For those who know me, I frequently listen to podcasts In fact, on my main page at www.politicshawaii.com, I even list the podcasts I listen to and blogs that I read, regularly.
And once in a while, what I hear from those shows really stops me in my tracks. In the case of this post, it stopped me running on the treadmill, frantically looking for the rewind button to hear the statements again.
It was a statement made on the show Pod Save America. It is a show, produced by a company called Crooked Media, in which, as they describe themselves, “Four former aides to President Obama—Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer, and Tommy Vietor—are joined by journalists, politicians, activists, and more for a no-b******t conversation about politics”
They were talking about, in the Tuesday, November 17th episode entitled “Transition to Greatness”, about how messaging done by leaders regarding COVID restrictions is actually one reason why people are so tired of the mandates. They were discussing it in the context of the current “3rd wave” of infections across the nation, currently.
This is what they said:
I mean, I do think that the part of the [expletive] up public messaging is a consequence of policy choices, which is that like and we’ve seen this here in Los Angeles, like you hear you hear [Los Angeles] Mayor Garcetti or our public health commissioner be talking about, like don’t see even close friends and family is absurd. Cancel all Christmas. And then on the on then you see and then and then you see restaurants are open. Gyms are open. Right.
They go on to speak more about the egregiousness of how the messaging is affecting people
Again I agree with that, except that it’s been particularly egregious in L.A. when you had Democratic officials, Garcetti, the [California] governor, others like criticizing people for going to the beach. Right. There were very dumb early messages about like outdoor gatherings, totally like condescending and sneering at people being like, don’t forget the other with your family, yada, yada, yada. And it’s like, no, stop with that {expletive] that is over. It didn’t work then. It won’t now. Give me specific, concise, actionable things that are practical that I can implement in my own life that might actually help mitigate this thing at scale. But like, hey, telling everyone that Thanksgiving, Christmas is over, it’s not going to work. It’s just not going to work.
And then, a realistic assessment of what political leaders should have been thinking about when it comes to long term management of the virus in the community.
And it is about actually finding a way to live sustainably in a way that prevents the disease from spreading. Which is, to your point, Tommy, like we went from criticizing people to being on the beaches, which felt incredibly draconian and about being outside, which we now know is like really safe. And by the way, part of what makes this [explitive] sustainable is being able to go outside and be six feet apart from somebody you care about and having a conversation, and catching up. There is never a moment where they said, here are the things that you can do to make your life sustainable and OK during this time. And so now we come to the holidays. Everyone is burnt out. Nobody knows exactly what’s right. Everybody’s been kind of thrown to the wolves of their own version of risk mitigation.
Now what has been said here has been expressed by many, mostly in conservative-leaning circles. What the news is, here, is that this show is not hosted by conservatives – far from it. Instead, this is being said by four who, one could say, are Democratic operatives.
I find it refreshing that at least some on the Left can see what those on the right have been saying all along – the way these liberal government officials have been handling the messaging on controlling the virus in the population is a bit to be desired.
Furthermore, and you can see it implied here, it’s because of this messaging why people are not universally doing the things they should be doing – wearing masks, washing hands, staying apart, etc. The fact is, through this, that our political leaders have failed to because of the way they approached it.
As I mentioned in a previous post, leaders imposing (some say draconian) measures to manage the virus in the community lacked an understanding of human behavior. The fact that human behaviorists have been devoid of the policy discussions on imposing measures is, unfortunately, coming back to bite them hard.
Even liberals are now seeing it. Now let’s see if anything changes?
For the record, PHwSF did reach out to Crooked Media, prior to publication, to inform them that we’d be citing quotes from their show for this piece.