Is Gov. Charlie Baker a one-man “superspreader?”
If you’ve had the misfortune of listening to some of his more recent press conferences, you’ve learned — over and over again — that a disproportionately large number of people the governor knows have been struck down with the virus.
In his droning recitations, his “friends” call him from the ICU, or at least their sick bed, to tell him how right he was about the panic. And how wrong his friends had been, to discount the peril they faced.
Perhaps the wise governor’s friends were lulled into complacency by the state’s actual data — one death among those under the age of 30 in Massachusetts in the last two weeks, same as the previous two weeks. The toll among those under 40 “surged” from 5 to 6 …
Those are the real numbers, but the governor claims his unnamed “friends,” who are from parts unknown, continue to drop like flies, one per press conference.
I’ve compiled a video of the governor’s anecdotes about the tragic toll among his “friends.” It’s at my website, howiecarrshow.com, and it’s called “The Friends of Charlie Baker.” It runs 2:53, and that doesn’t even include the latest apparition from Friday, “someone I know,” an even vaguer description than “friend.”
You guessed it — “someone” called Charlie from the hospital.
In every single case, his “friends” scoffed at his endless fear mongering. Then, they went somewhere, an “informal gathering,” neglecting to wear a mask or social distance or whatever his latest preposterous order entails.
Charlie’s voice invariably drops as he explains what happened next to his friends. Can you guess?
They were struck down — every last one of them!
I thought Tall Deval had learned his lesson from the tall tale he spun in 2014 about the “fisherman” in New Bedford. You remember him, “a mountain of a man,” Charlie recalled, smelling of “sweat and salt water.”
Six years later there’s still a BOLO out on that fictitious fisherman — not to mention his two sons.
With all these uncorroborated stories about his anonymous “friends,” Charlie’s pressers are starting to resemble an “award-winning” New York Times podcast, or maybe a Boston Globe metro column.
But apparently, Charlie has other “friends” in whom he has confided that this is all, well, “pandemic theater.” Which is how Holman Jenkins, a slobbering columnist for the Wall Street Journal described Charlie’s panic-stricken governorship this week:
“Twice I’ve commended him for admitting, as early as April, that his state’s contact-tracing effort was mainly a show, so voters would see that Massachusetts wasn’t sitting on his hands.”
Correction: Charlie has not been sitting on his hands.
Do you realize Maskachusetts is number one in the nation in nursing home deaths per capita, number three in overall death rate among the 50 states, and for months also had the highest unemployment rate in the U.S.?
That’s all on Charlie, just like the 76 dead at the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home.
Back to the Wall Street Journal: “In November, his outdoor mask-wearing mandate was panned as unscientific and unenforceable. He acknowledged as much, saying it was a signal, a new way to get the public’s attention.”
When did Charlie Parker (as Joe Biden calls him) say this exactly? When did he publicly cop to the fact that this was just more of his endless pseudo-science, with no basis in reality?
Jenkins continued, “Pandemic theater is too pejorative a term …”
No, it’s not.
In addition to his fables about his friends, at his pressers the governor just runs off at the mouth, spouting meaningless statistics about “testing” and “cases.”
Amidst all the hectoring and threats, Parker’s vocabulary seems to have shrunk to about 200 words, and his two favorites are “folks” and “communities.”
This is verbatim from earlier this week:
“What we’ve chosen to do throughout that is to talk to our colleagues in the health care community, our colleagues in the health care community generally, colleagues in the public health community …”
Maybe he should talk to some colleagues (or folks) in the restaurant community. Or the small business community. Or the skating rink community. …
Baker’s poll numbers are finally beginning to droop, which may be why he has begun insisting, shrilly, “This is for real!” Often, when someone tries to convince you that something for real, you can assume otherwise.
Lately, too, he’s been emitting the same vibe LBJ was giving off in 1968 when he was ranting about Vietnam. We’re turning the corner, peace with honor, all it will take is 50,000 more troops.
“We are in some respects on the last lap … a few more months of masks and distance and COVID precautions and not letting our guard down. … The path back to something that looks a little more like normal is just around the corner. … This is not forever. This is once. One time, one month, one year. …”
In 1973, Merle Haggard wrote a great country song during a time of national troubles: “If We Can Make It Through December.”
If only it were that simple now. The question now is, If we can make it through Charlie Parker …
A friend told me to say that.