Good morning, C&C! It’s Wednesday, and there’s a lot of news popping today. Your roundup: the corporate media shifts into action to protect Narrative 2.0 with a raft of stories about how masks are harmful and don’t work; Florida strikes back after woke Disney threatened the state’s kids, and even dumber, threatened the state’s legislators; Disney flails at a too little, too late response; the Governor takes on Twitter.

🗞COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY 🗞

🔥 Yesterday I reported that a Florida judge finally ended the CDC’s abominable transportation mask mandate on Monday, with the news met by cheering throngs of in-flight passengers and crew who couldn’t even wait till they landed to strip off the hated face rags.

Then things got muddled. Joe Biden seemed to announce the White House’s official policy of NOT appealing the decision when he was reported to have said it’s an individual choice now. The Daily Mail UK said that when asked about whether passengers should still follow the CDC mandate, Biden said, “That’s up to them.”

But apparently Biden’s not in charge. As pushback from radical elements in the democrat party ratcheted up, the messaging pivoted and became more … nuanced. Yesterday, Biden’s HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said the Biden administration will “likely” appeal the federal ruling striking down Biden’s mask mandate. Then Jen Psaki told reporters it was up to the Department of Justice to decide whether to appeal the ruling.

So, who’s in charge?

When reporters asked the DOJ, it said it planned to appeal, but only depending on whether the CDC concludes the mask requirement remains necessary. Um. Then CDC said it was reviewing its secret data archives or something, and will get back to us.

Who does the CDC report to again? It’s so confusing. Here’s how the buck was passed yesterday: Biden -> Becerra -> Psaki -> DOJ -> CDC -> Biden?

Meanwhile the TSA stopped enforcing the mask mandate nationally. Several states and large cities also announced ending local transportation mandates. Disney ended its mask policy (we’ll get into that below). Seems to be a trend.

At this point, yet another pivot would be politically disastrous for the Biden Administration. People want the masks to be OVER, regardless of what mentally-challenged experts on Twitter say. Stay tuned.

🔥 Florida’s special legislative session began yesterday. The most significant item up for debate is whether to end Walt Disney World’s special exemptions from sales taxes and local government. Ruh-roh, Mickey!

I want you to really think about what a tectonic shift this is, and how quickly things spiraled out of control for the corporate giant. And I want you to think about how quickly a woke board of directors can destroy a legacy American corporation by hiring “diverse” super-woke termites to run the company instead of proven corporate executive talent. Who needs expertise when you can achieve diversity?

But maybe — maybe — those particular diverse voices have been historically un-heard for a reason. Just saying.

Remember, Disney has been THE most politically powerful entity in Florida, for decades, or even longer. So what’s happening now is truly remarkable. Here’s the timeline. First, Florida passed a law protecting very young kids from grooming. Then about three hyper-woke Disney employees with face tattoos complained, and Disney’s woke managers sprang into action.

Disney announced it was cutting off all political donations in Florida, so there. Well, money is how you grease the wheels of government, and plenty of lawmakers that had been expecting their annual contributions from Disney were probably not too happy about that. But then Disney nailed itself into its coffin.

The media giant announced that, instead of supporting legislators, it was going to financially support a slew of kooky leftwing activist groups that oppose Florida’s new law, and was going to help work to get the law reversed. YOU might not have gotten the message, but our lawmakers got it, loud and clear. Disney just threatened them. In other words, Disney said it would indirectly fund most lawmakers’ political opponents in Florida. In yet other words, Disney said it would help REPLACE the lawmakers.

I’ve never heard it said this way before, but Disney seems to have touched some kind of “third rail” with its political threats. You simply don’t do that, not if you’re trying to do business in a state. But they did it. Every conservative lawmaker in Florida now has notice that Disney plans to shift its billions to help get them UNELECTED.

Dumb, dumb, dumb. Dumb Disney!

Disney not only threatened our KIDS — our most precious gifts — by promising to support groomers and pedophiles over parents, but for some deranged reason it also simultaneously threatened legislators. Not just a couple. All of them. Including lots of legislators who are ALSO parents.

