Gail Collins and
Ms. Collins and Mr. Stephens are Opinion columnists. They converse every week.
“Bret Stephens: Gail, the biggest political news from last week was the resounding defeat of the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, in the primary. Your thoughts on her political downfall?
Gail Collins: Well, running Chicago is a very tough job in the best of times, and Mayor Lightfoot was stuck doing it in the pandemic era.
Bret: Hmmm …
Gail: OK, that was my best shot at defending her. She was a huge disappointment — in a place like Chicago, you expect the mayor to get into a lot of fights, but she seemed to pick a new one every hour.
If you’ve got a city beset by crime and economic problems, any incumbent mayor would need a great plan and a whole lot of emotional connection to the average voter to deserve another term. None of that there.”
Another good column Bret and Gail. I love the ending, about the Hannah Dreier piece of child immigrants misused in dangerous jobs. Bret, you missed an important aspect of the mask debate and science. Dr. Fauci and many others pointed out, as did one great op-ed in the Times, that masks reduce the chances you will will get covid or other diseases. Since to get covid you need a serious exposure for 15 or 30 minutes, wearing a mask when you move about the restaurant, reduces the time and severity of any threat of exposures. It’s like that great movie, Everything, Everywhere, All at once. Partial mask wearing is better than no mask wearing, to reduce the duration and magnitude of exposures. We are terrible at this thoughtful behaviour of mask wearing, but we can learn it. I was struck by a visit to Hong Kong in 1985 or so, where I saw about 10% of the people in the airport were voluntarily wearing masks. Most of them were probably trying thoughtfully to protect others.
David blogs at InconvenientNews.net