Lectures From Limousine Liberals
The same people who sat at home praising essential workers as heroes now repay them with exclusion and sneering condescension
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/...ousine-liberals
by Bridget Phetasy
October 18, 2021

March 11, 2020, was the day the world stopped. The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson announced that they had the virus and were quarantining in Australia. In Los Angeles County, where I live, all gyms and bars were quickly closed, and a week later California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide stay-at-home order, urging 40 million residents to shelter in place.

While normal people tried to figure out how to juggle work, child care, and living under the same roof for 24 hours a day, celebrities were having a ball. Locked up with only their phones and without their handlers, the public was treated to an unfiltered parade of narcissism on fire. Distraught about the postponement of Coachella, Vanessa Hudgens took to Instagram Live to lament that “like, yeah, people are gonna die.” Gal Gadot talked about how “we’re all in this together” and gathered a celebrity cast to sing a horrifying version of “Imagine” from their sprawling mansions.

But no one does complete lack of self-awareness like Madonna. Not to be outdone in the tone-deaf celebrity video genre, she took to Instagram on March 22, 2020, naked in a tub filled with water and pink rose petals. As slow piano music played in the background, she described the virus as “the great equalizer.”

“That’s the thing about COVID-19,” she said. “It doesn’t care about how rich you are, how famous you are, how funny you are, how smart you are, where you live, how old you are, what amazing stories you can tell. It’s the great equalizer.” She finished this philosophical rambling by concluding that, “what’s terrible” about the virus is also “what’s great about it.”

The working class recognized what a joke this was from day one. Overnight they became “essential workers,” the heroes who never stopped working through the whole pandemic because they couldn’t. The nurses. The caretakers. The grocery store workers. Firemen. Policemen. Sanitation workers. For these Americans, their jobs only got harder, more dangerous, and more regulated. Their lives at home also became more complicated. Who would care for their children, now home from school, while they continued working? How would they protect their elderly family members? How could they keep their families safe from COVID-19 while coming and going from public-facing jobs?

Despite Madonna’s bathtub prophecy, COVID-19 absolutely cared about how old you are. In fact, the older you are, the more deadly the virus.-- excerpt, rest at link above --

Oh, this is good!