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Yesterday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued an update to their coronavirus masking guidance. Fully vaccinated people can now go maskless outdoors, apart from in crowds, and even people who arent fully vaccinated can exercise maskless outdoors alone or with their household. Everyone should continue to mask in indoor settings. President Biden announced the changes at an outdoor press conference. He walked up to the lectern masked; when a reporter asked what message he was trying to send, Biden grinned and said he wanted people to watch him take his mask off and not put it back on til he got inside. The update was anticipated, but it was nonetheless a big story, and there was no shortage of takes (and jokes) among journalists. If even one of you tries to write a Why I Miss Masks essay for The Atlantic, the journalist Laura Bassett warned, Im going to launch myself into the sun.

The need (or not) to wear masks outdoors has been a subject of media coverageand impassioned debatefor a while now. Last weekend, Shannon Palus, science editor at Slate, made the case that its time to end the practice, because evidence shows that being outdoors is very, very safe. Numerous medical experts agreed, but some readers vehemently did not; one Twitter user commented that Palus has blood on her hands. The debate continued yesterday on either side of the announcement. This is a good thing, Joe Scarborough said on MSNBCs Morning Joe, of the anticipated update, before turning to his co-host (and wife), Mika Brzezinski, and asking, That makes sense, right? Brzezinski replied that it does, but then added a caveat: I just think that also a lot of adults wearing masks is a good model for society right now when a lot of people are still not vaccinated and we want to be as careful as we can. Online, some journalists wondered how theyre supposed to tell which maskless passersby have been fully vaccinated and which havent, and said they would continue to wear masks outdoors, for reasons of signaling, safety, and ease. Others were more bullish; some experts even said that the CDCs update didnt go far enough. On his CNN show, Chris Cuomo pressed Andy Slavitt, a senior COVID adviser to Biden; given the low risk of outdoor transmission and the effectiveness of vaccines, Cuomo asked, why not let the vaccinated live their lives?

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Meanwhile, on the right, agitators have joined the debate by jumping in at the deepest end possible. On Monday night, Tucker Carlson, of Fox News, referred to people who wear masks outdoors as aggressors, and said that its our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in. The next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or the bike path, dont hesitate. Ask politely but firmly: Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason to wear it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable. We should do that, and we should keep doing it, until wearing a mask outdoors is roughly as socially accepted as lighting a Marlboro in an elevator. He wasnt done: making your children mask up outdoors, he said, should be illegal, and anyone who observes masked kids playing should call the police immediately. Contact child protective services. Keep calling until someone arrives. What youre seeing is abuse. Its child abuse, and youre morally obligated to try to prevent it. These comments, predictably, pitched the broader debate at a lower level of nuance, as some conservatives backed him up, while liberal commentators condemned him as a lunatic. Last night, also predictably, Carlson doubled down. The CDC has produced a new round of guidelines that are as indecipherable as a Turkish train schedule, he said. Next stop, Istanbul. Or is it Ankara?

This was merely the latest iteration of a media dynamic that weve seenand that Ive written aboutthroughout the pandemic: right-wing talking heads hijacking the naturally slow-moving, contentious development of science by taking the most absurd position imaginable and forcing those of us who care about reality into a reflexive defense of oversimplified truths, all covered under the flattening lens of the culture war. We saw this a year or so ago, when officials started to advise widespread masking, and, more recently, in the debate around vaccine passports, which some conservatives cast as Satanic Nazism. The more nuanced the debate, it seems, the wilder the right-wing claims about it. As the center of gravity on COVID restrictions has shifted toward more of a risk-mitigation approach, FiveThirtyEights Nate Silver noted yesterday, its telling that the fringes have also shifted toward more extreme positions.

As Ive written repeatedly, its always been important for the press to respect the messiness of scientific discovery. Its more so nowwith vaccination ramping up, the pandemic in the US is entering a new phase where the appropriateness of reinforcing blunt universal rules is being superseded, as I wrote recently, by much finer interpretations of personal and collective risk, and coverage has had to keep pace. Risk calculations involve science, of course, but they also centrally involve social science; the same goes for vaccine passports, with their attendant privacy and equity concerns, and, now, for outdoor masking. These are subjectiveand, to an increasing degreecultural questions. Of course, masks have long been cultural symbols, both in the US and overseas; its true, too, that traditional scientific vigilance around the virus should not let up. (A glance at India will tell you thatand as I wrote yesterday, that story is not a distant tragedy but part of a single global story that concerns us all.) Still, its possible to conceptualize a subtle shift in framing hereone that is less concerned with litigating the culture part of the culture war (its not culture, its science!), and more concerned with the war part. On his MSNBC show last night, Chris Hayes noted that when it comes to outdoor masking, the right-wingers are not really off-base on the science (with some caveats, of course). Rather, they are taking aim at the form of social solidarity that masks have come to represent.

