Daily Broadside | When Pelosi’s Blowout Blew up

Thursday and I’ve got to ask: Just how stupid does Nancy Pelosi think we are? I’ve been thinking about this for a couple of days and it’s sort of grating on me. So what better way to scratch that itch than to write it out?

To quickly summarize, since mid-March the U.S. has been in a fluctuating state of lock downs due to the Chinese Kung Flu Sicken. States have handled the pandemic in different ways, with most allowing businesses to restart under mandates about social distancing and face masks. But in some states, especially those led by Democrats, the people and economies continue to labor under draconian lock down orders.

California is one such state. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, third in line to the presidency and, politically, the most powerful woman in America, represents California’s 12th congressional district, which includes most of the city of San Francisco.

Last week Pelosi was caught on security video getting her hair done—a wash and blowout—in a beauty salon that was supposed to be closed due to stringent San Francisco guidelines. Not only was she at a salon that was operating illegally, but she was seen walking through the building without a mask, also a violation of the city’s guidelines.

The surveillance video was shared with Fox News by the salon’s owner, Erica Kious, who complained about Pelosi enjoying the service of her salon while it remains closed for business due to government regulations. The press and the politicians had a field day over Nancy “Antoinette.” Let them eat cake.

Of course, Pelosi denied that she did anything wrong and claimed that she was “set up.” When asked if she should apologize, Pelosi replied in a way only a practiced politician could: “It was a setup, and I take responsibility for falling for a setup.” Then she said, “I think that this salon owes me an apology for setting me up.”

The audacity.

Pelosi has nattered incessantly for months about wearing masks. She says “real men wear masks” (in a swipe at Trump), that masks are “essentially important” and that members of the House who don’t wear masks commit a “serious breach of decorum.” Masks, she says, “should be mandatory.”

I’m not going to litigate who did what to whom because, frankly, I’m done with this whole Who Flung Poo debacle. Businesses should open up, those who are most at risk should isolate, and masks should be worn by those who care for those at risk. Let the rest of us get back to whatever still exists of “normal.”

But, as Joe Biden would say, “here’s the, you know … the thing.” Whether or not Pelosi was set up, she didn’t follow her own rules. She said one thing and did another. That’s known as hypocrisy or, more colloquially, “a double-standard.”

Jesus addressed hypocrisy at length in Matthew 23, where he excoriated the Pharisees, who “tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.”

That verse easily describes our civic government today. And not just Democrats; that includes Republicans, too. But the hypocrisy Pelosi showed almost always defines the progressive left. Which leads me to the truism: “If the Left didn’t have double-standards, they’d have no standards at all.”