On Monday’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Kimmel unveiled a new children’s book for “kids with crazy parents” — aka anti-vaccine fanatics. The book, “Dot Got a Shot,” tells the story of Dot, a young piglet whose parents refuse to let her get vaccinated.
It’s pretty funny, even if it unrealistically suggests that anti-vaxxers might listen to their kids.
The story ticks off some of the greatest hits of right wing misinformation in the COVID era. For instance, Dot’s parents “threw spoons at the mailman to prove he’s magnetic.”
“‘Don’t tread on me’ is mom’s favorite new slogan,” the story adds, “and Dad got dewormed on advice from Joe Rogan.”
At one point, Dot writes to Anthony Fauci and asks him to come and help. In the story, Fauci declines — he explains they won’t listen to someone they already hate — and encourages her to talk to her parents instead. So Dot proceeds to collect a lot of facts, including the origins of vaccines and the history of vaccine mandates in America.
This produces an extremely unrealistic result: “And Dot’s loving reminder, it finally got through! They turned off Fox News and stopped eating horse goo.”
They proceed to get vaccinated, and the story concludes, “Her family’s protected from COVID, that’s that. Next up, convince them the Earth is not flat.”
Unfortunately, here in the real world the anti-vaxxers show no signs of listening to reason. But, it’s nice to see it happen in a parody children’s story. Watch the whole clip above.