Good News for AOC's Family! She's Spending Thanksgiving Alone!
We could all use a bit of social distancing from Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this holiday season — and for the next few decades, really, but we’re going to find a vaccine and she’s still going to be there.
In the meantime, this Thanksgiving her relatives in the Empire State, at the very least, will get a reprieve.
Less than a week after packed celebrations in Times Square for Joe Biden being declared president-elect by the establishment media — with the concomitant packed subway trains and packed apartments for the afterparties — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the state was cracking down on in-person gatherings ahead of the holidays.
In a news release Wednesday, the state said that “indoor and outdoor gatherings at private residences will be limited to no more than 10 people. The limit will be implemented due to the recent prevalence of COVID spread resulting from small indoor gatherings including Halloween parties. These gatherings have become a major cause of cluster activity across the state.”
“If you look at where the cases are coming from, if you do the contact tracing, you’ll see they’re coming from three main areas: establishments where alcohol is served, gyms, and indoor gatherings at private homes,” Cuomo said in a statement.
“The reason we have been successful in reducing the spread in New York is we have been a step ahead of COVID. You know where it’s going; stop it before it gets there. And you know where it’s going by following the science. This is the calibration that we’ve talked about: increase economic activity, watch the positivity rate — if the positivity rate starts to go up, back off on the economic activity. It was never binary — economic activity or public health — it was always both.”
“The rules are only as good as the enforcement. Local governments are in charge of enforcement,” he continued.
“There are only two fundamental truths in this situation: it’s individual discipline and it’s government enforcement. Period. End of sentence. I need the local governments to enforce this.”
Even in a news release, they can’t make Andrew Cuomo sound breviloquent. But I digress.
Leading the charge here is Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (don’t you dare call her AOC!), whose turkey day plans were reported on Thursday by Politico’s Erin Durkin:
.@AOC Thanksgiving plan: She and her family will all cook from the same recipe, then eat over Zoom.
— Erin Durkin (@erinmdurkin) November 12, 2020
I’m guessing cable news broke into normal programming to report on this one.
Will they be using a dry rub? Tenting the turkey with tinfoil? If they’re going to deep fry it, will they be Zooming that, too? Inquiring minds want to know.
Well, anyway, AOC made sure everyone knew she was keeping positive about this development.
“Time to get creative, folks!” she said, quote-tweeting Durkin’s original tweet.
Time to get creative, folks! https://t.co/EyCvDNzpWv
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 13, 2020
This was some of the reaction, which shouldn’t have been unexpected:
This thanksgiving I had the creative idea to denounce your party’s ridiculous suggestions and mandates and throw a MASSIVE bash. My big family is going to gather just a couple feet apart (about a table’s distance) and we’re going to laugh and SING, and there’s nothing you can do.
— Carlos Madrigal (@ThinkMadrigal) November 13, 2020
I will do as I please, my government will NEVER tell me how to live my life, especially you. And you are not kidding anybody, your family on zoom??? Right.
— MamaBus (@MamaBus) November 13, 2020
This will be my largest Thanksgiving gathering yet
— J.Maxx (@Libertarian247) November 13, 2020
We’re getting really creative in our household.
We’re having about 20 people over. They’re each going to bring side dishes and we’re going to make the staples of Thanksgiving dinner.
No one will wear a mask. And we’re going to laugh and sing.
I knew we could make this work!
— President-elect John Dennis (@RealJohnDennis) November 13, 2020
Here’s the thing. Many of us will, unfortunately, be taking a page out of this gentleman’s book on Thanksgiving:
You’re a LOT more creative than me. 🙂 I’m getting Cracker Barrel takeout and I’m going to eat it with my cat. pic.twitter.com/frRVU6ilKD
— Matt McCartney (@BigMattMcC12) November 13, 2020
Even if we wanted to have the kind of good ol’ fashioned Thanksgiving we’d ordinarily have, that’s pretty much off the table because of garden-variety restrictions, air travel issues or relatives who simply would have avoided large gatherings without official guidance anyhow.
Most of us would probably be meeting in small groups locally — likely less than 10 people. We could manage on our own.
Thanks to government restrictions, what’s going to happen for most people is … exactly what was going to happen before. They’ll stay at home or go to small gatherings.
There’s likely to be a contingent of people who’ll be swayed by the idea of having Zoom Thanksgiving Day dinners where they all cook the same thing. There’s another contingent of people, however, who’s likely to flout coronavirus restrictions specifically because they’ve been told they can’t do Thanksgiving like normal.
Meanwhile, the capacity of law enforcement to do anything about this seems limited in this situation — particularly in places like New York City, where it’d be nigh impossible for the police to actually discover most gatherings of over 10 people, much less break them up.
But, hey — AOC has scored some virtue-signaling points by letting us all know she’s going to be Zooming her dinner. Way to go.
I’m sure Ocasio-Cortez’s family will miss her this Thanksgiving.
As for the rest of us, we can take some solace knowing that, if we’re going about our regular gatherings this year, AOC will be looking at us like this in spirit:
https://t.co/4D4LVOyYhc pic.twitter.com/MwNIc41Szj
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 12, 2020
That just makes the holidays all the warmer.
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