Right now, at least, Disney has made itself politically toxic. If the legislators don’t sent the corporate giant a strong message now, they’ll be digging their own graves and encouraging more political brinksmanship from other big corporations in the upcoming cycle. A strong message seems inevitable now.

And anyway, what’s Disney going to do if their special tax breaks and political district are ended? Close the park? Nope, they’ll just have to take it, and start over. I could argue persuasively that none of this would have happened absent the pandemic.

If Disney wants my advice, here’s what they should do. The board should immediately purge the entire C-suite of managers. The new managers should be impeccably non-woke, and the company should announce a review of all pending projects to ensure they meet family-friendly standards. It should also issue a public apology to Florida.

Let’s see if they take the advice!

🔥 Disney is reeling, now trying to stealthily backpedal from last week’s disastrous pro-grooming messages, bizarre internal corporate videos showing execs promising to shove our kids’ faces in unwanted LGBTQ++ content, and its poorly-considered threats to Florida lawmakers. First, it’s largely shut up about “don’t say gay.” But yesterday, the media giant made a major policy announcement, desperately trying to quench the flames of public outrage. Check out yesterday’s story in the AP, coincidentally published for wide distribution just the same day that Florida’s special session to debate Disney’s fate was firing up. The headline: “Disney World: Face Masks Optional for All Areas of Resort.”

Hahahahahaha! Too late, Mickey!

The AP ties the Mouse’s sudden reversal to the judge’s convenient decision Monday vacating the CDC’s transportation mandate. But Disney’s previous policy didn’t track the travel mandates at all. It was specially obnoxious, requiring only UNVACCINATED guests to wear face masks, but allowing jabbed hostages, I mean guests, to take them off in some spots in the park. It seems to me this announcement shows Disney was well aware that its policy was EXTREMELY irritating to many park-goers, or else the media giant wouldn’t be trying to use it as some kind of peace offering now.

In other words, Disney’s saying, “look! We’re sorry! We’ll even drop our stupid mask mandate. We’ll behave, we promise!” Wouldn’t you have just LOVED to have been in the conference room in California where the tattooed pierced lunatics running the company came up with this idea?

CEO: “What are we going to do, Kwanje-Dorothy? Those transphobic bigots in Florida might cancel our giant tax break!”

Co-CEO: “I don’t know, Kujawamana-Felicia, when they/them said just now that they/them didn’t know what to do, I agreed with xur, I, I mean xi, sorry, I can’t remember; anyway I don’t know either.”

E-VP: “Wait! Why don’t we, I mean wur, sorry, I mean xour, or xe, hang on let me look at the chart again, yes, XE should stop making people wear masks in the park in Florida. We, er xe, all know transphobes hate masks. That could work.”

CEO: “Okay, that might work. Call our AP liaison and have xim, um sorry they/them, or it, oh never mind, we don’t have time for that now, just have ‘him’ run a story on it. Let’s get it out in time to convince the special session.”

Oh man, THIS is the kind of great family-friendly entertainment we expect from Disney, and boy are they delivering.

🔥 The San Fransisco Chronicle ran another crypto-hit-piece on masks in the form of an “expert” opinion piece headlined, “Four COVID Experts Say It’s Time to Accept Reality: ‘Vaccines Work, Masks Do Not’.”

The four self-designated covid experts who wrote the piece aren’t Team Reality players. Dr. Monica Gandhi, for example, has been a cheerful social media champion of masking and jabbing from day one. But look what the four experts stated near the top of their piece, stated as a FACT:

Before other cities like San Francisco follow [Philadephia and reimpose school masks], it’s time to reassess our prevention strategies in and outside of schools and accept reality: vaccines work, masks do not.

Masks don’t work! They said it OUT LOUD!

Look, I’m just as happy as anyone that the maskal tides are finally turning out to sea, but it is hard not to feel a tiny bit bitter about corporate media’s loving new embrace of Narrative 2.0. What I mean is, if you’d written the statement above on Facebook six months ago, and said we have to “accept reality … masks do not” work, your account would have been locked down faster than Joe Biden can wander away during a press briefing if no one’s watching him.

