New York Post

Patti LuPone Plays Karen

-

Chalk up one more celebrity COVID hypocrite: musical-theater great Patti LuPone turns out to be a (maskless) ranting mask Karen. A viral video shows the Tony and Grammy winner screaming “get the f – - k out” at a patron for refusing to mask up after a performanc­e of “Company” at the American Theatre Wing. Yet LuPone wasn’t wearing a mask as she ranted. Color us shocked.

Yes, she was doing a post-show Q-and-A. She likely wanted her face to be seen and her speech to be understood. But the policy of the theater where she was performing requires masking. So why not her? Does being on a stage mean you can’t get others sick?

LuPone’s obvious hypocrisy is all too typical of how politicos, celebs and other elites have behaved since the pandemic began.

Witness Mayor Adams carving out a milewide celebrity exemption in NYC’s privatesec­tor vax mandate. Or AOC smiling for a glamor shot at the Met gala with a squadron of masked-up servers in the background. Or then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo announcing that

be hosting Thanksgivi­ng dinner after telling the rest of us plebes not to.

As years of data now make abundantly clear, restrictiv­e mandates do nothing, good or bad, for broad-scale COVID outcomes. New York’s gone from having massive restrictio­ns and sky-high COVID deaths to almost no restrictio­ns and steadily dropping death and hospitaliz­ation rates — which remain low during the current “fifth wave.”

Thank vaccines, rising natural immunity, a better understand­ing of COVID among doctors and the therapeuti­cs now entering the market. Not mask or vaccine mandates.

Remember: Our outcomes are nearly identical to Florida’s, which never went down the same restrictio­nist route.

What the LuPone video shows — for the umpteenth time — is that the powerful love hygiene-theater. And privileged petty tyrants will keep obliviousl­y castigatin­g others for breaking rules they only follow when they feel like it until our officials, elected and otherwise, show some spine by killing our last COVID rules and ending this antiscient­ific farce for good.

Or the mask Karens will never go away.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States