Media top headlines September 14
In media news today, MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle claims unvaccinated people can just work from home, The New York Times gets accused of 'catering to the Bidens' after calling Hunter Biden story 'unsubstantiated,' and Kamala Harris is questioned after announcing steps for 'protecting the vaccinated'
The glitzy, celebrity-heavy Met Gala in New York Monday night was ripped as being excessive and out-of-touch, and many of those same critics are now also noting the apparent lack of masking and social distancing at the affair.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald singled out Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., as one of the evening's worst offenders. AOC was first mocked for showing up to the gala wearing a dress with the words "tax the rich" painted on it in red, arguing that her message fell on deaf ears because of her presence at the swanky soirée.
Attendees were required to be vaccinated, but Greenwald said the photos of Ocasio-Cortez going maskless, while her "servants" were forced to wear masks, painted an "ugly" picture. Standing behind Ocasio-Cortez and the celebrities in many of the event photos were masked event employees and volunteers helping usher attendees along the red carpet.
"While AOC's revolutionary and subversive socialist gown generated buzz, the normalization of maskless elites attended to by faceless servants is grotesque," Greenwald wrote on Substack.
"While AOC's subversive praxis was obviously a watershed moment for working-class politics, the more important lesson is the normalization of forcing servants to be masked while the elites they serve are free: a perfect symbol of the rot of America's cultural Balkanization," he added.
"When it comes to mask mandates, it is now commonplace to see two distinct classes of people: those who remain maskless as they are served, and those they employ as their servants who must have their faces covered at all times," Greenwald wrote. "Prior to the COVID pandemic, it was difficult to imagine how the enormous chasm between the lives of cultural and political elites and everyone else could be made any larger, yet the pandemic generated a new form of crude cultural segregation: a series of protocols which ensure that maskless elites need not ever cast eyes upon the faces of their servant class."
Attendees like "The View" host Whoopi Goldberg did note they had to wear masks once inside the event and could only remove them to eat.
Some of Greenwald's fellow journalists and others agreed.
Greenwald recalled some other high-profile examples of COVID hypocrisy among America's political elite.
"Governors, mayors, ministers and Speakers of the House have been filmed violating their own COVID protocols in order to dine with their closest lobbyist-friends, enjoy a coddled hair styling in chic salons, or unwind after signing new lockdown and quarantine orders by sneaking away for a weekend getaway with the family," he wrote.
The journalist singled out Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who was caught on camera without a mask getting a haircut at a San Francisco hair salon which was closed to the general public, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, D., who was pictured maskless at a party in the fancy French Laundry restaurant last November.
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More recently, former President Barack Obama's birthday celebration at Martha's Vineyard got noticeably less criticism by mainstream media outlets and Dr. Anthony Fauci than the Sturgis motorcycle rally in South Dakota or crowded college football games.
"Fauci flipped out at fans attending college football games, but has said nothing about the maskless celebrities at the Met Gala," the Daily Caller's David Hookstead wrote. "We live in two Americas. The rich do what they want and working class people are told to shut up and obey."
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