YOU CANNOT TAME A RABID DOG

By Akin Ojumu

When Neil Cavuto recently took to his show, Your World With Neil Cavuto, on Fox Business Channel to literally beg his listening audience to set politics aside and get vaccinated, he did so out of an abundance of responsibility he felt he owed his loyal audience. All he ever wanted was that these folks, who tune in on a daily basis to watch his show, live long, healthy, and productive lives. 

Out of sheer concern for their safety and well-being, and himself having just experienced a near death experience with the COVID-19, he thought it would be an abdication of his civic and moral responsibility for him to have such a massive platform and not use it to inform the millions of people who watch his show about the lethality of COVID-19 and the benefit of the vaccines approved to combat it.

What he said, in of itself, was not threatening and the tone he used was not at all condescending. Nevertheless, from the grooves across his brow and the quavering in his voice, you’d immediately realize that this was a difficult subject for him to broach. 

With utmost tentativeness, he looked straight into the camera and uttered these sacrilegious words. 

"This is not about left or right. This is not about who's conservative or liberal. Last time I checked, everyone regardless of their political persuasion is coming down with this. Take the political speaking points and toss them for now, I'm begging you. Toss them and think of what's good, not only for yourself but for those around you."

Now, a reasonable person would hear that and say, “Thank you, Mr. Cavuto. That was kind of you.” 

But that wasn’t the type of feedback he got. In response to his clarion call for life, Neil Cavuto received multiple death threats and a lot of ill will. For daring to wish that they would have sound health, Cavuto’s audience wished he were asleep and bound in death. The tweets and the e-mails from those who heard his appeal were so vile you’d think he must have raped their wives and murdered their families in cold blood. Rather than saluting him for having their best interests at heart, they descended on him like a pack of hungry wolves. They are mad at him because he had the audacity to escape the bubble of lies and tower of mendacity he himself had a hand in erecting.

That such loathsomeness was meted out to Neil Cavuto for speaking up for COVID-19 vaccines was not a surprise to many of us. The audience to which Neil Cavuto caters are nasty people and reason is one of the many attributes they lack. These are the people he has successfully cultivated for many years since he has been running his show. We’ve known for a long time that the vast majority of the foot soldiers Neil Cavuto and his ilk recruited and groomed in the white grievance war are unreasonable people. And as Hilary Clinton correctly described them, they are a bunch of deplorables. 

As much as I’d like to sympathize with Neil Cavuto – if not for anything, at least for speaking up and promoting a lifesaving public health measure – I find myself struggling to tamp down the schadenfreude urge I feel for the backlash he got. 

You see, Neil Cavuto along with his other colleagues at Fox News and the political establishment of the Republican party created this Frankenstein monster. What they didn’t foresee was that the monster they created will one day become uncontrollable and that they’ll become victims of collateral damage and fratricide of their own making. They forgot that no matter how strong the whip and sturdy the chain, you cannot tame a rabid dog. Sooner or later, the chain will break and the dog will turn on its owner.