This Lesbian Bar In Massachusetts Ended Their Mask Mandate. All Hell Broke Loose.

Matt Walsh (0:00)

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We've established a pattern on this show, as I'm sure you've noticed, and the pattern goes like this. I bring up some kind of current event or cultural issue, I explain the event or issue, and then I offer my analysis of said event or issue. And that last step, the analysis, is typically very important because without it, I would just be reporting on things that are happening. And that would make me a reporter or a journalist, which is somehow a species even more debased than podcaster. And so to avoid any specious charges of journalism, I like to color my recounting of events with my own opinion, as opposed to journalists who come to think of it do the exact same thing. However, on rare occasion, there is a circumstance so momentous or bizarre or extraordinary that it leaves almost no room for subjective analysis. All I can do in these cases, if I'm going to speak of it at all, is simply relay it to you in stupefied amazement. So for example, if aliens landed in my backyard, or if I went hiking in the woods and I happened to see Bigfoot dash through the trees riding a unicorn or something, all I would be able to do is just report the event, and all you'd be able to do is listen and conclude that I'm a schizophrenic lunatic just as you'd always suspect it. But the point is, I wouldn't have much of a take to offer. The event would speak for itself. That is the situation that we find ourselves in today. Thanks to a now infamous article this week in the Boston Globe. Now, this article is not about Bigfoot, although it does feature a number of people who, one can assume, probably bear a striking resemblance. Instead, the article has this title, A Western Massachusetts lesbian bar required KN95 masks. When it changed the rules, all hell broke loose. Last stitch bar in Greenfield wanted to build community, they got a firestorm instead. Now, I'll reiterate here that this article is from this week, and this week did occur in the year 2026 We have not entered a time warp that sent us barreling back to 2021 So this is a firestorm over a relaxed mask mandate in the current year AD. So already we have a situation that's obviously quite funny, but it gets so much better or so much worse, depending on whether you're cynical enough to find the collapse of Western civilization somewhat amusing, as I do. I fear that if I try to summarize the article, you'll be deprived of the Alice in Wonderland journey that those of us who read the entire thing experienced. And so we're going to go through this piece by piece.

Bear with me, here goes.

Quote, the August 31st Instagram post from Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, a lesbian bar in Greenfield, was upbeat, teasing a new DJ lineup and a volunteer meetup. But partway down the Rainbowhued post, labeled Updates, was a sentence that would splinter the queer community in this small pioneer valley city and beyond. It's with love, we inform our immuno-compromised disabled divas, we'll be opening Saturday nights as mask optional, wrote Last Ditch. Previously patrons were required to wear a well-fitted KN95 mask or better at all times. The new policy was not received with love. Now I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that immuno-compromised disabled divas sounds like the worst 70s disco band of all time. You're also wondering what KN95 or better means. What would be better? A gas mask, a hazmat suit, a full scuba diving outfit? Maybe those are all safer alternatives, I don't know. Of course, if you're really serious about public health, then another option is to have your lungs surgically removed so that you aren't expelling or breathing in any infected air at all. And those are all perfectly valid points, but let's stay on task, we've barely started reading on. The new policy was not received with love. Just say you're being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with, wrote one commenter. People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience, posted another. I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ableists, wrote a third. The thread grew to 442 comments, some supportive but many furious. People running the bar were accused of being ableist, eugenicist even, for relaxing their signature policy in the face of what commenters consider an ongoing pandemic. Greenfield has not reported any COVID cases in more than two months.