MARCH 2020 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

Since most of the news this month focused on the coronavirus and its various manifestations, I decided to restrict March IGGY nominations to absurd comments made about the pandemic. There have been many. Because of an overloaded Phronesis switchboard, I have necessarily had to pare down the number of candidates to the following few.

1. Fox News’ Don Luskin and Jesse Watters. Fox News is up in arms over the coronavirus. Not because people are getting infected and some dying. Not because of the dangers it poses to humanity. And, of course, not because of the tepid Trump administration response to the crisis. No, the Fox team is pissed at China for causing the pandemic by eating bat soup and then not apologizing to the world.

Enlightened by internet rumors, Fox News resident “economist” Luskin claimed the pandemic stemmed from the Chinese “selling bats in open market-places and then have business travel and tourist travel between that country and the civilized world.”

China hater, Fox News’ Jesse Watters, went after his favorite target Monday night: Chinese people. As host of The Five, a show on which the cumulative intelligence of the panel adds up to the number 5, Watters used the coronavirus as a jumping-off point to demand an apology from China for causing the COVID-19 disease.

Watters is probably best known for his “Watters World” segments, during which he walks around making fun of people, and more specifically for the wildly racist episode in which he made fun of Chinese people in Chinatown, in a man-on-the-street sort of performance. On Monday night’s show, after the panel brought up Trump’s handling of public health concerns stemming from COVID19, Watters showed off some of his trademark scientific brilliance:

“I’ll tell you why it started in China. Because they have these markets where they eat raw bats and snakes.” He then went on to observe: “They are a very hungry people,” he says. “Their communist government cannot feed the people, and they are desperate, this food is uncooked, it’s unsafe, and that’s why scientists believe that’s where it originated from.”

As with the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s, the right wing sphere is full of fact-free stories that can be summed up as someone else doing something in some other country to cause the badness, and if we were all white and living right, none of this would be happening.

2. Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis). Ron Johnson continues to make a name for himself as one of the dumbest and/or most malevolent people in the Senate, which is a very hard thing to do. Last week he was dismissing the COVID-19 pandemic, mirroring the same rhetoric as the rest of the party's Dear Leader-obsessed Fox News flank. This week he's trying to tread an impossibly fine line of not quite walking that back, but not quite issuing actual condemnations of state and federal officials taking severe (and economically damaging) measures to contain the virus, either.

Which is leading to interviews like the one he gave to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, in which Johnson compares a new virus that may kill "3.4 percent" of humans that contract it to ... highway accidents. And we don't shut down the highways, so ...

Johnson, as quoted by Journal Sentinel Washington bureau chief Craig Gilbert:

"97 to 99 percent will get through this and develop immunities and will be able to move beyond this. But we don’t shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways. It’s a risk we accept so we can move about. We don’t shut down our economies because tens of thousands of people die from the common flu." (If one out of every 30 car rides ended in a fatality, I think we can be fairly certain we would be shutting down our highways.)

He went on: “Getting coronavirus is not a death sentence except for maybe no more than 3.4 percent of our population (and) I think probably far less.”

It sounds fine until you work out the actual numbers. If 40%-70% of the United States population were to get the virus, as experts have suggested might be the case in an unchecked pandemic, that works out to 4.5 million deaths at the low end, nearly 8 million deaths at the high end.

3. Former Sheriff and Fox News Commentator David Clark. Back when he was a regular on Fox News, then-Sheriff Clarke’s main schtick involved vicious attacks on Black Lives Matter and the progressive movement, all of which led to Donald Trump very nearly naming him to the top seat in the Department of Homeland Security. Clarke, the onetime sheriff of Milwaukee County in Wisconsin, was  denied that spot, for reasons—mainly related to his propensity to spout conspiracy theories and  “constitutionalist” nonsense—that became all too apparent over the weekend, as  Clark took to twitter to denounce measures to limit the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus as “government control” (nefariously manipulated by George Soros) and urging readers to “take the streets” in defiance of it.
Twitter later removed several of the tweets for violating its terms of service, which include a ban on posts urging self-harm.

