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Nevilledog

(51,203 posts) Mon Feb 7, 2022, 06:07 PM Feb 2022

Memo To Dems: Stop Taking These Maskless Pictures

Link to tweet

Tweet text:

Tim Miller
@Timodc
I drafted up a quick memo on masking protocols for Democratic politicians on behalf of all the normal humans who are not obsessed with waging forever mask wars.

Follow the Winston Wolf rule: Dont (make people) do shit unless you do it first.

thebulwark.com
Memo To Dems: Stop Taking These Maskless Pictures
It’s Simple. Don’t Make Others Do Shit You Don’t Do.
3:04 PM · Feb 7, 2022

https://www.thebulwark.com/memo-to-dems-stop-taking-these-maskless-pictures/

Memo

Subject: Mask Protocols
To: Democratic Politicians and Staff
From: Humans Who Are Not Obsessed With the Mask Wars

Over the past two weeks, several Democratic politicians have found themselves in the Twitter barrel as a result of photographs featuring their maskless (gasp!) faces in situations where either a) officials from their party had instituted a mandate on masks or b) the plebeians who surrounded them were unable to show their pearly whites due to the stringent social covenant in their environs.

This is horrible optics—and thus bad politics! Because whether we like it or not optics is politics. Since some of you don’t seem to understand why these pictures in particular are so bad, let me lay it out for you:

1) It gives off an air of elitism—as if the rules apply only to regular Joes, not to the glorious statesmen and women who stoop to mingle with them.

2) It undermines the fundamental message politicians should be promoting in regard to masking: that it is part of a communal sacrifice to protect the vulnerable and the front-line workers who are bearing the brunt of the pandemic.

3) It plays right into the hands of the opposition party, which has centered its entire brand on performative populism in an attempt to wrestle away cross-pressured voters who may have liberal economic views but bristle at progressive social pieties.

*snip*