One of the most scandalous examples of television networks’ manufacturing frauds was Florida Governor. Ron DeSantis telling high school students at an event of his that “you do not have to wear those masks. Please take off those masks. Honestly, it’s not doing anything, and we’ve got to stop this COVID theater.”
NBC Nightly News tried to make this a story for not just one night, but two. It’s lame because it came after everyone took off their masks for the State of the Union address, after the “nonpartisan” Centers for Disease Control ruled against mask mandates just a few days before President Biden’s big speech.
It’s also lame because days before, NBC’s own Saturday Night Live aired a skit satirizing urban liberals who worried that maybe they had been wrong about the spread of COVID. One woman stated that she was reading an article. Her husband wanted to keep her quiet about the topic. “It was in Bloomberg, and I thought it was interesting…it was just saying that mask mandates had, I don’t know….little to no effect on COVID.” Then they all made faces of horror for laughs.
This is a real article. Faye Flam hosts the podcast and is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Follow the Science. She wrote “Masks have been the most visible part of America’s pandemic response, but one of the least consequential.” And: “There’s no avoiding it: The benefits of universal masking have been difficult to quantify.”
Republicans like DeSantis who have opposed mask mandates – especially for children in schools – have been painted as evil. He’s “DeathSantis,” he’s “the DeSantis variant,” he leads a “death cult.”
But Flam wrote: “The states with mask mandates haven’t fared significantly better than the 35 states that didn’t impose them during the omicron wave. My home state of Rhode Island has been subject to a mask mandate from mid-December. However, our January surge was much higher than that of any other state. There’s little evidence that mask mandates are the primary reason the pandemic waves eventually fall — though much of the outrage over lifting mandates is based on that assumption.”
But on NBC, anchorman Lester Holt – who adored Andrew Cuomo in 2020 for his COVID response – highlighted “Outrage tonight from that scolding by Florida’s governor to a group of students because they wore masks, calling it political theater.” Holt skipped the point that they were supposed to stand behind him as he spoke, although you could sense that from the video.
Dawn Marshall, an immunocompromised parent, became furious at DeSantis. “I almost jumped out of my skin. He was truly appalled. He took my authority away. My child was put at risk by him. He put me at risk because my child comes home to me.”
As if DeSantis isn’t vaccinated? It is amazing to see how suddenly parents have the right over their children, but networks such as NBC ignore or deny those dangerous and benighted parents who abuse school boards by complaining about COVID concealing, critical race theory and LGBT indoctrination.
Parent complaints are good…when they’re against Republicans. NBC’s Miguel Almaguer concluded by tagging DeSantis: “While he won’t wear a mask, tonight he is the face of controversy.”
TV news manufacturers play the “controversy” card in a very tilted way.
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