You'd think it'd be a relief to have Rush Limbaugh absent from his radio hate show, but of course, there's always another dangerous Right Wing Nut Job available to fill the void. Enter Mark Steyn, who filled in for Limbaugh, and decided that it wasn't bad enough that Trump was ringing the highest-pitched dog whistles for anti-Asian bigotry to come running and panting, drooling for scapegoats for COVID-19.
Listening at first, you might think Steyn was going along with the anti-Asian thing, when he singled out San Francisco for mockery. No, dear readers. He makes a hard turn to go elsewhere with it.
https://www.mediamatters.org/rush-limbaugh/limbaugh-guest-host-mark-stey...
MARK STEYN (GUEST HOST): San Francisco has just ordered everyone to shelter in place, just to say, “Stay in your apartment. Don't leave your apartment unless you need to go out to a grocery store or to a pharmacy or to a doctor's.” Why are they doing that? Why is San Francisco the first to do that? Because they’ve got all the gay guys there. It's a big gay town, San Francisco, and they're the ones with all the compromised immune systems from all the protease inhibitors and all the other stuff. And they don't want all the gays dropping dead on the San Francisco mayor's watch. So that's why they've got all that sheltering in place there.
And even if it dropped, they all dropped dead on the San Francisco mayor's watch, if there was a big gay apocalypse, you know, the way this thing is going now, it would be Trump who would get blamed for it anyway. He'd be -- it would be his homophobia that would have struck down all these people in San Francisco. So that's why they've all been ordered to stay home. And it's not easy staying home.
It's the gayz, people!
On a normal day, we shouldn't bother trying to make this make sense. We still shouldn't bother, but hey. We're under quarantine, we're bored, we got time.
San Francisco is the first to shelter in place because "they've got all the gay guys there." They do? So, the gay people in Maryland and New York and Illinois and Oklahoma (yes, you heard me. There are gay people in Oklahoma.) are just illusions, Doug Henning-style? The gay diaspora is very confused to learn that all the gay guys are in San Fran.
Anyhow, according to Steyn, the Mayor doesn't want the entire gay population of San Francisco to drop dead in the streets there for "a big gay apocalypse." Yet, for some reason, he's unhappy with the decision, which I don't get because he says if there WAS the big gay apocalypse "it would be Trump who would get blamed for it anyway."
First off, "Big Gay Apocalypse" sounds like a great name for a band, but as Steyn is describing it, IS NOT ACTUALLY A THING, OKAY?. Secondly, how again would Trump get blamed for it? Because "his homophobia" would have struck them down? Is that how homophobia works? So, like, is there ANY way Steyn would be happy? DON'T shelter in place, and we have a big gay apocalypse for which Trump is unfairly blamed because his homophobia can strike people down. DO shelter in place, and we DON'T have a big gay apocalypse, and Trump doesn't get blamed, so, what's the problem again?
I joke, though, only darkly. We cannot minimize the destructive — even fatal — power of homophobia. Ronald Reagan's legacy demonstrated that chillingly enough, as did the monsters who killed Matthew Shepard. To blame the mayor of San Francisco's attempts to keep ALL of her citizens safe, though, on the notion that she wants to protect ONLY the city's gay population from the "big gay apocalypse" — which, do I need to say again is not a thing? — is just some of the most mind-bendingly stupefying "reasoning" put forth so far.