Whether Carlson and his ilk believe their delusions or the whole thing is performance art doesnt really matter. (As Ive written before, obliterating the distinction between sincerity and trolling is a key, dangerous plank of present conservative discourse.) Either way, their continued mask hysteria underscores that the emphasis, for such people, has always been on the war partstaking out an extreme position, intellectual consistency be damned, and aggressively policing it to turn Americans against each other. The job, for the rest of us, is to create a less hostile climate where legitimately contentious cultural and scientific debates can thrive. The CDC changing its mask guidance isnt the final word on what public-health habits individuals and communities will choose to adopt going forwardthrough the end of pandemic, and, perhaps, beyond. If figuring it out involves Why I Miss Masks essays, then so be it.

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Defusing the culture war over masks outdoors - Columbia Journalism Review

LOS ANGELES -- In Sierra Teller Ornelas family, those who could spin a good tale earned a seat at her grandmoms expansive dining table, with lesser voices banished to the living room.

There was the feeling of holding court that was really big in my family, said Teller Ornelas, who happily recalled another of the perks: If I was in trouble and I could say something funny, I would get in less trouble.

The Native American writer is now sharing her narrative gifts with the world at large in Rutherford Falls, a new Peacock comedy she co-created and produces with Michael Schur ("The Good Place") and actor Ed Helms ("The Hangover").

The small Northeastern town of the show's title has, unwisely, kept a statue of its founder in an intersection. A safety relocation plan lacks the ring of a political hot-button but upsets Nathan (Helms), a Rutherford descendant enamored of his family history, and he clumsily goes to war.

In ever-widening circles, the conflict involves Nathans family, his best friend Reagan Wells (Jana Schmieding), a Native American with her own vision for cultural preservation, and the neighboring tribal-owned casino and its powerhouse CEO, Terry Thomas (Michael Greyeyes).

The 10-episode series, released in full this week on the streaming service, has drawn critical praise for its smart and endearing humor, and attention as the rare TV series to feature indigenous perspectives and characters minus stereotyping.

Schur (Parks and Recreation) and Helms worked together on The Office and know what makes for appealing TV. But when they began to develop the concept of Rutherford Falls, they saw what was missing: Teller Ornelas.

"We couldnt write the show without an equal representation of voices at the creative stage, not just in the writers room, but literally from the ground up, who understood the world we wanted to talk about, Schur said. Without her it was impossible, for the simple reason that we couldnt tell the story ... of these two Americas and these two histories.

Teller Ornelas, who is Navajo and Mexican American and was raised in Tucson, Arizona, programmed films at the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of the American Indian before chasing her Hollywood dreams. She honed her creative skills on Schurs Brooklyn Nine-Nine and on Superstore."

She was finishing a three-year contract as a Superstore writer and producer and planned to develop a Native American anthology series when the invitation came to join with Schur and Helms. It was at a telling point in the project.

Its very rare that you get the call in the beginning of the process where they say, Hey, we have half an idea. Would you like to develop it with us? Teller Ornelas said.

Usually, she said, native people are asked to give their stamp of approval to stories made about them, but without them: 'Were about to shoot. Can you read it now, tell us its OK and sign off on it? was how she described the cavalier approach.

She serves as an executive producer and showrunner, the person who oversees a production and the holy-grail ambition of TV writers. As important as her ethnicity is to the series, Schur said, her talent and competence are more so.

The more important thing is that shes really good at her job, he said, excelling as a first-time showrunner and despite the added burdens imposed by the pandemic.

The result of their collaboration is a show framed by what Schur describes as America's entrenched tendency to ignore its past rather than engage in a nuanced discussion about what our history says about us.

That alone would get the show canceled and possibly bring down Peacock, Schur joked, but he's banking that the talented cast and a roomful of really funny people who write funny jokes" will engage viewers.

The writing staff is half indigenous, reflecting the emphasis on fiction with an honest voice. The casting does as well: charming newcomer Schmieding is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux. Greyeyes, a veteran actor (True Detective, Fear the Walking Dead") who excels as the ambitious casino boss for the show's fictional Minishonka tribe, is Plains Cree.

In one scene, a journalist gets uncomfortably schooled about whats at stake for the tribe in a soliloquy delivered by Greyeyes' character, who we also see as a husband and dad.