In a series of tweets, the ignominious Clark commented:

“GO INTO THE STREETS FOLKS. Visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls, churches and demand that your schools remain open. NOW! If government doesn’t stop this foolishness…STAY IN THE STREETS. END GOVERNEMNT CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES. IF NOT NOW, WHEN? THIS IS AN EXPLOITATION OF A CRISIS.”

He also tweeted:

“It is now evident that this is an orchestrated attempt to destroy CAPITALISM. First sports, then schools and finally commercial business,” he warned in one since-deleted tweet. “Time to RISE UP and push back. Bars and restaurants should defy the order. Let people decide if they want to go out.”

Clarke’s first tweet, also removed, along these lines was mostly venting: “I am TIRED of all this, ‘we have to err on the side of caution’ BULL SH*T. WE HAVE TO GET BACK TO REASONABLENESS DAMMIT. It’s the DAMN FLU. Stop being afraid and start being SENSIBLE. WASH YOUR FUCK*NG HANDS! STOP BUYING TOILET PAPER. DO YOU FUC*ING HEAR ME????”

In short order, however, he shifted to figuring out a way to blame liberals for the pandemic’s spread. “Folks, the LEFT has collapsed our institutions that have served us in times of trouble,” he tweeted. “TAKE … TO … THE … STREETS. That is the battlefield the LEFT has defined. I will no longer sit back and watch the destruction of this great republic over the FLU.” (Twitter also deleted that tweet.)

Clarke—who has participated in the anti-Semitic attacks on financier George Soros in the past—also directed his ire at the Jewish man he believes is the “puppet master” behind “the left”: “Not ONE media outlet has asked about George Soros’s involvement in the FLU panic. He is SOMEWHERE involved in this,” he tweeted.

None of this comes as a particular surprise to anyone who has followed Clarke’s career. He first rose to fame in right-wing circles as a “constitutionalist” closely associated with extremists such as Richard Mack and his Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, the antigovernment organization that promotes the posse comitatus-derived belief, among others, that the county sheriff is the supreme law enforcement entity in the United States.

Not only is Clarke a member in good standing with the CSPOA, he was named its “Sheriff of the Year” in 2013 and addressed its annual convention. His speech openly endorsed the organization’s radical interpretation of the Constitution, and he called its members “the true patriots.” Clarke also emphasized his view that “our common enemy” is “the government.”

Clarke’s subsequent career as a frequent guest on Fox News included segments featuring vicious attacks on President Obama, whom he claimed was attempting to foment racial unrest due to his “divisive policies,” as well as accusing Obama of waging a “war on cops.” He was especially vicious in his attacks on black activists and the Black Lives Matter movement, describing them as “scum” and “subhuman” and calling for their eradication.

Eventually, after the DHS job was turned away, Fox News quietly scrubbed him from their contributor rolls. Even Fox has its limits.

4. Representative and Fox News Favorite Devin Nunes (R-CA). Nunes appeared on Fox News to, as has been his habit, again do the worst possible thing. Speaking to Fox host Maria Bartiromo, Nunes told the network's viewers that if you're sick, stay away from people, but "there's a lot of concerns with the economy here, because people are scared to go out. His advice?

“You were just talking about the economy, and there’s a lot of concerns with the economy here, because people are scared to go out. But I will just say, one of the things you can do if you’re healthy, you and your family, it’s a great time to go out and go to a local restaurant, likely you can get in easily. Let’s not hurt the working people in this country that are relying on wages and tips to keep their small business going. Just don’t run to the grocery store and buy $4000 worth of food, you know, go to your local pub

As evidence mounted of the serious of the pandemic, and the public health danger of Nunes’ murderous advice, not only did the dirtbag not walk back his ignorant urging, he doubled down, advising Americans on Fox News that there is no food shortage and recommending that people stop buying in bulk at grocery stores.

