It’s *checks notes* eleventween days into lockdown, and we’re all starting to get, as Stephen Colbert puts it, “a little kooky in the ol’ squirrel cage.” For me, that’s manifesting as a desire to read a lot of murder mysteries. For Colbert, it’s work-drinking and interrogating his teenage son about whether Toni Morrison’s Beloved is funny. For a lot of folks in certain states, it’s glomming onto illogical, heavily astroturfed protests against social distancing measures.
Colbert pointed out one protester in Washington state carrying a sign reading “Give me liberty or give me COVID-19.”
“Buddy, you’re in a large crowd, you’re not wearing a mask, you’re not six feet away from people — you might not need to choose.”
“I get that this is the land of liberty,” Colbert went on, “but these protesters aren’t just putting themselves at risk. The whole reason we are socially distancing in the first place is to prevent the spread of the virus, especially to our older relatives. I mean, there’s a reason the Boston Tea Partiers didn’t throw Nanna in the harbor.”
Colbert also called out Trump’s endorsement of both social distancing measures and the protests, with his now-infamous “LIBERATE” tweets.
“To be clear, Trump is now encouraging people to protest his own recommendations — that’s how much he needs to hear a chanting mob. He’s like Angry Tinkerbell. ‘Quick, kids! Scream LOCK HER UP or I’ll die.’”
Topics Activism Donald Trump Politics COVID-19
