We Can Chew Gum and Walk at the Same Time

This post is about two things that sort of have nothing to do with each other.  But the title unites them.

Last night, I got an e-mail from Art Gonzalez.  He highlighted part of a comment I made, in response to someone else's comment, in the immediately preceding post.  The part of my response he highlighted was about the "four losers" on the current Commission.  Art (correctly) assumed I meant he was one of the four losers.  He then went on, as any elementary school kid would, to tell me I'm the biggest loser in the Village, and that no one reads this blog.  ("I'm rubber, and you're glue, and whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you."  That kind of level.)  He went on to remind me that he had requested months ago that I remove him from the new post circulation, but that I apparently didn't do it, or didn't do it successfully, and he was still getting the notices.  He tells me that now, months after he requested to be removed.  He added that I shouldn't have said he was a loser on the Commission.  He says I should have said that he contributes nothing, and he would have respected this as my opinion (with which he did not, by the way, disagree, even though I told him that if he thinks I'm wrong, he should remind me of his contributions.  He did not respond.)

The thing is that if Art isn't interested in what I say, then why does he read it?  And he had to do more than that.  He had to read the post, the comments, and the replies to the comments.  I pointed all of that out to Art -- whom I personally like -- and I pointed out that in asking me to remove him from the new post announcement circulation (which I have now successfully done), he was asking me to save him from himself, since if he becomes aware of a new post he doesn't want to read, he will be compelled to read it, and the comments, and the replies to comments, essentially against his own will.  The only way I can prevent Art from doing what he says he doesn't want to do is to be sure he doesn't know there's a new post.  I'm not sure that's my job.  But, as I said, it's also not my intention to be in anyone's face, and if he doesn't want to know there's a new post -- if ignorance is bliss for Art -- then I oblige.  Although I also pointed out to Art that his being a loser on the Commission -- having run for a job he didn't want to do -- is his choice.  I said Art was a loser, but I didn't make him one.  The fact is that Art's failings took me completely by surprise, and as I reminded Art, when I ran at the same time he did, I strongly encouraged voters to vote for him, Mac, and me.  And I put myself last on the list.

The point is that Art should be able to delete e-mails that are not of interest to him, or, if they somehow are of interest to him, he shouldn't blame me for the fact that he delves into them.  He ought to be more independently capable of running his own life and functioning.

Today on the radio, I heard stories about Joe Biden's having said the coronavirus/COVID pandemic is over.  That's what the announcers and discussants said Biden said, but that's not what he said.  They invented Biden's position about the pandemic.  What he said -- they played the recording of it -- was that the pandemic is over, but we still have problems with COVID.  (And I heard this on the local NPR station, not some right wing functionary network.)  Now I have to admit that what Biden said, assuming that's all he said, didn't make entire sense. How is the pandemic over if we still have problems with COVID?  What did he mean by putting it this way?  But no one asked him that.  They just reported, and then savaged, half of his comment.  There were then discussants, including some doctor named Robert Wachter, who said the rate of coronavirus infection has come down greatly, and Dr Wachter said -- I'm just quoting here -- the pandemic is over when we think it's over.  It was unclear what, exactly, that meant, either, but people were saying there are now 400-500 COVID deaths a day, instead of many more than that, as was true previously.  So maybe Dr Wachter, who also wasn't asked, meant that it would not be rational to conclude that the pandemic is over when there are zero deaths per day, so someone has to choose at what level of morbidity and mortality it would be fair to say the pandemic is over.  It was in this extended report that someone said, regarding how to gauge progress against the coronavirus, that "we can chew gum and walk at the same time."

Chewing gum and walking at the same time sounds easy, but maybe Art Gonzalez, and people who deal with what other people say, and have to conceptualize conclusions from it, have to be a little more open-minded, or tolerant, or even just inquisitive.  Short cuts and sound bites are tempting, but they're so often wrong.