Roll Up Your Sleeves (NBC-TV, Walgreens, aired April 18, 2021)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2021 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

I’ve been waiting for the chance to comment on two star-studded TV shows I watched Sunday night, the 56th annual Academy of Country Music awards on CBS and a hour-long show on NBC that preceded it: Roll Up Your Sleeves, an infomercial to promote the vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease it causes, COVID-19. The most bizarre thing about Roll Up Your Sleeves is that anyone, including NBC and the principal corporate sponsor, Walgreens, thought it was necessary to promote the vaccine in this way. You would think that anyone faced with a pandemic that has been deranging normal human life for over a year now would grab the chance to do something that would, if not eliminate the COVID-19 threat, at least alleviate it and make it manageable. You’d be wrong. There’s a fascinating article in the April 20 Los Angeles Times by Robb Willer and Jay Van Ravel, “How to Convince Republicans to Get Vaccinated” (https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-04-20/vaccine-hesitancy-covid-republicans-political-polarization), that points out how politically polarized everything about COVID-19 has become, including the vaccine.

According to these authors, 44 percent of Republicans have told pollsters that they don’t intend to get the show, while 92 percent of Democrats either have already got the vaccine or definitely plan to. The authors suggest that the only way to erode Republicans’ unwillingness to get vaccinated is to enlist Repubican spokespeople to advocate it – and the producers of Roll Up Your Sleeves scored exactly one major Republican, former President George W. Bush. Instead the show was far more focused on getting people of color in general and African-Americans in particular. The three co-hosts – Michelle Obama, Ciera and her husband, Russell Wilson – were all Black, and among the major voices promoting the vaccine to African-Americans were former President Barack Obama in a segment with basketball stars Shaquille O’Neal and Charles Barkley. Barack Obama made one good point in referencing the understandable skepticism of African-Americans towards major medical interventions by the federal government – the grim history that has ranged from the Mengele-like experiments done on Black subjects during slavery to the infamous Tuskegee Experiment of 1932, in which African-American men who had contracted syphilis were denied the treatments that then existed so doctors could study the “natural” untreated course of the disease. (Then again, given that the standard treatments for syphilis at the time were compounds of mercury and arsenic, which were only replaced by penicillin after World War II, the government and the researchers might have been unwittingly doing those Black men a favor.)

Obama pointed out that the Tuskegee Experiment involved withholding care and treatment from Black people, while the vaccine campaign involves offering Black people (and Americans in general) a potentially life-saving treatment against a deadly virus. The show also featured at least two African-American church congregations in which the ministers have taken an active role in getting their congregants vaccinated. The show spiraled on through various guest stars – frankly I had thought this would be a musical show with variety acts performing their hits and attracting people to the vaccine message, but even people like Ciara who are known for singing just talked instead. After Michelle Obama’s introduction the show began with a segment between actor Matthew McConaughey and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who for some reason has been hailed not only as a great infectious disease expert despite how thoroughly he screwed up the AIDS response and even called “The Sexiest Man Alive.” They also dragged in NASCAR champion driver Duke Jarrett and actress Eva Longoria, along with current President Joe Biden, ending with the 72-year-old comedian Billy Crystal, who closed the show with a charming anecdote of his grandchildren. I hope the show encourages people to get vaccinated (I’ve already had both shots of the Moderna vaccine in February) but it’s a sad commentary on the craziness that has surrounded this issue from the get-go that anyone thought they needed to make this show!