It was really important for us to make sure that every character wasnt flattened, Teller Ornelas said. " Everyone on any given Sunday could be the protagonist on this show.

But Rutherford Falls offers a native perspective, not THE native perspective, she said. She welcomes the prospect of more indigenous-focused projects, including FX's upcoming Reservation Dogs, a comedy set on an Oklahoma reservation and co-created by filmmaker Taika Waititi, a New Zealander of Maori descent.

In modern style, Teller Ornelas is carrying on a family and cultural tradition that's reflected in the maternal half of her surname. It was born of the 19th-century Navajo Long Walk, the brutal relocation of tribal members from what is now Arizona to eastern New Mexico.

At a holding and processing point she compared to New York's Ellis Island, they asked my great-great grandfather, What do you do for a living? He said, 'I'm a storyteller. I'm the keeper of my stories, my people.' That's why they named him Teller."

I really hold that dear to me, knowing that I am doing what he did, she said.

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'Rutherford Falls' mixes comedy, culture wars, native voices - ABC News

WASHINGTONPresident Joe Bidens infrastructure and jobs proposal would invest an historic $174 billion in electric vehicles, through consumer tax credits and direct spending on charging stations, mass transit vehicles and school buses.

But heavy Republican pushback against the vast scale of Bidens support for EVs could signal trouble for the presidents hope to rapidly electrify the nations transportation system. And some analysts are fearful that electric vehicles could become wrapped up in the culture wars, as Covid-19 vaccines have.

With leading car makers like General Motors setting dates for producing only electric vehicles, some GOP leaders say they understand that a movement toward electric vehicles is inevitable.

All the major car manufacturers have said that theyre going to go to an electric vehicle fleet by 2035, 2040, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) said at a Senate Budget Hearing in early April. To my Republican colleagues, its just a matter of time until most cars will be running on something other than gasoline.

South Carolina is home to some electric vehicle factories, and Biden virtually visited a Proterra electric battery facility in South Carolina last week.

Grahams colleague, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) is a co-sponsor of a bill introduced in March that would provide incentives for private investments in electric and hydrogen vehicle refueling stations.

The sticking point has become what the senators and many other Republicans see as Bidens determination to get as many EVs on the road as quickly as possible. Almost every congressional Republican has voiced opposition to Bidens proposal, characterizing his infrastructure bill and its dramatic investment in EVs as part of a leftist agenda unrelated to traditional infrastructure.

The total amount of funding it would direct to roads, bridges, ports, waterways and airports combined adds up to less than what it would spend just on electric cars, said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a press release last week. The far left sees a strong family resemblance between these proposals and their socialist Green New Deal.

On Thursday, Senate Republicans unveiled a less pricey counter offer to Bidens $2.2 trillion proposal that focused on traditional infrastructure, but it was rejected by Senate Democrats before it was introduced. Negotiations between Senate Democrats and Republicans on the infrastructure bill are continuing.

As if to stoke Republican fears, two progressive Democrats, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, last week revived their push for the Green New Deal, a broad plan to dramatically reduce U.S. reliance on and production of fossil fuels, while promoting clean energy jobs.

Bidens investment in the EV market in the United States would go toward building 500,000 charging stations by 2030, giving tax incentives to consumers who buy EVs and replacing 50,000 diesel transit vehicles, while electrifying at least 20 percent of the nations public school bus fleet.

The U.S. has a choice of whether were going to lead in these sectors or if were going to follow, Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk said last week at a virtual meeting sponsored by ZETA, an advocacy group for electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, a fundamental change is already happening in the automobile industry.

In January, General Motors set 2035 as a target for producing only EVs and 2040 to achieve complete carbon neutrality across all of its facilities. Volvo plans to cut out internal combustion engines even sooner, going all electric by 2030.

ZETA Executive Director Joe Britton said that the companies announcements reflect the irreversibility of electrification in the transportation sector, and pointed out the huge economic opportunity in developing domestic manufacturing of electric vehicles and batteries.

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The success of Bidens climate agenda, with a recently announced goal to cut nationwide carbon emissions by 50 to 52 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, will depend largely on how quickly he can convince American automakers and consumers to go electric. Only about 2 percent of vehicles sold in the United States last year were EVs. A number of recent studies, including by the National Academies of Science, concluded that half of all new vehicles sold should be electric to meet the greenhouse gas reduction goal Biden adopted.

Before Americans embrace of EVs is clear, though, Biden success in getting his $2.2 trillion infrastructure plan through the Senate will depend on whether he can convince Republicans to support the legislation, or whether he decides to push it through using a budget reconciliation process that requires support only from Democrats, who control the chamber 51-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting tie-breaking votes.

