New York Magazine writer Sarah Jones joined Andrea Mitchell Reports guest host Chris Jansing and MSNBC medical contributor Dr. Lipi Roy on Tuesday to discuss weddings and other large social gatherings in the age of COVID. MSNBC celebrated the Jones theory "There's nothing more American than a gaudy, expensive party that kills people."
The genesis for the segment was an article Jones wrote about how she postponed her wedding, while highlighting some that became super-spreaders. Jones claimed she wrote the article to figure out why, "But I think we have to dig a little deeper than that and ask why are people doing this, what's the motivation. I think generally there are incentives for people to be selfish. We have people in power who are encouraging people to be selfish, who are promoting reckless reopening policies."
But it is not just in pandemic-related matters where people are selfish, but America generally encourages selfishness, "And I think historically we do live in a culture that has encouraged people to sort of push the costs of their actions onto other people."
Jansing could have asked Jones if it was fair to describe those who are promoting various reopening plans as selfish while she has a job that is great for telework, but instead she agreed. Returning to weddings and helpfully reading from Jones's article, she declared:
Yeah, and you point out, I'm going to read part of your article, "Call the weddings stupid or selfish if you want, I can't argue with either characterization. But they aren't aberrant. There's nothing more American than a gaudy, expensive party that kills people. The very stories America tells about itself encourages all of us to be selfish, to shift the cost of our actions onto others." So, I mean, is this in many ways, do you think, Sarah, just sort of a commentary on America in general and not necessarily just this pandemic?
Jones naturally agreed with her own article, saying "Yeah, I mean, we need to put our responses to the pandemic into the appropriate context. They didn't come out of a void, they're aren’t mysterious and I think it's important to comprehend what's causing them so that the next time there is a major natural disaster, whether that's a pandemic or something else, we can respond better."
Jansing then got to Roy, asking her advice on "What would you say to people about planning for the future right now?"
Roy also responded by quoting the Jones article: "one of the lines in Sarah's article that really resonated with me as a physician, was, you know, 'we're inconvenienced, disappointed, even a little depressed, but we can reschedule a wedding. We can't resurrect anyone who dies because we decided to throw a plague party.'"
While some of the examples Jones gave in her article were examples of genuine irresponsibility, to extrapolate that argue nothing is more American than death by "plague party" shows a contempt for every American that doesn't share the total-lockdown mentality of the liberal networks, which never have to suspend their business in a pandemic.
