Typing with one hand, pearls clutched in the other.

It really is the kind of story you feel ridiculous covering, and yet the media is insisting on keeping this in the news cycle. One can only surmise that somewhere internally the networks and major papers have information that President Trump referring to the Coronavirus as the ‘’Kung Flu’’ has serious traction with the public. Why else would they be so insistent on keeping this dose of idiocy alive?

On Saturday at the Tulsa rally Trump invoked the dastardly phrase once again, a clear way for him to troll the hand-wringers in the media. In predictable fashion they have redacted, declaring the term Kung Flu to be racist. They say this despite not indicating specifically what race is offended, how referring to a virus by name is offensive to people, and the one lingering question — why were they not upset about this during the Obama administration?

This week I sat in a thread where it was pointed out that in recent years the Veterans Administration had invoked the dire phrase in some of its literature in regards to battling a contagion. It is a jarring visual…if you are the type to be predisposed to being offended by medical pamphlet flyers.

How dare the administration permit the use of Kung Flu – Er, in 2015… pic.twitter.com/TEqYXww0cK

— Brad Slager: aka Wuhan Solo (@MartiniShark) June 25, 2020

When one user reached out to the source of this one they had taken down the page in a matter of minutes. Another government out let invoked the phrase as well, this time the VA locations in Washington.

Yea, that Trump is a racist for using this phrase – that somehow was not racist during Obama’s years in office. pic.twitter.com/ar4IBjxkxq

— Brad Slager: aka Wuhan Solo (@MartiniShark) June 25, 2020

Once these examples surfaced a number of defenses and deflections were sent out. These are offices and not the administration, President Obama was probably not aware of these, and Obama never uttered the phrase himself. Then there is the even more strained attempt to say that this is a false equivalency being offered to explain away Trump’s guilt of making a racist comment.

This means that it is racist to refer to a viral contagion with the term Kung Flu, but it is not racist to refer to fighting a viral contagion with the term Kung Flu. The people making this argument are the same ones who have declared that the centuries-old practice of naming a pandemic agent after the area where it initially broke out is racist. Thus ‘’Wuhan virus’’ or Chinese Coronavirus’’ have also been declared hateful terms. 

These are the supposed adults who are coaching us through this viral crisis. That they are incapable of recognizing the President is intentionally goading them into falling to pieces over this phrase defies the use of the term ‘’adults’’.