MAY 2021 IGNOMINIOUS ABSURDITY OF THE MONTH: THE IGGY

1. Arizona House Rep. Joseph Chaplik. From the Church of the Perpetual Face Palm (aka the modern-day Republican Party) comes another wee dollop of “what the fuck?” So how do you even begin to respond to this?

The Republican-controlled Arizona House voted along party lines last week to allow state businesses to ignore any and all city, town, or county measures requiring their customers to wear masks. In other words, the state that flipped blue last year for the first time since 1996 has decided to flip the fuck out. Why? Well, as the sponsor of this anti-mask bill, Rep. Joseph Chaplik, would have you believe, it’s because we didn’t all die of AIDS back in the ‘80s.

In the House debate, Rep. Randall Friese, a Tucson Democrat who is a physician, said masks are part of the “very basic, important tools,” along with hand-washing and social distancing, to curb the spread.

Chaplik, however, argued that the mandates are an overreaction and that society has managed to survive other viral outbreaks without masks.

For example, he cited HIV “that was going to wipe our global destruction of human bodies with AIDS.”

“We heard about that in the ’80s,” Chaplik said. “Yet no masks were required.”

Uh … who wants to tell him?

People are fond of saying Republicans these days are virulently anti-science. But that suggests they actually know what science is. This feels more like a bunch of little kids who’ve never tried a vegetable saying they hate broccoli. I don’t know that they’re anti-science so much as they’re anti-scientist—because scientists keep telling them they can’t just eat Pixie Stix all day and expect to stay healthy.

They’ll do what they want, dammit, because FREEDOM!

Another GOP representative, Bret Roberts, questioned the overall effectiveness of masks, asking, “If they work, how are people still catching COVID?”

Uh, okay, now who wants to tell him?

Thank God we now have a president who takes COVID seriously. Unfortunately, we can’t just throw fools like this in the gulag because, you know, freedom.

But that doesn’t mean we have to keep reelecting them.