Some people in America are probably more hazardous to the public’s health than your average mask-less Republican. Serial killers and terrorists, for instance. But few people combine recklessness, selfishness, and ignorance more effectively than your average mask-less Republican. And Exhibit A is coronavirus poster child Louie Gohmert.
Let me rephrase that: In fighting a killer disease, we are only as strong as our weakest link, and the weakest link is someone like Louie Gohmert.
The Texas congressman tested positive for stupidity a long time ago, having declared (to cite only a few examples) that hammers are as lethal as assault weapons, that gay marriage would inspire people to make love to animals, that President Obama was sending troops overseas to infect them with the Ebola virus and bring it home, and that the Germans had perfected a powdered mist that could kill the coronavirus for 14 days. (He made that up.)
For months, Gohmert had been wandering around the U.S. Capitol without a mask, and refusing to social distance. At a House hearing in May, he jabbered: “Nobody in here has the coronavirus unless it’s somebody in the media. So the only reason we would wear masks is if we were trying to protect ourselves from you, in the media. And we’re not scared of you.”
Loony Louie got it backwards – we wear masks as a precaution, to protect others from us – and he recently said that he’d only start wearing one if he tested positive. (“If I get it, you’ll never see me without a mask.”) Which also gets it backwards, because the whole idea is to wear one before you infect others.
And he may well have infected others, because, as you probably know, Gohmert tested positive on Tuesday. He was tested by the White House only because he was scheduled to fly with Donald Trump to hot-spot Texas. In other words, if he hadn’t been tested for that special reason, he would still be wandering around the Capitol as a potential super-spreader.
Even House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy was so rattled yesterday that he mistakenly referred to Gohmert as “Congressman Covid.”
Can there possibly be a better metaphor for our collective misfortune? Tens of millions of selfish, stupid Americans, who somehow equate irresponsibility with “freedom,” are happy to take their cues from dolts like Gohmert and Trump – in a new national poll, only 58 percent of Republicans believe in masks – so it’s no wonder the virus continues to spread.
There’s spreading anxiety on Capitol Hill, because lawmakers and staffers are not routinely tested, and because some lawmakers we could mention (OK, Gohmert) are so deep in denial that they won’t let their aides work from home. Gohmert’s people didn’t even know he’d tested positive until Politico broke the story. Then he decided to show up and tell them all in person.
Indeed, one of his staffers told Politico yesterday that the boss, as a matter of policy, “requires full staff to be in the office, including three interns, so that ‘we could be an example to America about how to open up safely'” – and that, in the office, people are often “berated for wearing masks.” And Gohmert isn’t contrite about his diagnosis. He has worn a mask during some House hearings – so now he says he got the virus because of the mask.
Maybe it’s not fair to pick on Gohmert, given all the company he keeps. Trump this week has been praising some quack who’s touting hydroxychloroquine (I thought we’d put that bogus cure to rest) – the same quack who says that some women’s gynecological problems are caused by having dream sex with demons. And now we have Republican Tommy Tuberville, the ex-football coach who’s running for the Senate in Alabama, who’s defying a required quarantine in order to raise money in rooms where nobody is wearing masks. Care to hear his rationale?
“I think our government’s gone overboard on this entire pandemic because we don’t know the facts. Every time you turn around you hear different doctors say different things. I just want them to let us determine our own fate.”
But what gives Tommy and Louie the right to determine ours?
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And speaking of foolish Republicans…
Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, June 20, at Trump’s Tulsa rally, refusing to wear a mask: “Having a fantastic time!”
Herman Cain, July 1, commenting about mask mandates: “PEOPLE ARE FED UP!”
Herman Cain, July 1: Hospitalized with the coronavirus.
Herman Cain, July 30: Dead.