Over the last couple of weeks, lots of media attention and outrage has been focused on the Oklahoma GOP's gleeful obsession with equating "vaccine passports" during a global pandemic to the Nazi extermination of Jewish peoples across Europe during World War II, otherwise known as the Holocaust.
Although the Oklahoma GOP's comparisons offended a bunch of people, including many in its own party, they haven't really softened their stance or apologized. Instead, they've gone full Trump and exploited the controversy they created for even more attention!
This is because:
A) They're propagandist trolls who believe what they preach.
B) It's been a successful fundraising tool and rallying cry.
C) The analogy really connects on social media with alt-right nationalists, science deniers, and even a couple of Oklahoma weathermen!
Over the weekend, an Ogle Mole alerted us to this exchange between diabolical Facebook beefcake weatherman Aaron Tuttle and Gary England – the Severe Weather God of Oklahoma turned angry old conservative mortal on social media:
Listen, we expect crap like this from Aaron Tuttle. Even though he's a meteorologist for the federal government and uses non-FDA-approved supplements to help maintain his "bodybuilder appearance," he's about as anti-science, anti-government and anti-vaccine as they come! I'm kind of delighted he's anti-vax, because it's never made the vaccine seem safer.
But Gary England???
Actually, those who follow Gary England on social media wouldn't be surprised by this either.
When News 9 forced his weather holiness into early retirement, I figured he'd go the way of Bilbo and spend his remaining days with the weather elves of Rivendell, working on his memoir and painting severe weather landscapes and Oklahoma sunsets with oil on canvas. Instead, he's gone the way of Saruman scouring The Shire, morphing into an angry old conservative white man who spends the entire day glued to right-wing cable news and social media, griping at Val on the Genter about Joe Biden, the fake news liberal media and the barometric pressure making his joints flare-up.
As the guy who mythologized Gary England to the point of taking a Volkswagen-sponsored pilgrimage to Seiling for his birthday, Gary's descent into right-wing troll psychosis has been tough to watch unfold. It's almost as sad as his final broadcast, or the time he couldn't figure out to work the station's new giant iPad during a Spring severe weather warmup. This was probably the first time we all knew Gary was kind of losing it.
That's brutal. The part where Michael Armstrong walks in front of the screen to help Gary reminded me of having to show my grandpa how to operate a new cable box remote. It makes me want to put on my I TORNADO Gary England t-shirt and run to Miss Oklahoma to cry!
Anyway, what were we talking about it again?
Oh yeah, Gary England and Aaron Tuttle implying on social media that "vaccine passports" are one step of a sinister deep state plot to exert control of the masses, or some other quack conspiracy theory with more plot holes than a 1980s action movie.
According to Gary, it's just history repeating itself:
Yeah, if you don't understand that vaccine mandates are the slippery slope that leads to genocide, then you don't know history... says the guy who's equating a government official asking for vaccine documentation during a global pandemic to genocide.
Here's what a real historian thinks about Gary's analogy:
Historian and former Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld also took aim at the analogy, stressing Monday that “the yellow star was a symbol of death that excluded Jews from society and marked them for extermination, while vaccines, on the other hand, save lives.” To equate the two, he told The Associated Press, is an “odious” comparison that serves to trivialize the yellow star.
Anyway, I guess if you want more riveting right-wing content, go follow Aaron Tuttle or Gary England on Twitter.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We'll keep you advised.
