), James Lankford (R-OK), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jerry Moran (R-KS), Rand Paul (R-KY), Rob Portman (R-OH), James Risch (R-ID), Mike Rounds (R-SD), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Rick Scott (R-FL), Tim Scott (R-SC), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), John Thune (R-SD), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Roger Wicker (R-MS), and Todd Young (R-IN).

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Romney reintroduces bill banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy - KJZZ