Nunes did see fit to “qualify” his previous comments, telling Sean Hannity in another Fox interview that he meant that people should go to drive-throughs and get takeout.

“These media freaks don’t have a clue what’s going on out in the real world. We have a problem out here because we have people standing in line for 45 minutes at Costco.”

Nunes also told Laura Ingraham on Fox News that “there’s a good chance we can get through this in the next couple of weeks and for sure by Easter, because we have a handle on who’s getting sick and how to treat them.”

Later, after critics of Nunes’ ignorant and murderous comments bombarded the network, Fox News host Shannon Bream gave Nunes a chance to answer his critics. He didn’t disappoint:

“That’s total fake news, once again. What I said still remains the case, it is still true. … The No. 1 problem we have right now is we have hundreds and hundreds of people that are going to Costco and grocery stores and other places. That’s exactly what we don’t want to do. … Fake news is making this very political. And it shows what little credibility they have—they have no clue.”

Of course, it’s now abundantly clear that Nunes is not only full of shit, his advice is downright dangerous. If followed it would result in more sickness and more deaths. As a public official, he should be prosecuted—or at least turned out of office.

5. President Donald Trump. Where would a month of IGGY-worthy absurdities about the coronavirus be without an offering from the Trumpster? There are dozens I could choose from, but his goal-post-shift about the projected number of virus deaths is arguably the topper. In just over a month, Donald Trump has gone from predicting that U.S. coronavirus cases would be “down close to zero” very soon to suggesting that a mere 100,000 to 200,000 deaths would represent “a very good job” by him.

Some of Trump’s greatest downplaying hits include claiming of February 2, “we pretty much shut it down coming in from China;” February 19 “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along; A “down close to zero” claim came on February 26, when there were 15 reported cases of COVID-19 in the U.S.; and, on March 10, “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

In a March 29 White House briefing in the Rose Garden, Trump referenced new data from his task force and said that between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths would represent a victory over the coronavirus.

In doing so, Trump seemed to suddenly embrace coronavirus projections that he had previously shrugged off and downplayed. Rather than put an optimistic spin on what lies ahead, he now sought to use the most dire projections to pre-spin his administration’s response as a success.

Now he’s all “Hey, at least it probably won’t be 2.2 million.” That number was a projection, made two weeks ago, of the possible result if the U.S. did nothing to slow the spread of the virus, and Trump really wants us to remember it. He wants us to remember it so much he said the number 16 times in Sunday’s press briefing, so that when the number isn’t that bad—after governors of several states got way out in front of the federal government and Trump was pressured away from his original desire to see restrictions lifted by Easter—he can claim credit.

“So, you’re talking about 2.2 million deaths, 2.2 million people from this,” Trump said. “And so if we could hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000 — it’s a horrible number, maybe even less — but to 100,000. So, we have between 100 and 200,000, and we altogether have done a very good job." Trump added, “But to point to up to 2.2 million deaths and maybe even beyond that, I’m feeling very good about what we did last week.”

Credit. For “only” 100,000 or so deaths! That’s nearly twice as many Americans who died in the Vietnam war. Well over 10 times as many compared to those that died in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it’s Trump’s current benchmark for success. This is the same man who on March 13, said the 2009 swine flu had killed 14,000 people in the United States and called the Obama administration’s response to it as “a disaster.”

Reminds me of General Buck Johnson’s infamous quip about nuclear war in the movie, Dr. Strangelove:

I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 5 to 8 million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.

No matter what the ultimate outcome of the pandemic, Trumps will take credit for accomplishing more than any other President could have. What a man!
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And the March IGGY winner is:

Tough call this month, I'd really like to go with the moronic Senator Ron Johnson, but I decided to select the foul-mouthed, ex-Sheriff Clark. Anyone who gets scrubbed from Fox News has to be a certified ignominious human being.