Liberal author Naomi Wolf is well-known for her feminist commentary of the 1990s and her warnings against the Patriot Act during the Bush Administration's two terms. Recently, Wolf has been promoting COVID-19 conspiracy theories — and Media Matters' Matt Gertz reports that Fox News has been more than happy to hear them.
Gertz explains, "The feminist writer Naomi Wolf garnered fame during the 1990s for her book 'The Beauty Myth' and her work as an adviser to the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But in recent years, she's been better known for promoting an array of unhinged conspiracy theories, most recently regarding the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. This combination has made her a perfect guest for Fox News."
Fox News' coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic has been dramatically different from that of MSNBC or CNN. When MSNBC and CNN, in 2020, were showing how enormous a threat COVID-19 posed, Fox News joined former President Donald Trump in downplaying the pandemic's severity.
"Fox is far more interested in turning coronavirus into a political cudgel than in giving users accurate health information," Gertz observes. "And so, the network's hosts lean on Wolf's liberal credentials while giving her a platform to claim that the Democratic response to the pandemic is aimed at dissolving society and enacting a totalitarian state comparable to Nazi Germany."
Gertz notes that Wolf has "appeared at least seven times on Fox" since mid-February to "discuss her views on the pandemic: twice apiece on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight' and 'The Revolution with Steve Hilton,' and three times on 'Fox News Primetime.'"
"It is irresponsible for a news outlet to give Wolf that sort of credulous attention," Gertz writes. "Her social media channels are littered with absurd claims about the virus and its vaccines. Between her first and second Fox appearances alone, she tweeted that a new technology allowed the delivery of 'vaccines w nanopatticles that let you travel back in time'; that the Moderna vaccine is a 'software platform' that allows 'uploads'; and that due to face masks, children now lack 'the human reflex that they when you smile at them they smile back' and have 'dark circles under (their) eyes from low oxygen."
