Vaccine Debate on the Colbert Report

[triana1326]

Did anyone else catch this? Stephen had some really good questions for the author of the book - some pro-vaccine guy who was saying that the anti-vax movement was really dangerous. A lot of fear-mongering from the author, and surprisingly, Stephen called him on some of it. Interesting to say the least....

[Chamomile Girl]

Oooh, I'll bet it was Paul Offit. I'm going to look that one up now .

[sosurreal09]

I felt like he was mocking non vaxers quite a bit

[triana1326]

Well, look at it this way - he's a comedian who has to mock everything. True, it's not an ideal forum to have a vax debate, but at least he asked some good questions and got some people thinking, and hope that it inspires them to look into this topic and decide for themselves.

[sosurreal09]

That is true, I guess I just got kinda pissed about the bathing suite part.

[carriebft]

It seemed like they did a format where Colbert went with the typical antivax talking points and let Offit break them down, with comedy mixed in. humor show though...so not exactly an arena for a good debate.

[ma2two]

Colbert used very weak, not "typical" anti-vax talking points. He played right into Offit's spiel. I wasn't surprised, though. It's a humor show, and Colbert never asks hard hitting questions. For the comedy format, he pretends to be against his guests, but he never is, and it's always a promotion of the guest and of their book.

[stephcamp725]

No disrespect, but you do know that Stephen Colbert *was* mocking the anti-vax side. He pretends to be on the side that he is actually "against", to play devil's advocate and prove a point. He plays up his faux-conservativeness in order to bring to light the comedic side of the story. 

[sosurreal09]

I figured that. I never actually watched the show before I just you tubed this part the OP wrote about...so...