Celebrities and the Media Shouldn't Sneer at Coronavirus Lockdown Protesters

The gatherings are ill-advised but understandable given the harms of government-enforced shutdowns.

In their desperation to get back to work, some Americans are taking to the streets to demand that the government end the quarantine. Comedian Patton Oswalt is unsympathetic.

"Anne Frank spent 2 years hiding in an attic and we've been home for just over a month with Netflix, food delivery & video games and there are people risking viral death by storming state capital buildings & screaming, 'Open Fuddruckers!'" he tweeted on Saturday.

This is hardly Oswalt's first display of smug liberal condescension: His tweet denouncing Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann as a "leering, privileged little shit" was one of the most vile celebrity attacks on the wrongly maligned teenager.

It may be trivially simple for the Emmy Award-winning comic—and voice of Remy in Pixar's Ratatouille—to stay at home, watch Netflix, order carry-out, and play video games for a few weeks. (Writer and podcaster Bridget Phetasy compared Oswalt to Marie Antoinette's apocryphal indifference toward the hungry masses, tweeting: "Let them eat kale!") But many auto mechanics, coffee baristas, and small business owners can't afford this so easily. They are watching their financial situations become more and more precarious with each day that extreme social distancing continues. Oswalt suggested that the uncultured rubes are crazy to want Fuddruckers to reopen; people whose livelihoods depend upon places like Fuddruckers might see things differently.