This was going to begin as an argument about how fair minded I try to be while talking to people on the Right on Facebook to keep lines of communication open between our increasingly fracturing society. I believe that’s true but I’m also quite willing to be a straight shooter to. But before I could write that post I should do a little Snopes like research from my secure location in Corona Virus Free 2101 East 4th Street. That research has led me to pivot back to pan right-wing fear mongering……in this case fear mongering about liberal fear mongering.
CE sent me a video. I haven’t figured out how to copy it and post it here but this is a still picture I took of it as it played. I will describe it in a moment but note – There is no one standing in line in this still of the video I will be describing shortly.
This is the third communication CE has sent me in recent days since he reestablished contact with me. To the best of my memory we last chilled together at a Minnesota Republican State convention in 1978. He’s a Duluth resident, however, and he is perfectly aware of my (Republican-like) decade long criticism of the no-public-vote, Red Plan and its aftermath of crowded classrooms. In fact, CE has a grandson in the Duluth Schools, or rather did, until the schools closed.
First CE sent me the Right wing Fright video created by proto-fascists in Germany. I published the German rather than the English version on my blog. Then he sent me a pretty video of a western band singing the blues about no one caring for our wonderful America anymore. Today he sent me the video I am unable to post today through Facebook messenger. The first time I played this video the audio hadn’t arrived. All I saw was a quiet building with hardly any traffic or people around it. I thought it was just another of the startlingly vacant city streets that everyone is now astonished to see. I assumed it was taken somewhere in the Twin Cities. So, I sent CE a message with the first thing that occurred to me as I looked at the near empty street. I knocked off some lyrics from the old Vietnam Era anti-war song “>”Where have all the flowers Gone.” If you are too young to remember it it has four stanzas in order: Where have all the flowers gone (gone to young girls) Where have all the young girls gone (Gone to young men) Where have all the young men gone (Gone to soldiers) Where have all the soldiers gone (gone to flowers every one) When will they ever learn? (If you were a kid in the 1960’s you remember buying red plastic poppies for your lapel every Veteran’s Day in honor of the war dead.)
I simply wrote CE back this message: Where have all the people gone, long time passing, Where have all the people gone, long time ago? He sent me back a thumbs-up symbol.
When I looked at the video a little later the audio had arrived. It was from a Todd Starnes a self described conservative radio station talk show host. In short he said this: Not to minimize the virus or anything but look folks, this is the Brooklyn Hospital Center and the line for testing corona virus. You’ve all heard about the crush of people but lookie here. There is nobody. Where is the crisis? This video tells a very different story than the liberal pro-democrat crisis frenzy you hear about on mainstream news. Share this video to show people what is really going on in New York. Nada!
God dammit. With that I had to do some Snopes like digging. Here’s my conclusion. Todd Stares is making a good conservative fake new living by lying through his teeth for Paranoid Right Fox media outlets. Here is a little of what I discovered. First here is a NY Times story about what is actually happening until recently in the Brooklyn Medical Center.
And then I found an earlier video WITH PEOPLE IN IT shared by Mr. Starnes from the same location. This one showed a dozen people waiting for testing at the same location as Todd’s later video which showed no line at all. Compare this earlier video to the still photo up above of the later misleading video.
https://twitter.com/toddstarnes/status/1241420102001721344?lang=en
So which video should I believe? I don’t know when video, sans people, was taken. My guess is that it was early in the morning before people expected the hospital to be ready for sick people. Like Todd said let me equivocate by saying I don’t know for sure that Todd is lying through his video. No! No! No! I’m simply sharing with my eight loyal readers possible evidence that Todd Starnes ia an “epic Trump-wannabe-liar.” It seems obvious to me that Todd didn’t want to show anybody waiting to be tested so he came back when he could be sure no one would be present. That way he could present proof of liberal lies. All the better to stoke right-wing suspicions that there is no massive die off going on in New York City. Let me set my fair minded self aside for a minute. Ef you Murdoch family!
There is a reason that lines in front of hospitals are threadbare. A lot of people have lost their insurance. A lot of people know that if they get sick at most it will only last a couple of bad days. Most people know that standing next to other sick people is a good way to catch the virus. And the problem is not outside the hospitals. Its in the hospitals that are under-equipped thanks to Trump’s six week dismissal of the virus. That’s where the hubbub is making doctors, nurses and visitors sick and where finding masks and ventilators is a problem. Todd Starnes went to Brooklyn Hospital to show us that at 6AM it doesn’t look like a sci-fi movie mob of panicked people running away from Godzilla. How stupid does Todd Starnes think we are?
I think most Americans have figured out that ignoring the virus will kill two million Americans. That would be almost double the deaths of America’s soldiers in every previous war. Sure, that’s only one in every fifty people. I’d almost be willing to play Russian roulette with a revolver that had 49 empty bullet chambers out of 50. But Mr. Starnes, I sure the hell wouldn’t put that gun to the temple of my grandchildren, children or wife. Todd Starnes you and Fox News wants me to put that goddammed NRA protected gun against our temples. Ef U Todd Starnes.
I am sending a link to this post to CE for his review. It will be interesting to see if he gives me another thumbs-up.
NOTE: CE did send me a thumbs us when he got this. There is hope.
