(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The latest indignations erupting on multiple fronts around Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis provide instructive examples of leftists desperately searching for outrages to use as political props or causes to cancel in the name of woke orthodoxy.
When DeSantis, a Republican, told school kids at a press event that is was okay, in accordance with actually following the science, for them to remove their masks, establishment media and radical activists — at the risk of repetition — went into hysterics.
A few of the students remained masked and DeSantis wrestled them to the ground, forcing them to take off their face coverings. Which of course he didn’t, although given the coverage that ensued it would be easy to think that he did.
DeSantis berated students, howled the Associated Press; he yelled at students, decried CNN, he scolded them, bleated MSNBC; he admonished them, gasped ABC News and parents shared the fury, crowed the Independent.
In reality, DeSantis simply said what a growing majority of the public feels, that it’s time to get on with life; that it’s an individual choice to wear a mask and demanding otherwise is little but despotic harassment.
“You do not have to wear those masks,” DeSantis told the students. “I mean, please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything and we’ve got to stop with this COVID theater. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”
Fox News host Tucker Carlson made mincemeat of the media’s overreaction and DeSantis ripped the hypocrisy of still forcing kids to wear masks.
“None of the adults were wearing masks and it seemed to me like someone told those kids they had to do it,” DeSantis said.
“So I just wanted to make it very clear they do not need to be doing it,” he said. “Obviously, in Florida it’s a free state, you can do it. But I think it’s also important to point out there’s no reason to do it for young and healthy kids.
“They talk about by letting someone have a choice to take off their mask, and welcoming that choice, that’s some how bullying,” DeSantis said. “Bullying is locking kids out of school, which they did.
“Bullying is forcing kids to wear masks for eight hours a day, which they did for two years and are only stopping now because the polling’s changed.”
When they weren’t hyperventilating over DeSantis telling kids it was safe to de-mask if they wanted, woke activists were manufacturing another DeSantis crisis.
In this instance, it was over a piece of legislation that he supports but hasn’t even aggressively championed.
The legislation, which critics have misleadingly labeled the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, passed the Florida House last month, won approval Thursday from a state Senate committee and is expected to land on DeSantis’s desk for approval.
Roiled by LGBT activists and a lazily compliant media, protests erupted claiming the bill would traumatize students and put them at risk from bullying. Even President Joe Biden piled on.
“I want every member of the LGBTQI+ community — especially the kids who will be impacted by this hateful bill — to know that you are loved and accepted just as you are,” Biden tweeted last month, reported NPR.
But even government-funded, far-left NPR was forced to check Biden and explain that the bill, according to House sponsor Rep. Joe Harding, simply “aims to have schools teach gender and sexuality at an appropriate age and to keep parents informed about what’s happening in the classroom.”
When leftists and mainstream media erupted with disingenuous dire warnings, DeSantis roasted them on their collective partisan peddling.
“I’m just curious, you call it that,” he said, when asked by a reporter about what the media has dubbed the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill. “I have not seen that in any of these bills. Where is that coming from?
“You’re in the news business, does the truth matter or not? Is that in any of the bills, yes or no?” DeSantis asked rhetorically, because the answer was obvious.
The truth doesn’t matter to the leftist media and there’s nothing in the bill that targets gay or trans or cis-gender students.
“So I start getting asked this by the media and I’m just thinking to myself, okay, they’re getting spun up, I see — you know how this works, right?” DeSantis said.
“And I was like, there is no way it’s true,” he said. “And I didn’t even look at the bill yet. I just knew it wasn’t true.”
DeSantis explained his reasons for supporting the bill, saying he thinks “it’s inappropriate to be injecting those matters like transgenderism in a kindergarten classroom,” adding that if someone opposed the bill they at least “have a responsibility to be honest about” what’s in the bill.
A journalist asks about the so-called “Don’t Say Gay Bill.”
DeSantis: “You call it that. I’ve not seen that in any of these bills. Where is that coming from? … You’re in the news business. Does the truth matter or not?” pic.twitter.com/DMwG9IPPnp
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 5, 2022
“You can create a false narrative, you can stage a protest, you can do all those things, but you’re not telling the truth about what’s actually there,” DeSantis said.
”I get it if you’re intentionally just trying to create a political narrative and you know it’s not true, but you still do it,” he said. “That’s, unfortunately, the world we live in.”
For proof, look no further than another faux umbrage that is reemerging from a Florida swamp to fill a potential void of leftist angst.
👇🏾 an 1845 symbol that was used in Florida to tell the federal government to leave them alone with their pro-slavery policies, is being used as a political joke to Gov. @RonDeSantisFL.
The “Free State of Florida” is becoming a dangerous place to live. https://t.co/8AfQuNyUXd
— Shevrin “Shev” Jones (@ShevrinJones) March 2, 2022
Never mind that Florida’s “Let Us Alone” flag, which inspired the gator logo, was never officially adopted, was proposed years before the Civil war and had nothing to do with slavery, as noted by even a self-professed “grumpy old man.”
Love it! States rights. Floridians know what’s best for FL not Washington DC.
— Grumpy old man (@grumpyguy63) March 2, 2022
None of which matters, because social activists have another crisis that can be used to advance their agenda.
Doesnt this alligator go hand in hand with “alligator bait” racism of the south???
— Joph (@jsuzannemd) March 3, 2022
It would, if one accepts the leftist narrative that the cancel culture cabal whipped into a frenzy two years ago, when it appropriated an ancient, much-disputed tale about plantation owners using black babies as “gator bait,” and forced the University of Florida to bow at the altar of woke.
“The recognizable ‘Gator Bait’ chant and correlating Gator chomp arm motion will no longer be heard and seen at University of Florida sporting events,” reported the Sporting News.
“The discontinuation of the cheer is part of what the school is calling The Decade Ahead plan to address racism and inequality amid a global movement.”
Paul Ortiz, a University of Florida history professor, said it’s disputed whether “gator bait” incidents actually happened, and even the university’s president conceded that he knew “of no evidence of racism associated with our ‘Gator Bait’ cheer at UF sporting events.”
It didn’t matter then, and it doesn’t matter now; the false leftist narratives continue, as the ongoing assault on DeSantis and a pro-freedom message proves.
