DeSantis, High School students, and masks
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ASPartOfMe
Veteran
Joined: 25 Aug 2013
Age: 66
Gender: Male
Posts: 34,404
Location: Long Island, New York
06 Mar 2022, 11:46 am
Stop bullying kids': Gov. Ron DeSantis widely criticized over mask confrontation with students
Quote:
A short video clip of the governor’s interaction with the students Wednesday went viral, generating millions of views.
DeSantis was widely criticized over the exchange, with many people focusing less on his mask position and more on his willingness to impose his views on children in a way they found bullying.
DeSantis walked up to the Middleton High School students during an event at the University of South Florida and spoke to them in an aggressive manner, asking them to remove their masks and punctuating his remarks by pointing at them.
"You do not have to wear those masks,” DeSantis said in the video captured by WFLA News Channel 8, Tampa’s NBC station. “Please take them off. Honestly, it's not doing anything. We've gotta stop with this COVID theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous."
DeSantis then turned away from the students, sighed, shook his head and launched into a press conference about cybersecurity.
Critics said the brief episode was highly revealing.
Parents of some of the students the governor told to unmask were upset. Parent Kevin Brown told WFLA that DeSantis should "stop bullying kids."
University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett noted that DeSantis already had a reputation for being "standoffish" and lacking "public empathy" and said this episode could reinforce that view of him.
“It does reveal something that a lot of people have noticed, and that’s in some ways he doesn’t have great people skills," Jewett said.
WFLA political anchor and reporter Evan Donovan promoted an 18-second clip of the incident in a tweet that was shared more than 26,000 times. The video embedded in Donovan’s tweet had more than 14 million views as of Thursday afternoon. Everyone from celebrities to members of Congress weighed in on the incident.
George Takei, a liberal activist and actor of Star Trek fame, sarcastically tweeted “he seems nice” to his 3.3 million followers and included a link to a story about the DeSantis mask incident.
Major media outlets across the country covered the episode.
Polling indicates DeSantis is among the most popular GOP elected officials in the nation. A straw poll taken at the Conservative Political Action Conference – the Super Bowl of conservative politics – last weekend found that DeSantis is by far the favorite to win the GOP nomination for president if former President Donald Trump doesn’t run again.
Yet fighting mask mandates and lecturing children for voluntarily wearing masks are two different things, and the governor may have finally found a target in his war that many people believe should be off limits.
Except that some leading conservatives cheered the governor. One reason the incident was so widely disseminated is because right wing media outlets also shared it, but approvingly.
"This is phenomenal," said conservative political commentator Clay Travis, host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, in a tweet to his 875,000 followers that shared the video clip of DeSantis and the students.
DeSantis shared the clip himself. It's featured as part of an ad his campaign put out Thursday.
The governor's campaign also sent a fundraising email highlighting the mask incident with the students.
"The legacy media and the left want young people to wear cloth masks in perpetuity — regardless of the harm," the email reads.
Conservative commentators Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro -- who have more than 9 million Twitter followers between them -- both tweeted about the governor's mask exchange with the students. Hannity shared an article posted on his website, which states that DeSantis "took a moment to teach some students about COVID theater."
DeSantis was widely criticized over the exchange, with many people focusing less on his mask position and more on his willingness to impose his views on children in a way they found bullying.
DeSantis walked up to the Middleton High School students during an event at the University of South Florida and spoke to them in an aggressive manner, asking them to remove their masks and punctuating his remarks by pointing at them.
"You do not have to wear those masks,” DeSantis said in the video captured by WFLA News Channel 8, Tampa’s NBC station. “Please take them off. Honestly, it's not doing anything. We've gotta stop with this COVID theater. So if you wanna wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous."
DeSantis then turned away from the students, sighed, shook his head and launched into a press conference about cybersecurity.
Critics said the brief episode was highly revealing.
Parents of some of the students the governor told to unmask were upset. Parent Kevin Brown told WFLA that DeSantis should "stop bullying kids."
University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett noted that DeSantis already had a reputation for being "standoffish" and lacking "public empathy" and said this episode could reinforce that view of him.
“It does reveal something that a lot of people have noticed, and that’s in some ways he doesn’t have great people skills," Jewett said.
WFLA political anchor and reporter Evan Donovan promoted an 18-second clip of the incident in a tweet that was shared more than 26,000 times. The video embedded in Donovan’s tweet had more than 14 million views as of Thursday afternoon. Everyone from celebrities to members of Congress weighed in on the incident.
George Takei, a liberal activist and actor of Star Trek fame, sarcastically tweeted “he seems nice” to his 3.3 million followers and included a link to a story about the DeSantis mask incident.
Major media outlets across the country covered the episode.
Polling indicates DeSantis is among the most popular GOP elected officials in the nation. A straw poll taken at the Conservative Political Action Conference – the Super Bowl of conservative politics – last weekend found that DeSantis is by far the favorite to win the GOP nomination for president if former President Donald Trump doesn’t run again.
Yet fighting mask mandates and lecturing children for voluntarily wearing masks are two different things, and the governor may have finally found a target in his war that many people believe should be off limits.
Except that some leading conservatives cheered the governor. One reason the incident was so widely disseminated is because right wing media outlets also shared it, but approvingly.
"This is phenomenal," said conservative political commentator Clay Travis, host of The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show, in a tweet to his 875,000 followers that shared the video clip of DeSantis and the students.
DeSantis shared the clip himself. It's featured as part of an ad his campaign put out Thursday.
The governor's campaign also sent a fundraising email highlighting the mask incident with the students.
"The legacy media and the left want young people to wear cloth masks in perpetuity — regardless of the harm," the email reads.
Conservative commentators Sean Hannity and Ben Shapiro -- who have more than 9 million Twitter followers between them -- both tweeted about the governor's mask exchange with the students. Hannity shared an article posted on his website, which states that DeSantis "took a moment to teach some students about COVID theater."
I have gone maskless outdoors during my walks during the whole pandemic that includes March and April of 2020, when we were all no immunity and the only treatment was a ventilator, and hospitals were treating people in outdoor tents. Nowadays I wear a KN95 indoors unless I know everyone is at least fully vaccinated. During the Omicron surge I did wear the mask indoors with fully vaccinated people. I will continue to mask indoors unless I know everyone is fully vaxxed until such time as we know more about Long Covid in fully vaxxed people.
All sides here are engaged in hyperbole or gaslighting. These were high school students not “children”. What did not occur was a confrontation, it was an adult giving a condescending lecture to high school students. Yes coming from a governor it was bullying. Conservatives are noting that he said “If you want to wear it fine” to claim he was acknowledging their freedom of choice. That is gaslighting, everything else he said communicated said it was everything but fine.
Again what is demonstrated here is hypocrisy. The lifting of mask mandates has been justified by freedom of choice, when too often that is not what is really wanted. What too often is wanted is another excuse to own the libs. Calling people who want to mask, “bitter clingers”, “demented” etc is a regular occurrence in the conservative spaces I look at including the “respectable” ones. A National Review article compared people who still want to mask to the last WWII soldier to surrender.
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Kraichgauer
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Gender: Male
Posts: 47,781
Location: Spokane area, Washington state.
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