Just gonna haul out this gem for another on-theme shine today:
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Well, she did say that at the beginning, but it seems to have been a gaffe, because later she was claiming the science does support opening schools.
In any case, equally disturbing is the apparent open strategy that, yes, all schoolchildren will get infected. But that’s “OK” because the young don’t get hurt too bad. And “the science” does seem to support this. It’s just that, obviously, all these contagious schoolchildren will come in contact with adults, killing some of them.
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“Our peer nations”?
Like… Which one?
She also refers to western countries all opening up…
United States <> the only western country.
We’re watching this happen overseas, with a really big bowl of popcorn…
There is no longer any point trying to be eloquent about this situation. Just when you think the Trump presidency is as insanely fucking idiotic as something can get, they double down on the stupidity.
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They’re all traitors. Traitors to humanity and the american people. They’ll sell you for a cigarette.
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Where do people learn to lie like that at such a young age? Trump University?
I doubt seriously if McInanely has any offspring of her own or she might see how utterly callous that sounds.
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You are right. The quote everyone is incensed about in context does seem like a misspeak.
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One of my absolute favs!!
Can’t be more spot-on than this.
Well, politically I may agree with you, but this was just as much a denial of reality, even if the motives and character defects that prompted it may have been entirely different, which does make it a slightly tangential example.
Nevertheless, reality was denied and came back to bite them on the arse, which may in itself be what makes it a tangential example seeing as reality has yet to bite Trump, Johnson and the other solipsists in the same way.
That may be correct. In which case, she’s proving she’s an incompetent press secretary because her entire job is to clearly promote the views of the administration, and she’s so incompetent that it come across as sounding as though she was dismissing science altogether. Given the GOP’s penchant for science denial for the last few decades, no one is surprised by the latter, nor are we surprised that Trump hires incompetents to represent him in the public eye (what is this, like his third press secretary in three years now, and they’ve all been equally shitty).
Science denial or incompetence. Both are GOP standards.
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I was thinking he was a buffoon well before that point. He sounds like one of those people who constantly mentions, unbidden, how they didn’t go to university and are therefore smarter than anyone who did.
(Wikipedia says he did in fact attend a university, and no, he’s no relation, though I bet his last name is 50% of how he managed to land a writing gig at even an unknown website)
(Though I’m only going by this one article; perhaps he was having an off day)
I really don’t think so.
“The science should not stand in the way of this” is 100% consistent with, “Hey, these particular science facts support me.”
Both express the exact same idea - that facts are soldiers in a war, that they are enemies or allies. Allied facts are good, enemy facts are bad. The quote people are gawking at isn’t, “and no one should listen to science ever!” it’s “Science should not stand in the way of [what we want]” It’s a misspeak only in that you aren’t supposed to say that out loud.
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Don’t listen to science. We have science. Our science is the best science. Better than that liberal science. The best science is on our side.
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It’s not too hard to draw the line from Big Tobacco paying for their own scientists to discredit anti-smoking efforts to this. It’s basically an extension of the same strategy. Agenda first (typically profit) and then you either find or invent the science to support the agenda. Even if you’re in the tiny minority, in the opinion of the voters one scientist vs. another equals “nobody really knows for sure.” (See also: Big Oil and climate change). This isn’t event particularly Trumpian, just GOP SOP.
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Doubleplus good!
His last name is not any part of how he got this gig, I’m pretty sure. He has been around the UK comedy (topical/political/musical branch) circuit for years, especially known for composing and performing a topical song about one of the week’s news stories every week on The Now Show for the best part of two decades.
Oddly, his Wikipedia entry makes no mention of his regular contributions to The New European, which is not “an unknown website” over here. They popped up in 2016 as a remain campaigning newssheet and today are still on the print newsstands with a modest circulation (about a third of PrivateEye’s, for reference) but no doubt many more readers online. Some of their other regular contributors are even better known (maybe not to a US audience, but certainly are to a UK one).
Writers such as Booker-prize winner Howard Jacobson,
Bonnie Greer, Miranda Sawyer, Jonathan Freedland, Victor
Lewis-Smith, Louise Chunn, Alastair Campbell, Mitch Benn
and Hardeep Singh-Kholi have set the agenda regularly
from within the pages of The New European.
It’s where the Repugnicons want kids to be indoctrinated into unquestioning stupidity.
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Children are petri dishes with legs and the ability to lick things. Every family who has ever sent a child to daycare or school knows this. That first year is brutal. The kid contracts and brings home everything. The fact most children appear to be asymptomatic when infected with COVID-19 is going to make it even worse.
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So their parents can go to work. That’s it. The only reason it is of any concern to them.
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