Why Nancy Pelosi’s Salon-gate Situation Makes Me Furious at Both Sides

Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi tries to make an appointment with her hair dresser, who is unavailable and refers her to a salon in San Francisco, where pandemic regulations covering beauty parlors are in flux. The shop’s owner tells Pelosi the salon is permitted to serve one patron at a time and invites her in. Pelosi is caught on the salon’s video camera walking from the hair-washing room to the hair-cutting section with her mask momentarily off. The proprietor sends the tape to Fox News and havoc ensues, as media of all political stripes go scurrying to cover what passes for a “scandal,” or at least a newsworthy display of hypocrisy on the Speaker’s part.

Our Republican President, whom you’d think had better things to do, tweets this, among other things:

“Crazy Nancy Pelosi is being decimated for having a beauty parlor opened, when all others are closed, and for not wearing a mask — despite constantly lecturing everyone else. We will almost certainly take back the House, and send Nancy packing!”

In response to microphones in her face, the Speaker says she was “set up.” Fox News quotes the salon owner as saying Pelosi’s claim is “absolutely false.” CNN rushes in to probe the situation with almost as much zeal as it devoted to covering Trump’s quid quo pro to Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskiy, pressuring him to launch a public investigation of Joe Biden in exchange for urgent military aid.

No less a beacon of American journalism than the Washington Post asks “Whether Pelosi should have looked up the restrictions more closely before going into the salon…” Furthermore, WAPO wants to know if Pelosi showed poor judgment by momentarily taking off the face mask she normally wears to walk from the hair-washing station to the hair-cutting chair.

Jumpin’ Jehosaphat! Someone should alert the news media!

Oh. What’s that? They already have?

Well, to paraphrase Strother Martin’s famous quote from “Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here, is failure to exercise a nanogram of proportionality, intelligence or common sense in our news reporting, public debate and national discourse at a time when our society is coming apart at the seams.

Taking this in over the past 24 hours, I couldn’t help being reminded of one particular broadcast of Howard Stern’s radio show during my morning drive to work in the ’90s. