because they did not impose statewide draconian mandates. Yet that didn’t happen... And because it didn’t happen, theater chains like AMC and others that chose to close down nationwide could reopen at will in those states and come up with their own ways of functioning with an eye toward the safety of their customers and workers – which, given their potential liability if they do not do so thoroughly and their own obvious need to avoid bad publicity and deep personal guilt, is something very much in their self-interest to pursue and secure. In the blue states, the lockdowns have been by fiat and whose leaders are much more interested in telling business owners and others how to do what they should do, on the extraordinarily dubious grounds that they know better how to protect people. That’s because they have listened to public health officials, some of whom seemed to think it was fine for people to go out and protest en masse at the end of May, even as authorities were still punishing people who had the temerity to try and cut someone’s hair. The regulations governing reopening will be more draconian, more costly, and more bureaucratic than anywhere else – and there’s always the prospect that a governor will decide after a week that it’s just too dangerous for the theaters to remain open and then just lock their doors again. The lockdown was largely the result of policies and ideas that emanated in the blue states and their institutions. The epidemiologists who calculated the dangers to the American (and global) body politic and declared that as many as 2 million were likely
The red states are home to everything bad – except, perhaps, when they offer lucrative tax credits to producers so that movies and TV shows will be filmed there. (Georgia is particularly generous, which caused terrible cognitive dissonance last year when an anti- abortion law there caused some Hollywood types to vow never to set foot in the state. Oddly, that profound determination lasted about a week. Tax credits are literally ready money. And an actor has got to eat... at Katsuya, L.A.’s most formidable Japanese restaurant.) And yet, here the movie people are... No business is more in need of a dramatic reopening than theirs, and that reopening will have And yet, here the movie people are... No business is more in need of a dramatic reopening than theirs, and that reopening will have to take place first and foremost in the locales in America that never fully closed. Red states, which are less densely populated as a rule and more generally attracted to an individualistic philosophy that views top-down government mandates with deep suspicion, resisted general lockdown... and were viciously attacked for doing so. We were told to watch in horror as the residents of Texas, Georgia, and Florida would be felled by coronavirus just as the residents of New York City were in April to take place first and foremost in the locales in America that never fully closed.
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July 2020
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