People Are Even Crazier Now
Gonna point them out, but I'm including another recipe to make up for it.
Here you go. A second newsletter of the week. I plan to do more of them, but I have been so caught off guard by how nuts everyone has become over this virus.
One of the things I have tried to maintain is a sense of fairness and charity here. I assume that people who disagree with positions I hold do so from a sensible perspective. For example, the “Re-Open America” crowd is concerned with the economy grinding to a halt and people being out of work for far longer than we are shut down.
It’s an understandable position, and one of the death tolls people won’t account for is the suicide toll from people who see no way out of their predicament.
What is not an understandable position is “We must re-open the economy no matter the cost,” with the implication that the cost is people’s lives. That, at least, is how this tweet from far-right pundit John Cardillo comes across.
First of all, this “bad flu” rhetoric is part of the problem. This isn’t just a bad flu. It isn’t the flu at all. It is a novel coronavirus that can have, in its mildest symptoms, flu-like effects. However, if this were just a “bad flu,” we would not have seen overwhelmed hospitals, massive infection rates, and a medical community in such a panic that some nurses are having breakdowns under the stress.
Folks like Cardillo love to point out the flu numbers from previous years, the number of car deaths per year, even swimming pool deaths. The problem is that none of these things kill 30,000 people in the span of a month. The flu kills 30,000 in six months. Cars kill this much in twelve months. There is no comparison here, and the COVID-19 deaths are with sheltering in place orders and increased social distancing.
It is utter insanity to downplay this virus and say that it’s worth the risk, that 100,000 lives don’t matter as much as the economy does. If you call yourself pro-life, then you simply can’t believe that sacrificing any life is worthwhile in any way.
The National Media Is Not Handling This Well At All
What’s worse is that people in the national media have decided to treat this as yet another way to show they are resisting Trump’s tyranny. I am increasingly convinced that Trump could open a COVID-19 press conference with “I would like to begin by praising CNN on their trustworthy coverage of this virus,” and the fact-checking team at CNN would work day and night to prove him wrong.
Somehow, with millions out of work and people suffering from this disease, it is the journalists who are covering the President of these United States who are really feeling the struggle here. Just ask CNN’s Brian Stelter.
“Journos are living this.”
You know what? I will grant you that some journalists are living this. I know several journalists facing layoffs and furloughs because ad revenue is down. They are national political journalists like Stelter, who make hundreds of thousands, if not millions, per year playing at being the Guardians Of Truth Telling.
No, it’s the local journalists who are suffering through this. They have to go out and cover their local communities, see the hurt people are feeling on a daily basis, deal with the fallout of communities being shut down. They struggle to find stories to fill their pages and tell their stories, but also struggle in listening to the stories their subjects tell.
Stelter spends all day tweeting about Fox News and what they’re saying at any given moment. What exactly is he suffering through here? Working from home?
Trump treats every press briefing as though it’s Festivus and he is airing his grievances. Maybe that’s what they’re all going through, but let’s be honest, that’s not really anything new. Trump lies. That’s not new. The world of the national press hasn’t changed all that much.
Sorry, Brian. You’re a media reporter with base-level analytical skills and you spend your days defending your network and attack Fox News. You aren’t doing anything special, and you’re not going through anything special. Get over yourself.
Here’s A Recipe To Take The Edge Off
So, today my oldest and I made a chocolate chip banana bread and it was pretty damn good. If you have some overly-ripe bananas you need to get rid of, I recommend making it. This is based on the One-Bowl Chocolate Chip Banana Bread recipe provided by BuzzFeed’s Tasty community, but I made some adjustments.
1 1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 egg, beaten
1/3 cup butter, melter
3 ripe bananas
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1/4 cup milk chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mash the bananas thoroughly with a fork.
Add the butter and mix with the banana.
Add the flour, salt, egg, vanilla, and baking powder, gently mixing it together with a wooden spoon. Scrape the sides to get all your dry ingredients mixed in thoroughly.
Gently mix in the dark chocolate.
Pour mixture into a greased bread baking tray. Top the mixture with the milk chocolate chips.
Bake in the oven for 50-60 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean (except for a little melted chocolate).
Wait for it to cool completely, slice, and serve.
Final Thoughts…
I made my oldest watch Hook with me this week. It is one of my favorite movies ever. It is on Netflix and you should definitely make a family movie night out of it.
Coming up this week on Homestyle, Leigh and I will be speaking with a guest about decorating cookies. You will also hear someone offer a surprising opinion about store-bought cookies.
The small business money that was set aside for struggling businesses? It ran out as companies like Ruth’s Chris took millions and restructured themselves in order to get around rules meant to keep them from getting it. You should never do business with these people again. Many small business owners were first in line to apply and never heard a word. Meanwhile, these big companies got first dibs. It’s unfathomable and I hope to God there’s a group set to investigate this.