But that could create even greater partisan backlash and push EVs into the polarized rift between liberals and conservatives.

If current Republican talking points associating EVs with the Green New Deal stick, you could start to see the kind of almost culture wars around electric vehicles that we see on vaccines and that we see on voting rights and abortion, said David Victor, a professor of innovation and public policy at the University of California, San Diego. Peoples attitudes [on EVs] could end up being determined first and foremost by their party affiliation.

Biden could also lose the support of some centrist Democrats like West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who expressed hesitation last week at the idea of pushing Bidens original infrastructure proposal through Congress without any Republican support.

Victor said that an EV policy that would have the potential to win Republican support would focus on private sector incentives for EVs and EV infrastructure, like the bill Burr was a co-sponsor of in March, which many Democrats and the EV industry see as a bare minimum.

Among the public, EVs are still a relatively nonpartisan topic. According to a 2019 Climate Nexus national poll, 70 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of Democrats have a somewhat or very positive opinion of electric vehicles.

It would be, again, ridiculous and unfortunate if this became partisan, said Cathy Zoi, CEO of EVgo, the largest fast charging network for electric vehicles in the United States, during a virtual panel conducted by ZETA. We should all be able to come together and put the force of our shoulders behind this infrastructure investment.

Nico Portuondo is a graduate student at Northwestern Universitys Medill School of Journalism, where he specializes in politics, policy and foreign affairs. He recently completed a media internship at the Union of Concerned Scientists and now covers environmental policy at Medills Washington bureau. Nico graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University, where he majored in environmental science and policy.

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Bidens Bet on Electric Vehicles Is Drawing Opposition from Republicans Who Fear Liberal Overreach - InsideClimate News

Image: Courtesy of HBO Max

Bethenny Frankel wants everyone to know shes real, and in a new Vanity Fair profile, she says it repeatedly. How about we do real? The sentiment, she says, defined her upcoming HBO Max Apprentice-esque business competion, The Big Shot With Bethenny. Youll see its extremely real. It couldnt be more real.

Get the memo? This lady is very real.

Its a whole lot of Bethenny Frankel in VFs gargantuan interview with the mogul, appropriately titled, Bethenny Frankel Would Rather Be Canceled Than Muzzled. The headline gives most of what happens next away. Heres the full quote:

Listen, Id rather be canceled than muzzled. There are so many watered-down, filtered versions of people running around the entertainment industry. Its the absolute majority. I am absolutely the exception, no question. But when you do something that is risky, or that you might regret, or that risks cancellation nation, you think about what it takes to survive, and what it takes to thrive, and where the envelope is, and if you can push it.

She adds that her decision to do a podcast was a risky thing for a person like me, because Im just going to say what I think. So I made a conscious, calculated decisionsomething could go sideways, for sure. Apparently, the play worked, because now she has a new show on HBO Max, The Big Shot With Bethenny, in which she will find someone to run this goddamn circus, or in non-reality television star speak, her business empire.

Funny, though, because I cant imagine what is riskier about a podcast than multiple stints on The Real Housewives of New York, during which she screamed, screamed some more, tore her friendships apart, and sold a lot of tequila.

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Bethenny also speaks bluntly about the businesspeople she admires. To her, the biggest thing is that they have to have built a brand and done it in a nontraditional way. Heres the hellish list, which caused me to break out in hives and call my therapist crying. Jamie Siminoff, who created the Ring and sold it to Amazon for a billion dollars. Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Handler, [Barstool Sports creator] Dave Portnoy, Mark Cuban, Ryan Murphy. Apparently, these goons and goblins will also guest-star on The Big Shot, which seems bad, but most likely very good for ol Beth.

Speaking of the union-busting, misogynistic, hate-filled pig monster known as Dave Portnoy, Bethenny seems to admire him quite a bit. Heres the rest of what she has to say about that demon king from the darkest blood pits of hell:

If its not full shtick, I think Dave Portnoy is doing things his own way and pissing off people. Hes not really afraid. Its part of his brand to piss off people. The difference between Dave Portnoy and me, besides everything, ishe has a brand, but he [isnt partnered with a] wholesome company brand like Conagra. So I cant go totally rogue and do everything that I want to do. But Ive made people mad.

The full quotes gets even weirder:

Ive had all the Karens mad at me for helping 100 small-owned Black businesses. To them I was a racist. Ive had the same group pissed off because I said something about Donald Trump. But then I had another group pissed off at me for posting a Hillary Clinton photo. I had Dana White and I had Hillary Clinton on the podcast. Its not about politics. Its about opinions and your own route to success.

