THE RETURN OF JUST-THE-TIP.

 You know, in addition to my five-day-a-week gig at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down (Subscribe! Cheap!) I also follow and comment on daily events at Twitter (Follow! Gratis!), which is fun but somewhat saps the strength I would need for more longform observations of life's passing parade. But here's something I noticed that I really wanted to make a point of. 

At National Review, Charles Two Middle Initials Cooke is one among many wingnuts enraged by last night's Met Gala. But while most of them are (as usual) obsessed with hatewank object Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez ("Twitter erupts over Ocasio-Cortez's 'Tax The Rich' dress at Met Gala: 'Hypocrisy of our ruling class,'" ejaculates Fox News), Cooke is mad that the help was masked:

The photographs from last night’s event at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City show a host of celebrities — including New York Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Carolyn Maloney — enjoying themselves without masks while the staff that are waiting on them are all masked up.

Why?

Guests at the event were obliged to be vaccinated. But so, per New York City rules, were the staff...

Never rule out willful obtuseness, but most people in big cities know that staff -- for example, waiters at restaurants -- are typically masked, while guests often are not -- for example, when they're eating food served by the masked servers. At the Gala, the guests were basically doing a photo shoot (what other purpose does the event serve?), hence their masklessness. 

As for the staff, it may be they're cool with being masked because it helps protect them from assholes who don't follow the rules, which service workers know allll about. 

You get some idea why Cooke is making this absurd stretch in his finale:

Is the science different for famous people, perhaps?...

If, as the president claims, unvaccinated people pose a risk to vaccinated people, then the Met chose to put its guests at risk — and those guests, by declining to mask up, went along with it.

"As the president claims." 

See, this is a variation on what I used to call Just-The-Tip Trumpers -- which, come to think of it, has always been overrepresented at National Review. Many, many conservatives have gone over entirely to COVID-hoax horse-dewormer madness, but the manicured magazine types like Cooke need to preserve their credibility with donors, newspaper editors, and Sunday morning talk show bookers. So they instead go the Just-The-Tip route -- for example, they may assure you they personally believe vaccines and masks work, maybe possibly, but liberals who say they do are big hypocrites, which they show either by failing to wear a mask or by wearing masks too much or by failing to acknowledge it's really black people making us all sick --  so, really, when you think about it, it's the MAGA people refusing treatment and getting hospitalized who have the better part of the argument. 

And the Met Gala is perfect for this routine. Look, liberals wearing fancy clothes -- they're for the "working man" so they're supposed to dress like extras in a Pudovkin movie! They think they's sumpin' better'n you, but them Hollyweird sissies are as barefaced as Cousin Cyrus at a Kid Rock concert! So tie their inappropriate glamour to COVID, and presto -- you've done your bit for the Cause without having to get down in the manure with the Base.

UPDATE: They just can't quit her -- National Review has a story headlined "Conservative Watchdog Files Ethics Complaint against AOC over Met Gala Attendance," which sounds very very serious but -- well, let alicublog commenter mortimer2000 tell it:

[National Review says] The American Accountability Foundation has filed an ethics complaint calling for a probe into whether Ocasio-Cortez accepted an “impermissible gift” to attend the gala or violated any campaign finance laws, according to Fox News.... “Without prompt investigation and enforcement of Congressional Rules, the American people are likely to lose faith in the ability of Congress to police its members,” the complaint says.

You will be shocked to learn that The American Accountability Foundation consists of two deeply not-just-the-tip Republican operatives -- veterans of the Trump administration, the Cruz for President oppo program, and Ron Johnson's staff, among other swamps.

Keep up the good work, AOC! They're obsessed with you.

Heh, indeed, get it.