Last year, the corporate media ran endless opinion pieces by experts telling us to mask up, dammit, don’t be anti-science. But now it’s the very same experts telling us that masks DON’T work. Thanks experts.

So you can now add Dan Halperin, Jeanne Noble, Norman Hearst and Monica Gandhi to Leanna Wen as prominent social media covid experts who are publicly advocating AGAINST masking. And Jiminy Cricket, this letter was perfect timing for a Biden Administration wrestling with the fractious politics of ending airplane masking.

The article first rounds up a bunch of studies showing no or limited effect from masks, critiques studies purporting to show mask benefits, and then notes darkly that “there is emerging evidence that masking can be harmful.” Imagine saying THAT twelve months ago. Actually, you don’t need to imagine it, since I and others DID say that, and were accused of literally kicking Grandma into the wood chipper while she’s not looking, just by SAYING IT.

And in case you are thinking, but Jeff, this article was probably written last week, long before the airplane mask falderol started, consider this sentence from later in the piece: “Continuing to require masks in schools (or airplanes for that matter) simply makes no sense.”

OR AIRPLANES.

Is that enough evidence for you that this piece was whipped up to support ending masking on planes, as I argue? The only question is whether it was organic, whether these FOUR reliable “follow the CDC” experts came up with this on their own, or whether someone asked them to do it. I have no evidence besides the propitious timing and the sneaky parenthetical reference to airplane masking. But what do YOU think?

Finally, wrapping up, the four experts fired the rhetorical Cruise missile, FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: “We should instead follow the science (and much of the world) and allow children to enjoy their childhood while learning and playing with their faces uncovered.” It’s Science! Shut up!

See how easy it is? Mask advocates are now the science deniers. Hey, other foot: meet the shoe.

🔥 The New York Times also ran a stealth hit job on masks yesterday, headlined “For Some Teens, as Masks Come Off, Anxiety Sets In.” The sub headline explains, “Whether it’s virus worries, social pressure, shyness or acne, some kids are reluctant to ditch the mask.” The story focuses on teens who have obvious anxiety disorders caused by two years of face masking.

For example, the article quotes Belle, 16, who said “only seeing half of someone’s face for two years straight and then completely opening up to them, like, ‘Oh, here’s my face’ — you know, it’s a lot.” Belle has decided to keep wearing the mask even though her school has lifted the mandate. Charlie, 15, has also decided to hang onto his mask, explaining “as of now, I feel most comfortable when I have it on.”

The Times recites the well-known figures about teen suicides, rates of suicidal thinking (up 25%) and levels of depression and anxiety (doubled). It notes the new term “mask fishing” traveling around younger social media, a term which connotes tricking people into thinking you’re more attractive than you really are by hiding your face flaws under the mask. The Times explained these kinds of trends can multiply the pain and judgment teens already feel when perceived as unattractive by their peers.

The kids think masks are normal, since they’ve been masking for a substantial fraction of their conscious existence. Charlie, the 15-year-old, even described masking as a SOCIAL NORM, explaining “when you have to break a social norm, it’s kind of like opening a door that you haven’t been through before, and it’s scary.”

The article ends on an upbeat note. An update describes how Charlie tried taking his mask off during the last three periods of school and enjoyed it. He’s keeping the mask in his pocket though, just in case.

We’ve been discussing mask-induced psychosis in kids here on C&C since the beginning. We saw it as an argument for ending child masking as soon as possible, to contain the damage created by power-mad, brain-damaged public health experts. And that’s how the Times is using it now too. They didn’t EXPLICITLY say we need to immediately stop masking kids. They just made it clear you’re a horrible person if you don’t agree with that.

🔥 Yesterday, Governor DeSantis announced the State of Florida — a twitter shareholder — was looking at ways to hold Twitter’s board of directors accountable for breaching their fiduciary duties in rejecting Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company. Ruh-roh.

Have a wonderful Wednesday! Who knows; what’ll happen next? We’ll find out in tomorrow’s update.

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