Jon Stewart blames measles outbreak on 'science-denying affluent California liberals'

'They’re not rednecks. They’re not ignorant. They practice a mindful stupidity,' 'Daily Show' host says

Yahoo News

Jon Stewart tackled America's ongoing vaccine debate on Tuesday, mocking both conservatives and liberals who deny science.

"There's no red America. There's no blue America. There's just a needlessly sick America," Stewart said on "The Daily Show" in a segment titled "Les Measlesrables."

Stewart skewered a pair of prominent Republicans and possible 2016 presidential candidates — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — for fueling antivaccination activists, as well as “science-denying affluent California liberals.”

“They’re not rednecks. They’re not ignorant," the "Daily Show" host said. "They practice a mindful stupidity.”

The segment comes amid a measles outbreak that has sickened more than 100 people in the United States, with public health officials and the White House urging parents to vaccinate their children.

“You should get your kids vaccinated,” President Barack Obama told Savannah Guthrie during an interview broadcast on NBC’s “Today” show Monday. “It’s good for them.”

"Oh, no. You can't say that!" Stewart said. "You're Barack Obama! You can't tell people what to do. Now half the country just on principle has jumped in their cars and raced off looking for the Measles Depot!"

Stewart also mocked CNN's coverage of the outbreak, which included an “unnecessary hologram of measles floating through an airplane."

Late Tuesday, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, weighed in on the vaccine debate in an op-ed published on the cable network's website:

Over the last few hours, I have started, scratched out and even abandoned the writing of this op-ed. I couldn't do it. It wasn't there. Didn't feel it.

Something kept nagging at me, and it wasn't until this very moment that I finally figured out what.

It's the idea that this article would be labeled "opinion" or "editorial" in the first place. Sure, there are some topics that seem to lend themselves appropriately to opinion pages:

The President's new budget.

The death penalty.

Is Tom Brady the greatest quarterback ever?

Vaccines, however, which have prevented 6 million deaths every year worldwide and have fundamentally changed modern medicine, should not be on that list.

The benefit of vaccines is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact.


NBC medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman, who was suspended last fall for breaking a quarantine after a member of her crew contracted Ebola, tweeted that members of the public have a "responsibility" to get their children vaccinated.