Um....This is the liberal version of the conservative performative masking theater, but this time *in favor* of masks instead of against. https://t.co/VjIsdVbqvj
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) May 3, 2021
If you think "cosmopolitanism" is a thing, I guess so. Except there's precious little "cosmopolitan" about my neighborhood (aside from being very ethnically diverse in the most ethnically diverse city in the country; but I don't know if that relates to "cosmopolitanism" or not), and yet I don't see anyone out without a mask. We're neither New York nor Daytona Beach. We just don't want to make other people sick, even if we have gotten the vaccine (and not nearly all of us have).To be clear, the CDC update on outdoor masking last week was a guidance, not an edict. To the extent that Brookline is actually overruling another authority, it's the state of Massachusetts, which eased its outdoor masking rules following the CDC shift.
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) May 3, 2021
Brookline also strikes me as being a bit like Austin, which is even less cosmopolitan than New York. Austin is defying the Governor and requiring masks where he says they can’t. Houston isn’t requiring them, but neither is anybody ripping it off our faces. So is Austin being “performative”? Or is it everybody around me?
Or maybe we can just stop using the term “performative” as an adverb or an adjective. It’s as misplaced and misused as “existential” to intensify the word “crisis.” It just sounds clever. In both cases, you’re using it wrong.
Both terms are already cliches; they’ve lost almost any meaning except as signifiers of pop culture cleverness. Like “meme;” all three words belong in the usage graveyard until we’ve forgotten them and they can return to their rightful place in our vocabularies.
“These things that pass for knowledge I don’t understand.”
"the usage graveyard" Oh, I love that. I agree.
ReplyDeleteI've seen Brookline, it's like a very well off ghetto for white collar professionals and university profs. A fluke, in other words. But I absolutely love the idea that masking in public will become more common because I'd love to see us handle things like the annual flu season more rationally than letting all hell break loose. My sister-in-law wears hers when she's in the garden because she's found it cuts down on her pollen allergy. I haven't gone that far yet but if I could buy a box of high quality ones when the front line medical people and first responders don't need them, I might try it. If nothing else it will force me to shave more regularly than I have been during total isolation.
I can recall, a few years back (long before Covid) seeing people, usually Asians, wearing masks in public. Sometimes because they clearly had a respiratory illness (flu, cold, whatever?), sometimes it seemed almost “cultural.”
ReplyDeleteI’m with you. I may keep wearing mine, especially if it controls my allergies (pollen, etc.).