When I read this headline yesterday in the Washington Post:
I immediately pictured the in-your-face, proudly ignorant, provocatively opinionated, unvaccinated, infectious former running mate of maverick John McCain smugly saying to the world, and NYC in particular, “here’s your fucking honor system, assholes.” It was enough to piss me off, the thought of that provocateur giving the finger to the honor system, like everyone else in her slavishly authoritarian party.
I felt a flash of anger. I thought of Tich Nhat Hanh’s good advice.
Here is Sarah Lazarus’s wry version of the Palin story:
Sarah Palin dined out at multiple New York City restaurants after testing positive for COVID, but in her defense, she’s had a lot of time to fill since her libel trial got delayed because she tested positive for COVID
The New York Times had their usual judiciously worded headline today:
A few hours after I saw the Washington Post headline I went back and took a look at the Washington Post article.
It turns out Sarah Palin ate outdoors, which is apparently fine in New York City if you are unvaccinated, whether tested or untested (covid positive could be a deal breaker there, it is an honor system). The article states that, according to someone, she went back to the restaurant to apologize for the ruckus she’d caused a few days earlier, which may be true. The article also noted that it has not been disclosed when Palin tested positive for covid-19, meaning the five day isolation period the CDC recommends could theoretically have passed. All unlikely, perhaps, but possibly true.
So is the attention grabbing headline really fair? Sarah Palin is in NYC to testify in her federal lawsuit against the New York Times, she claims a 2017 editorial libeled her. She’s waiting for a negative covid test so the trial can get started. By dining outdoors, it seems she had not actually flouted the letter of New York City’s pandemic regulations, assuming she wasn’t lying about her infectious status. She surely also enjoyed the attention she got for making the radical left covid-haters mad, you betcha.
She is an ignorant asshole, and a sassy symbol for millions more, standing on the right to infect whoever they want with a potentially deadly disease, in the name of performing rabid partisan politics and “owning”, if not also killing, political enemies. She is an aggravating pustule on the eyelid of American democracy, the wet dream of cynical fucks who pictured someone exactly like Trump as the president one day. But is the provocative, click bait headline fair in announcing that she deliberately flouted New York city’s covid rules when the article under the bold headline makes a something of a case that she may not have? Just asking.
Everybody wants to be treated fairly, you could even say we all deserve it. Fairness is another word for justice, after all. Even a provocative piece of shit is entitled to make the case that she’s being treated unfairly, as Ms. Palin is about to do in federal court in this anarchist jurisdiction.
t’s Be slow to anger, quick to seek better understanding. Breathing is much better than holding your breath til your face turns blue. Trust me on that one.
Not succumbing to anger is very, very hard to do, I know, particularly when provoked, even moreso when constant provocation is part of a deliberate plan to keep everyone enraged, to increase “engagement” on “social media” and bring about long planned American fascism, a privatized corporate state with unlimited wealth for a few and a hearty fuck you to everyone else.
It is best, for yourself and for all of us, to practice being slower to anger, quick to seek better understanding. Breathing, and letting ourselves calm, not immediately reacting to each provocation, is much better than holding your breath til your face turns blue. Trust me on that one.
And, yeah, calmly, and with love, fuck Sarah Palin.
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