During the coronavirus pandemic, the mayors of America's real cities have mostly been pretty good. (New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has been kind of an idiot sometimes, but he means well.) There really hasn't been a Governor Brian Kemp-style mayor figure, who literally might kill you dead of COVID-19, because of how they are so stupid.
Until now.
Carolyn Goodman is the mayor of Las Vegas, and she totally is ready to play Russian Roulette with your life, in a casino, on a roulette table that's just fucking SATURATED with coronavirus. And like abject morons are wont to do, she's been doing the media circuit!
Everybody is talking about this interview Goodman did with Anderson Cooper, because oh my god bugfuck.
Anderson Cooper: You're talking about encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to come to Las Vegas ... smoking,… https://t.co/d8rkLt1zZu
— Lis Power (@Lis Power) 1587581394.0
COOPER: You're talking about encouraging hundreds of thousands of people to come to Las Vegas [...] smoking, drinking, touching slot machines, breathing circulated air, and then returning home to states around America and countries around the world, doesn't that sound like a virus petri dish?
GOODMAN: No, it sounds like you're being an alarmist!
Goodman said OF COURSE she believes in social distancing. "I'm a rational ...," said Goodman, failing to complete her thought before asserting that casinos should just figure out how to do social distancing for themselves, as that is not her job as mayor of Las Vegas. She doesn't even own a casino, you guys! She wants them to be open, though. And if she owned a hotel, it would be the cleanest hotel you ever saw, you betcha.
"That's the competition in this country!" explained Goodman, who literally thinks if casinos fuck it up and give a lot of people coronavirus, well, the free market will sort it out. "That's not the mayor's job!"
Cooper confirmed that what the mayor was saying with her mouth was that she thinks the free market will sort this out, because if there is an outbreak at one casino, the free market will just go to a different casino, thereby destroying the sick casino with the yucky outbreak.
"Yeah, yeah," said Goodman. She also told Anderson Cooper he is a "very good interviewer" and "I've watched you for years" and "you're wonderful!"
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But what about people who work at the casinos, who might die? Shouldn't Carolyn Goodman care more about them than she cares about the casino owners and their profits? That led to this exchange:
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COOPER: Casino owners are probably doing OK, it's the people who are working on the floor who are the ones who are going to become infected and potentially die.
GOODMAN: You're talking disease. I'm talking life -- I'm talking life and living.
COOPER: OK, that makes no sense.
Carolyn Goodman was pretty sure she was making sense.
Anyway, it's fiiiiiiiine , you guys. Mayor Goodman says they've had so many viruses in Las Vegas, they had Ebola, they had West Nile, "A NEIGHBOR OF MINE DIED FROM WEST NILE!" and she got it from the swimming pool! Cooper noted that none of those were as contagious, but Carolyn Goodman was already off on her story about her neighbor and fuck it.
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Cooper tried to show Goodman a Chinese study that explained How Is Coronavirus Spread, through air conditioning in a restaurant, which led to this exchange:
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COOPER: Chinese researchers have shown how this virus spreads
GOODMAN: Ooh, you are good! Anderson, you are tough! [LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH] We're back to China! This isn't China, this is Las Vegas, Nevada!
COOPER: Wow, OK, that's really ignorant.
GOODMAN: That's ignorant?
COOPER: That's an ignorant, ignorant statment.
Yes, Mayor Goodman, because Las-Vegas-Ese people can transmit coronas in a restaurant through the air conditioning just as easily as Chinese people can. You fucking dumbshit.
But look, Carolyn Goodman understands science experiments, and how one group gets the real drug and the other one gets a placebo, and she just wants Las Vegas to get the placebo, and if everybody dies, well then, that fact is definitely going on the Science Fair poster board!
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GOODMAN: I know when you have a disease you have a placebo that gets the water and the sugar, and then you get those that actually get the shot. We would love to be that placebo! [unintelligible ]
COOPER: You wanna get the placebo, you don't wanna get the actual [...] the group that gets the placebo, by the way, usually gets the short end of the stick ...
GOODMAN: Well you don't know! How do you know ... [trails off and laughs uproariously like drunk Aunt Karen at Thanksgiving, who is just pretty sure she is an expert in whatever field you currently work in ]
Yeah wow. She actually said that.
This batshit Anderson Cooper interview came after another interview, where MSNBC's Katy Tur had to play Whack-A-Idiot with Goodman after she had started making news for calling the shutdowns "total insanity."
Mayor Calls Las Vegas Shutdown 'Total Insanity' | Katy Tur | MSNBC www.youtube.com
In this video, Goodman offered her original theory for How To Hunger Games In The Time Of Coronavirus:
GOODMAN: What I assume is that everybody is a coronavirus carrier — that 100% of our population is asymptomatic, but a carrier. [...] My whole opinion is get our people back to work. [...]
Assume everybody is a carrier. And then you start from an even slate. And tell the people what to do. And let the businesses open and competition will destroy that business if, in fact, they become evident that they have disease, they're closed down. It's that simple.
Thank God the strip is not within the Las Vegas city limits.
Watch the whole video for Goodman's batshit, and also for Katy Tur science-splaining coronavirus to the idiot, and also just Tur's facial expressions. "Mayor Goodman, there's no assuming I am correct ," Tur said a thousand different ways to Goodman, because SHE JUST FUCKING IS CORRECT, YOU DUMB ASSHOLE.
At press time, Donald Trump had just nominated Carolyn Goodman to be America's new head of vaccine development, after he fired the actual good qualified person who had that job.
Just kidding, it's just after 1 p.m. on the East Coast, we doubt Trump has waddled down to work yet.
[videos via Lis Power and Daniel Lewis from Media Matters]
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False equivalence. Libations means you end up with no pants.
I'm a proud graduate of Haverford College, which at least in the old days was allied with Bryn Mawr College down the road. Both of these are excellent liberal arts collleges, and Haverford in particular has strong Quaker roots, which permeate the ethos of the place.
Turns out that this woman went to Bryn Mawr, and her late mob-lawyer husband went to Haverford. This has caused quite a bit of chit-chat on various forums frequented by alums. I think Bob Dylan said someting about people going to the finest schools and so on ... it happens!