Kyle Smith Whines About Wearing Masks on The Upper West Side

It seems the latest fad among conservatives is to whine about how awful the Upper West Side is. 

Kyle Smith had his turn at NRO yesterday:

On a return visit this weekend to the Upper West Side neighborhood where I’ve lived for more than a quarter of a century, the fear in the air was palpable. The population seemed to be reduced by about half. New Yorkers steer around each other on the sidewalks, some of them walking in the street to avoid passing near a stranger. A lady declined to ride the elevator with me and my children. People are especially terrified of the subway, whose ridership is down 80 percent from normal levels. Friday night, at a time when there would ordinarily be 50 or more people riding on any given car of the 1 train, there were about seven. Downtown was morose, grim, broken. Graffiti (the anarchists’ symbol, “ACAB” for “All Cops Are Bastards”) was much in evidence.

Mask compliance is almost universal on the Upper West Side: easily 90 percent. The area is defined by college-educated white folk over 40. These are rich people, they’re rule-followers, and if following one more rule might help them ace the virus the way they aced every other test in their lives, they’re going to follow it to a T. Mask wearing, like every other habit, is also a kind of class signifier. Less affluent-looking people are far more likely to wear them pulled down like a chin strap. When it’s 85 degrees out and you wear a mask out of doors for any length of time, though, your face starts to sweat, and breathing can become a chore. Because there are so many people on the sidewalk and you can’t avoid passing close to others, you have to spend much more time with a mask on here in the city than in a more sparsely populated place, which makes mask wearing a kind of extra New York tax or burden, along with all of the others. I spent more time wearing a mask in the city this weekend than I did the entire summer on Long Island, which was irritating. Some of the most irritable people on earth now have a major additional reason to be irritable.

There's no question New York City is a far more tense place than it was five months ago, but one would be hard-pressed to find a city in America where that isn't the case. COVID-19 is everywhere in America.

While it appears that Smith is among the 90% of folks on the Upper West Side who are wearing masks, he doesn't much care for it. He calls it a chore, finds it irritating and even likens it to a tax. Well, better to wear a mask than wear a ventilator. Just ask Herman Cain. Oh wait!!! We can't.

It seems to me that Smith would have not done very well during WWII (the conflict Trump thinks the 1918 pandemic ended) when this country was subject to rationing of everything from food, textiles, rubber, gasoline and transportation. 

In the grand scheme of things, Americans haven't been asked to do all that much by comparison. Yet with all the anger and violence that has resulted from being asked to wear a mask I shudder to imagine what would happen if there were rations imposed on coffee, sugar and meat. 

If Smith prefers to attend a Trump rally in Tulsa, a bikers rally in Sturgis, South Dakota or simply go back to Long Island, not wear a mask and pop hydroxychloroquine tablets and think only of himself then he has the luxury to do so. Those of us who remain in Manhattan and on the Upper West Side wear our masks because we must show concern for others.