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There is not a day that goes by where we’re not receiving some type of “urgent” update on whether or not President Trump, Vice President Pence, and/or other Trump administration officials are wearing a mask.
Some reporters, like CNN White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, have even made it their mission during the pandemic to provide daily mask updates on Trump, Pence, and others, because if there’s one thing the millions of struggling, out of work Americans are concerned about right now it’s whether or not members of the Trump administration are donning masks.
Other reporters, like CBS News White House correspondent Weijia Jiang, take the mask monitoring even further by way of actually giving tweet play by plays on whether or not Trump is wearing a mask.
When these officials are not wearing masks, which is often, we get the usual snide comments from reporters about how those officcials are doing this in spite of alleged policies at the places they’re visiting that mandate people were masks.
And when journalists aren’t attempting to shame the White House into wearing masks, they’re shaming each other, as ABC News journo Jon Karl tried to do with Fox News’s John Roberts earlier this month. When they’re not doing it to each other, they’re hypocritically wagging their fingers at anyone else who they see not wearing a mask.
We are now at the point where people are mask shaming other people openly and loudly in places like grocery stores, as seen in a disturbing Staten Island video posted on Twitter over the weekend.
As I wrote earlier, I’m a mask wearer myself. When I go to the grocery store or even through the drive-thru to pick up some lunch or dinner, I’m wearing a mask. When I drop off groceries at my mom and dad’s house, I wear a mask. At the same time, I’m not going to mask shame someone for not wearing one.
The main reason why was explained well by my RedState colleague Nick Arama in his post on the Staten Island incident:
But what’s silly here is whatever the politics, this is scary fearful mob mentality.
[…]
If anything, all the yelling and screaming is more likely to spread the virus than simply ignoring the woman or not going near her. Moreover they think that their right to dictate to her justifies chasing her out of the store with obscenities. It makes it much easier to see how cults or socialists dictatorships can work if and when they manipulate such fear and people lose their humanity.
Not only that, but people are also mask shaming people who don’t wear masks outdoors – even when those people are socially distanced away from others.
It’s just gotten out of hand. The mask shaming has simply got to stop – with the exceptions being when it’s done to someone like any mask-shaming journalist or Democratic politician who gets caught not wearing one after their many lectures on the subject.
In those cases, some social-media shaming is entirely appropriate. 😉
