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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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His admission that Pfizer is in bed with its regulators is important. That’s not something that people make up to brag about on dates, it’s actually the opposite. No one brags about their company being corrupt to a gay liberal on a date, neither would they say that they think Covid leaked from the Wuhan lab. This makes me strongly believe he wasn’t lying about his first claim, either.

I don’t know what Pfizer’s defense will be. “You don’t understand, our director of global research was a token diversity hire” is not something that can be transmitted on CNN.

Even if we were to interpret his remarks as “the idea came up in a meeting for fun but was shut down”, his statement on Pfizer being corrupt is super important!

Thing is, is anyone surprised pharma companies and the regulators have a cosy relationship? We have to remember this is Covid, the push was on to get vaccines, and the usual slow process of having them approved was junked in the name of speed and getting herd immunity. "We made a ton of money out of this" - again, not surprising. Everyone made a ton of money during the worst of the pandemic, see all the tech layoffs now once the lockdown finished and people aren't doing everything online, so all the surplus hiring during the fat times is being trimmed away.

It's not a good look for Pfizer, but I think the most that will come out of it is this guy being handed his marching papers. Project Veritas is dodgy enough (it's on shaky ground even with people like me broadly sympathetic to what they're trying to do, because of fairly credible allegations of set-ups and editing video to take things out of context) and it's absolutely hated by liberals and the media because it goes after their sacred cows, so in the end this will be brushed aside as "just some far-right attempt at a smear of racial and sexual minorities" (based on the target being gay and black).

Between this and the twitter files, that the narrative has moved from "it's not happening" to "it happened, so what" is infuriating.

But moreover, what isn't happening right now that will later have happened and be a good thing actually? One has to wonder.