By J. Hogan
-Gains & Gleanings-
Early on in this weird year of pandemic a very ugly trend began. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s face of COVID-19, issued a missive stating that everyone must wear masks in any public setting… and was promptly photographed at a Washington Nationals baseball game without a covering for his face.
He admitted to a lapse in judgement and a self-inflicted “imaging problem,” but assured us that we all should take his words more seriously than he did, and always wear a mask.
Chicago’s Mayor Lori Lightfoot justified her hair appointments at a time when she was not allowing any other salon to make a living, by blatantly insisting that she was more important than others. See, she reasoned, she’s the face of Chicago during a time when daily pressers are needed… not just common everyday folk.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was soon exposed, maskless, at a salon in San Francisco, when no salons were allowed to be open and masks were mandatory - heck to hear California’s dictating Gov. Gavin Newsome, it might seemingly even become the reason to bring back the death penalty to the once-Golden state. The salon owner has since been hounded out of business for shining a light on Pelosi’s hypocrisy.
Speaking of Gavin Newsome, he of the take-me-seriously-I-will-ruin-you approach to COVID-19 restrictions, the good governor was filmed dining, maskless, with a dozen medical industry lobbyists at a high dollar French restaurant.
That a dozen lobbyists from the industry demanding masks, social distancing, and economy-killing measures were so brazenly throwing a multi-thousand dollar feast for one of their loudest and most aggressive government mouthpieces while ignoring all that they imposed on others should be shocking. But it’s not.
The only thing that would’ve made the situation more comically true to form would be an audio recording of the crew laughingly saying of us mere riffraff, “Let them eat cake!”
Government has a real problem these days. We don’t believe in them, and we don’t believe them. That’s a good sign. They don’t deserve our trust. We aren’t supposed to have “betters” in government here, and they aren’t supposed to give us draconian rules for our protection that somehow don’t apply to them.
Going into the holidays we got more blatant hypocrisy. Michael Hancock, the mayor of Denver finished taping his public safety message telling the good citizens of the Mile High City to stay home for Thanksgiving, not have guests, and certainly don’t travel for the holiday… and promptly drove to Denver International Airport to fly to Mississippi to have his holiday with family.
Austin’s mayor did even better, taping his message of quasi house arrest for the peons over whom he fancies himself ruling while himself vacationing in Cabo San Lucas Mexico, having flown there with 20 others on a private jet.
Of course, once exposed, he apologized and made sure to reiterate that his words should be taken seriously.
In days of old, when men rose up and threw off the shackles of King George, the citizenry would have marched to each of these hypocrites’ offices with pitchforks and torches, walked them to the stateline and warned them not to come back.
A few dozen cases into this year’s game of “I really believe what I’m imposing on you but ignoring for me,” it seems we don’t have the wherewithal or outrage to break out the pitchforks.
I am sure, however, that many of us have no intention of taking these people seriously.
Rev. James Hogan is a native of Stowe Township and serves as pastor of Faithbridge Community Church in McKees Rocks.