Horror novelist Stephen King’s latest hot take on the Covid-19 outbreak has not gone over well online, slamming President Trump’s response team for having the wrong race, age and gender – but netizens advised he stick to fiction.
Weighing in during the president’s national emergency declaration on Friday – where Trump was joined by a group of health officials tapped to help with efforts to contain the spread of the lethal virus – King sagely pointed out the demographic composition of the team, describing it as “all male, all old, and all white.”
Note that Trump’s coronavirus team is all male, all old, and all white.
The uncalled-for observation has drawn a storm of reactions on Twitter, with many criticizing King for dragging the completely unrelated issues of race and gender into the debate over the administration’s ability to stem the health crisis.
Maybe that is because are the experts? Who would you rather have?
With an ever-itchy Twitter finger, King apparently didn’t watch the briefing for long before writing off the team members as too old, male and white – yet there were, in fact, women present. Realizing his error, the author fired off a quick backtrack and a “Whoops … my bad.” But hardly missing a beat, he immediately resumed the tirade, commenting that the “lady with the shawl” looked “so great” next to the other “bozo” team members – while completely ignoring her qualifications.
The good-looking “lady with the shawl,” it turns out, is Dr. Deborah Birx, who was made White House response coordinator for the Covid-19 pandemic, and since 2014 has overseen a $6.6 billion program to combat AIDS in 65 countries under the purview of the State Department. Commenters on social media rushed to inform King of Birx’s credentials, which go far beyond her looks.
She is not “the lady with the shawl”, you sexist moron.
She is Dr Deborah Birx, a world-renowned medical expert and a retired Army colonel who serves as the coronavirus response coordinator in the White House. https://t.co/F7TXH9Griw
Hey @RealSLokhova , take it easy on Stephen. Reality is not his strength, and you shouldn’t blame him for not knowing that Dr. Birx is one of the country’s critical and important leaders in our response to COVID-19. As long as he self-quarantines, we will get through this.
Also present for the national emergency announcement was Seema Verma, who administers the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under the Trump administration, and is the founder and former CEO of health consultancy firm SVC Inc. – another female overlooked by King in his quest for internet approval.
King's efforts to burnish his woke bona fides comes just a few weeks after he was roasted by his fellow liberals over declaring that he valued quality over diversity in matters of art – and forced to recant that heresy. When it comes to the much less serious subject of a global outbreak, however, apparently skin color and sexual anatomy outweigh scientific expertise for the novelist.
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March 13, 2020 at 03:36PM
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‘Write books or shut up’: Stephen King takes heat after criticizing Trump’s Covid-19 response team for being ‘male, old & white’
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March 13, 2020
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