Because Trump has made such a hash of the response to the pandemic, we are going to see a cascade of problems, each one following the other like dominos. And the very next one is going to hit very soon, as John Oliver points out.
The above sign, without the mask requirement, is commonly found posted at the entrance to many business establishments in the US and has been so for a long time. As far as I am aware, it has not caused any controversy and shirtless or shoeless people have not threatened the businesses with lawsuits. And yet, because mask wearing has been made into a culture war issue by Donald Trump, we now have the bizarre spectacle of people doing just that. Take this case:
Hugo’s Tacos, a beloved LA chain, announced Sunday that it was temporarily closing both its taco stands after its employees reported increasing harassment from customers who refused to wear masks during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The harassment – ranging from racial slurs to food and objects being thrown at employees – “has taken a toll” on staff, CEO and part-owner Bill Kohne told BuzzFeed News. Kohne said he wants to give his employees a break as the company works toward solutions to better protect them.
The recent protests and demonstration have largely featured young people of diverse backgrounds facing off against the police or Trump-supporting counter protestors. But Saturday saw something different at The Villages, a retirement community in Florida that has very wealthy, almost exclusively white, residents. It is seen as a reliably very right-wing Republican stronghold and has hosted many fundraisers for such candidates including Trump.
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Is there anything more boring than seeing the vacation photos of other people? What makes it worse is that the people who show you these photos are usually people you know well, making it hard to politely extricate yourself from the situation, as neighbor Bob realizes.
This clip from John Oliver’s show was from back in 2017 but is still timely in the current context of removing statues and other monuments honoring confederate leaders and renaming military bases named after confederate generals.
Seth Meyers weighs in on Trump defending confederacy
At the best of times, the state of US prisons are a scandal but what is happening during the pandemic is unconscionable, with inmates kept in conditions that guarantee that almost all of them will be exposed to the virus. John Oliver examines the problem and provides some common-sense steps that could be taken to ameliorate the situation but of course they are not being done because being seen as soft on criminals is seen by many politicians as a electoral death sentence, even though there is no way to confine the virus to just the prison population.
Late night talk show comedians are having a field day with Trump’s rally flop and what is billed his dejected ‘walk of shame’ afterwards back to the White House, that some have even set to music.
Seth Meyers, who has made no secret of his contempt for Trump, was clearly enjoying having fun at Trump’s expense.
As a break from political news, here are some cartoons. This first one is something that one is more likely to appreciate as one gets older and the opinions of others become less important.
I cannot tell you how many times I have experienced this second scenario.
In a blistering attack, Meyers points out how despicable John Bolton is and always has been, and then goes on to say that capitalism in the US has created the highly unjust and unequal system that we now have, where the wealthy make out like bandits while the rest of us are squeezed dry. It is encouraging that the evils of capitalism are increasingly and explicitly being highlighted by mainstream media.
Somme of you may be familiar with the ‘crazifiction factor‘, a term invented by John Rogers to explain the 27% of Americans who seem to be willing to vote for the most bizarre candidates. The Onion reports that the Pew Research organization that conducts polls on various aspects of American life has come up with a different figure.
WASHINGTON—Classifying millions of citizens around the country as “total goddamn mysteries,” a resigned Pew Research study released Friday found it was impossible to determine what the fuck was going on with 15% of Americans. “After an exhaustive, year-long venture, we are still just as confused, if not more confused, about what the deal is with all these indecipherable weirdos,” said lead researcher Jenna Kirkman, before throwing her arms into the air, and calling a large portion of Americans “lost causes.” “According to our very frustrating research, a large portion of Americans are just freaks who will never be understood, no matter how hard we try. Are they happy? Sad? Old? Young? Unfortunately, because so much of the nation are just total fucking randos, we may never actually know.” At press time, Kirkman added that the remaining 85% of Americans were basic as shit, allowing researchers to easily parse every detail about their boring, miserable lives.
(This is of course satire.)