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The last two years have felt a lot like a cosmic joke. I sometimes like to recap it to myself, just in the hopes of actually believing everything that’s going on.
There’s a virus that strikes the elderly and obese and spares children, and two years later the most common mitigation strategy is putting ineffective and dirty cloth masks on schoolchildren. For adults in many blue areas, we’re forced to wear masks in a restaurant from the door to our table. In New York City, it’s even worse: you have to show proof of a vaccine that doesn’t prevent transmission in order to enter an indoor space, and also wear a mask.
Yet it was at just the moment that life became laughably absurd that comedians stopped daring to tell jokes. Now, we’re hectored with moralistic progressive haranguing from those who supposedly make a living being funny.
Making jokes could be construed as going against the prevailing narrative of Covid mania, er, caution. And as such, few comedians have dared. Enter Adam Carolla, who does dare to do that in a new comedy special produced by the Daily Wire, called Truth Yeller.
Within the first five minutes, Carolla describes traveling during Covid with mask theater in place. He jokes about how nonsensical the rules are; he is yelled at to pull up his mask one minute, and then served hummus, which he eats with his hands. He quips, “Do you think anyone has died because they snacked on an airplane? What would their obituary read?”
Carolla links these nonsense TSA rules with those we’ve been begrudgingly living with for years, like liquid limits to pass through security. These regulations have never made much sense; they’re the products of unthinking bureaucrats unable to utilize common sense in their enforcement of the rules. Carolla uses the example of a nearly empty tube of toothpaste labeled “4 oz.” that isn’t permitted through, while sneaking through the technically allowed amounts of alcohol.
We understand how ludicrous these post-9/11 rules are because we’ve seen them in practice for over a decade; we know dumping out our water bottles at the security line and then buying new bottles for $4 each isn’t saving any lives. We’re not allowed (yet) to mock Covid regulations on masks because doing so is, for many elites, a threat to public health.
Carolla (and his first guest, Jay Leno) are doing a vital and subversive public service: they’re breaking the seal on mocking the Covid theater we’re all subjected to.
There’s some part of all Americans that understands that we are living in some sort of absurd simulation. Kids in schools are masked all day, often in ineffective and dirty cloth masks, while adults are shoulder to shoulder in bars, restaurants and sporting events. Where I live in Montgomery County, kids are still playing outdoor soccer in masks, and our county executive is hinting at what is essentially permanent masking requirements, as are already in place in Oregon.
But like in Oregon, the politicians passing such regulations aren’t scared enough of Covid to follow the rules they’ve imposed upon us all. In the last month alone, four members of the Montgomery County Council have been spotted at indoor public events where masks were removed (I documented it here on Twitter).
We should be able to point and laugh at this absurdity: kids in preschools and daycares are required to be masked, but at a legislative breakfast in the ballroom of a large local chain hotel, all of the adults could remove their masks because there was food in front of them. What would it take to unmask toddlers here? Maybe we can convince them to hold their sippy cups and an animal cracker all day; because we know that food and drink somehow neutralizes the airborne virus.
I’m joking, of course, but this is all a joke. None of it makes sense. We should all be openly mocking the ridiculous world we’ve been forced to live in by hypocritical bureaucrats attending networking events and parties unmasked while lecturing us about how dangerous this virus is. It’s nice to see Carolla doing so. Here’s hoping he starts a trend and inspires other so-called comedians to take aim as well.
