Salutations, Meteor readers,

There will be no news today, as I’ve instead chosen to use this time to send a second-by-second reaction essay to the trailer for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights.

Kidding! In today’s totally normal newsletter, we learn about how we’re currently living in a Planet of the Apes prequel. Plus, author Scarlett Harris on the significance of Mariah Carey receiving the Video Vanguard Award (her first VMA) this weekend.

Haunt me then,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

“There’s no precedent for this”: Yesterday, Florida’s surgeon general announced that the state plans to end all vaccine mandates for everyone, including schoolchildren. That means that the long-time, lifesaving vaccines for polio, measles, and many more (very! preventable!) diseases could become options rather than requirements. I had one obvious question: what the fuck? So I spoke to Dr. Dara Kass, an emergency room physician and healthcare policy consultant in New York.

“To be clear, they’re not banning vaccines,” Dr. Kass clarifies. “They’re saying your pediatrician may not stock it, your insurance may not cover it, [and] the other kids in school may not be vaccinated.” And without a requirement in place, insurance companies get the message that they don’t have to cover these treatments, making it more difficult for them to be readily available at doctors’ offices and pharmacies. Suddenly, the burden shifts to the consumer, and if there’s one thing American consumers know, it’s that our for-profit insurance companies will do what is in the interest of their bottom line, not public safety (because it’s literally not their job).

In other words, Dr. Kass explains, elected officials are working to “make [vaccines] much harder for us to get, and they didn’t advertise that when they went into office.”

It would appear that Florida is taking advantage of a chaotic moment in federal vaccine guidance, but Dr. Kass disagrees. “I think that this is a long-standing plan that [the Florida GOP] have to be inflammatory and extremist,” she argues. “The lack of leadership at HHS is empowering Florida to do things that are the most inflammatory and the most extreme. No rational person thinks that dismantling requirements for schoolchildren—which helps community safety—is a logical and smart idea.” Dr. Kass says that officials like Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo are “sacrificing our children” to prove they’re in alignment with Robert F. Kennedy’s leadership and the MAHA agenda to “dismantle our public health infrastructure.”

 “This is clearly an attempt to do that,” she says. “There’s no precedent for the idea of removing requirements for vaccines for anybody.”

And it isn’t just a Florida problem. Imagine, if you will, unvaccinated children who unknowingly have a virus in their system running around sneezing on everything as children are wont to do—and coming into contact with the elderly, with the immunocompromised, with people suffering from long covid. Adults who fall into those categories, vaccinated or not, will be affected by these changes because, as Dr. Kass explains, “older Americans rely on herd immunity” for protection. You don’t have to work too hard to picture the worst-case scenario because there is an entire film genre dedicated to painting that picture. (See: the entire Planet of the Apes franchise, Contagion, I Am Legend, or any zombie movie ever.)

It’s not all negative, though. States like Pennsylvania, California, Washington, and Oregon are reacting to the federal government abandoning the ship of public health by actually being helpful. Pennsylvania announced that its vaccine policies will be guided by (you’ll never believe it) the top medical societies in the state. Meanwhile, the three western states are combining forces to create the West Coast Health Alliance to “uphold scientific integrity in public health.”

So, as we always like to say when things start to go completely off the rails: call your representatives, no matter their party. One thing we should all be able to agree on is that more people dying from preventable illnesses is bad, and the only way to move forward is with proven, effective science, which we have! Ask your representatives to commit to following the science and not the changing winds of political power. And if they’re reluctant to speak up, just remind them that every person who dies—and people will die if this becomes the norm—is one less vote for their re-election. That’ll get their attention.

  AND:

• Not to be outdone by Florida’s messiness, Texas was also quite busy being awful yesterday. The state passed a transgender bathroom ban and a bounty hunting law for people who use abortion pills. Sigh. Back to 5calls.org we go.

• Following an earthquake that has left thousands dead, women in Afghanistan say that they were ignored by male rescue workers who refused to treat them. “They gathered us in one corner and forgot about us,” one survivor told the New York Times.

• Donald Trump has finally taken notice of all of the Epstein survivors who gathered at the Capitol to plead with him for justice. It seems the president is not entirely interested in bringing the truth to light despite the incredibly brave testimonies of so many women.

• Sydney Sweeney is doing another ad campaign. Respectfully, we want off this ride girl, do something else.

Mariah to the Moon!

BY SCARLET HARRIS

Why Mariah’s First Moonman Matters

MARIAH AT THIS YEAR’S BET AWARDS (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

This weekend at the MTV Video Music Awards, Mariah Carey is being awarded the Video Vanguard Award—her first VMA.

If it feels long overdue, that’s because it is. While the Songwriters Hall of Fame inducted Mariah in 2020, her videos have, until now, gone unrecognized at the biggest industry awards show. That oversight is especially galling, given that Mariah—a powerhouse biracial woman with a vocal range that could shatter glass—has understood the power and impact that a video can have since the start of her career. Long before the idea of women musicians controlling their own image and voice went mainstream, Mariah directed several of her earliest and most influential videos, from the deceptively simple “Fantasy” (’95, with that iconic fairground clip to “Always Be My Baby” (’97) to the Life of a Showgirl-coded “Breakdown” (’97). “I’d done a lot of videos and wasn’t always a hundred percent thrilled,” she said at the time. “So I figured I would give directing a shot.” It worked. The Mariah-directed videos reflect a gaze that actually centers her face—a novel idea at the time.

BACKSTAGE WITH LL COOL J AT THE 1997 MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

With her remixes, which were often given more attention than the original tracks, Mariah became a reverse crossover star—from pop into R’n’B. No mean feat as Mariah was famously under the thumb of her controlling husband and manager, record executive Tommy Mottola, who was intent on continuing to market her as the girl next door instead of letting her explore her biracial identity and R’n’B roots. In 2022, when Pitchfork’s then-editor-in-chief Puja Patel named the “Fantasy” remix featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard the best song of the 1990s, shåe lauded the track as “a declaration of independence, a reclamation of agency and identity, a blueprint for a new kind of pop song that would be replicated for decades to come.” (Certain men were very, very mad about that.)

Mariah’s musical career had highs and lows after that: Glitter was panned; The Emancipation of Mimi was triumphant, and since then, Mariah has shot videos that are self-referential (“Touch My Body,” ’09), audacious (the Eminem diss track “Obsessed,” ’09), and more. But all the while, she has wielded absolute control over her image, including as the reigning, ageless Queen of Christmas. (It’s nearing that time…)

Today, her influence is felt in the world-building that Beyoncé and Taylor Swift offer in their visuals. And like Beyoncé, who only picked up a Grammy for Album of the Year this year, Mariah is a woman of color who has been overlooked too long. She has five Grammys in genre categories, but she’s never won the big one, calling the awards show “overrated.” It speaks to the outsized impact women of color, and particularly Black women, have on culture—while simultaneously being snubbed by the establishment.

Now Mariah is finally being awarded her due. Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, your move.

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