There Was Christie, Sanders and Trump
Now Add the Gorsuch Meme
The ubiquitous Chris Christie meme of the overweight, then-governor lounging on the beach was repeated around the world and even on the moon.
Likewise, the meme went viral of Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., bundled up in mittens, a down coat and face mask, at the Jan. 20, 2020, inauguration of President Joe Biden.
At the risk of redundancy, memes seem to be everywhere and at their best, they keep a moment alive, whether it is to reveal a serious moment or to poke satirical fun. There was a corpulent Christie sunbathing on a chaise lounge at an empty beach at the New Jersey shore during a weekend-long shutdown of nonessential services provided by the state government, including public access to national parks and waterfronts, as ordered by Christie himself.
Other popular memes showed the words “Donald Trump announces foreign policy advisors” above a photo of the Three Stooges, dressed in garish, ribbon-strewn, military uniforms.
Or the one of former First Lady Melania trump speaking at a dais above the words, “I learned to work hard growing up a poor black girl in the southside of Chicago.”
And that memorable one of a photo of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, above the words, “Most punchable face in America.”
Now, add to the pantheon of famous or infamous memes, a picture of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, a trump appointee, without a protective face mask, when he took his seat along with other seven, fully-masked justices on Friday to hear oral arguments in two cases challenging the Biden administration’s covid rules. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, who had previously been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench, participated remotely from her chambers. Sotomayor has diabetes, which is a risk factor for more severe illness with covid. Had she not been compromised, she would have been seated next to Gorsuch. And one can only wonder if Gorsuch would have donned the demon face mask then.
And by the way, Reporters and lawyers must wear N95 masks and be tested daily for COVID-19. Incoherently, the rules don’t apply to the justices, for reasons that are cloaked in stone cold silence. But Gorsuch doesn’t like to be told what to do, so I assume, he doesn’t wear a seat belt, he drinks and drives, he yells fire in a crowded theater and he refuses to have his children vaccinated for small pox. During the discussion over challenges to Biden’s COVID-19 rules, Gorsuch added another non-sequitur, saying, “Could [the government] also implement regulations about exercise regimes, sleep habits, medicines and supplements that must be ingested by hospital employees in the name of health and safety?” Well, yes, if it turned out that failure to exercise, sleep, use medicines and supplements added to a worldwide plague.
Could Gorsuch be sending a worse message and the worst time, when the COVID-19 omicron variant is ravaging the country, inundating hospital rooms with patients and threatening to put the fragile health care system on life support. The pandemic hit new milestones July 23, with cases topping four million in the United States and three million in Europe as fresh spikes from Belgium to Tokyo to Melbourne forced new restrictions on citizens. Meanwhile, 37.8 percent of Americans are not fully vaccinated against the virus. Scientists expect that the omicron variant will continue to surge through January and then begin to fall.
Gorsuch is either supremely cynical or supremely dumb and I go for supremely cynical, given how he was nominated to the High Court by the supremely dumb ex-president trump. It boggles the mind to think that a man on the highest court of the land doesn’t understand that face masks, coupled with vaccinations and boosters, have proven to minimize the harm of COVID-19.
Gorsuch sounds like one of those with intellectual challenges who cherry pick reports to fit their delusional politics, like the reports that the cloth masks may not be effective in deterring the omicron variant. People with intellectual challenges may find it difficult to read beyond one paragraph, so excuse them if they didn’t also read that N95masks are quite effective. Gorsuch, I assume is not intellectually challenged, just morally and ethically challenged.
The same intellectually challenged, conspiracy-laden, fact-rejecting, trump-worshipping Americans are prone to spout out facts about how people who have had both vaccinations and a booster are still getting sick. Sadly, they apparently couldn’t make it to the next paragraph that states unequivocally that people who have been vaccinated and boosted may get the virus but it will very likely be relatively benign, ending in a bad cold and possibly a flu-like condition for a few days. The same report, even further down in the story and even more unlikely to be seen by the intellectually challenged, notes without doubt, that a person who had not had the two vaccinations and booster not only stands a greater chance of getting COVID-19 and spreading it around like cake at a birthday party but also suffering serious and potentially deadly symptoms.
And then there are those who point at the latest recommendations regarding COVID -19 and say the change proves the government and scientific community don’t know what they’re doing. Yes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president’s chief medical advisor, now recommend that people with COVID-19 isolate for five days, instead of the previously recommended 10 days. The new guidance comes after studies have shown that after five days, a person without symptoms can return to normal activities while wearing a mask for at least five more days.
The CDC says that the guidelines have been updated in order to reflect growing evidence that suggests transmission of Covid-19 often occurs one to two days before the onset of symptoms and during the two to three days after. This is called science and I would rather accept the guidance of scientists rather than someone like Big Bird hating, Big Lie believing, Ted Cruz who called COVID -19 nothing more than a bad cold.
The questions before the Supreme Court effect many millions of Americans. One involves a rule proposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which would require vaccinations for about 80 million workers.
The other challenged policy is a requirement by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that vaccinations are required for more than 17 million health-care workers at 76,000 facilities that receive federal money tied to the programs.
And we are about to leave these monumental decisions up to a panel that includes a justice who won’t wear a protective face mask. Oy ve.