As if things have not been batshit enough as of late, we got to end the work week with not one, not two, but three RFK Jr. hearings -- before the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday and before the House Education and Workforce Committee on Friday. This meant that I got to watch at least six hours of America's least favorite gravelly voiced, raccoon-dick-cutting, anti-vaccine, never-nude conspiracy theorist be impossibly condescending to anyone trying to get a straight answer from him about anything.

Naturally, The New York Times made a heroic effort to sane-wash Kennedy, breathlessly reporting that he had "shifted his tone" during the hearings on Thursday by "admitting" that the measles vaccine is safe "for most people" and that getting measles is not good, writing:

In back-to-back hearings on Capitol Hill, Mr. Kennedy testified that the measles vaccine is safe and effective "for most people" and agreed it was safer than getting measles. Under questioning, he also allowed that the vaccine might have saved the lives of two unvaccinated children who died of measles in Texas earlier this year.

His comments, while carefully couched, stand in stark contrast to his previous statements about vaccination. Coupled with Mr. Trump's announcement of Dr. Erica Schwartz, a deputy surgeon general in his first administration, as his new pick for C.D.C. director, they provided the latest evidence yet that Mr. Kennedy is trying to publicly put his efforts to overhaul American vaccine policy behind him.

Is he though? I think we can be pretty sure he is not.

. . .

Far less easy to fool than The New York Times was Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama, who had some questions for Kennedy regarding a 2024 interview he did on the YouTube show High Lvl Conversations, hosted by "wellness" influencer 19Keys, in which he had some real interesting ideas about sending Black children to rural "wellness farms" to get "reparented."

Via The Daily Beast:

At one point during the conversation, Kennedy, 72, said that if elected, he would create "Wellness Farm" rehabilitation facilities in rural areas all around the country.

"Every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRI, benzos, which are known to induce violence. And those children are going to have a chance to go somewhere to get reparented," said Kennedy, who now serves as President Donald Trump's health secretary.

During a congressional hearing Thursday about his department's budget, Democratic Rep. Terri Sewell of Alabama read Kennedy's comment back to him and asked if he had ever parented or "re-parented a Black child."

Naturally, Kennedy just insisted that he had never said any such thing and didn't even know what that meant, and got very agitated about it. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if perhaps he's got some Valium rage of his own.

Conveniently, however, the recording is online and it even has subtitles. He actually brought it up twice, so it's hardly as though he misspoke. If he now does not know what he meant by that, perhaps he's got some cognitive issues of his own to deal with.

. . .