The more I think about a collaborative environment in which Dana White, Hilary Clinton, Bethenny Frankel, a bunch of Karens, and Dave Portnoy all mill about together freely, the more the sun darkens and the sky fills with locusts and the rivers run green and black with acid and all manners of disease. I think thats enough quotes from ol Beth for now. I need to crawl back into bed and never read the internet ever again.

More here:
Bethenny Frankel Has Taken Up Her Sword in the Cancel Culture Wars - Jezebel

The GOP, an increasingly extremist party whose members still cant all admit that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, has a message for Joe Biden: Stop being so radical and divisive. That was the gist of Senator Tim Scotts rebuttal to the presidents first address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night. Painting Bidens calls for unity as empty platitudes, the South Carolina Republican accused Democrats of dividing Americans in pursuit of a far-left agenda, and of abandoning GOP lawmakers who sincerely want to come together to advance common-sense legislation. We need policies and progress that bring us closer together, Scott said. But three months in, the actions of the president and his party are pulling us further and further apart.

As a thesis, it was fundamentally dishonest. But it was also telling: Lacking a serious and coherent agenda of their own, and under the spell of a wannabe-strongman, Republicans response to Biden is to misrepresent him as they open up new fronts in the culture wars. Sure, at times on Wednesday night Biden seemed moments away from breaking into Wont You Be My Neighbor?but, Republicans want Americans to believe, thats just a front for a fringe agenda that has, in the words of Scott, helped push the nation off its shared foundation. Or, as Ted Cruz summed up Bidens address: Boring, but radical.

Theyre not wrong that the ambition of the agenda the administration has pushed in its first 100 days can sometimes be overlooked because its point man is, well, Joe Biden; it can be hard to wrap your head around the fact that the guy bullshitting about golf with John Boehner is putting forth one of the most unabashedly progressive platforms in recent history. But his project isnt to make crazy ideas seem normal, as Republicans contend; its to make the case for what should be normal. Polls suggest hes doing just that: a CNN survey after his address Wednesday found that nearly three-quarters of viewers believed the policies Biden proposed would move the country in the right direction; a CBS News poll came in with similar results, with 85% of respondents saying they approved of the speech and as many or more describing what they saw as inspiring, caring, and presidential. The country may be bitterly polarized, but a majority approve of Biden and his policiesespecially compared with his predecessor.

So where does that leave Republicans, who are still at the mercy of the former guy? Apparently, hoping that Americans scare easily and have a short memory. Scott opened his rebuttal by dinging Biden for failing to lower the temperaturewithout mentioning who it was, exactly, that raised it (maybe the president who sicced armed supporters on the Capitol in response to his election loss?). Next, he suggested that Bidenwho assumed office at the worst point of the COVID crisis, with a sputtering vaccine rolloutis wrongly taking credit for the improved pandemic outlook in the U.S., arguing that the progress hes attributing to his own administration actually began under Trump. Too often, Scott said without a hint of irony, powerful grown-ups set science aside. Finally, Scott took aim at several partisan items on the Biden agenda, all without saying anything substantive about what made them so radical or what solution Republicans would prefer. The premise throughout: that Democrats are seeking to foist their agenda on the country by dividing it.

That point was made most directly in the most eyebrow-raising line of the response, which came as Scottthe only Black Republican in the Senaterebuked Bidens call to address systemic racism. America is not a racist country, he said, defending the laws the GOP has enacted or proposed in a barely-veiled effort to curtail voting rights. Its backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination. And its wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present. It was the most contentious line of Scotts speech, though Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday said she agreed that she doesnt believe America is a racist country. These are issues that we must confront, Harris added. It does not help to heal our country, to unify us as a people, to ignore the realities of that. Scott, whose lived experience gives him credibility on the subject that his Republican colleagues lack, wasnt necessarily saying racism doesnt existjust that it isnt baked into the system, and that to suggest it is is its own kind of discrimination. Kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them, Scott said, riffing on the old reverse racism trope, and if they look a certain way, theyre an oppressor.

Scott is certainly entitled to his views on the matter. But the implication that recognizing a problem is divisive and working to solve it is radical is absurd. The GOPs approach to this and other issues may satisfy the culture warriors among them, for whom the very suggestion that something in this country needs fixing is an egregious attack. But for most Americans facing these issues, who have watched for four years as Trump and his party either ignored or exacerbated them, perhaps the idea of Biden investing billions in child care costs wont be seen as a Trojan horse for a radical socialist takeover, but as something that will tangibly improve their lives.

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Republicans Unironically Claim Joe Bidens Agenda Is Tearing the Country Apart - Vanity Fair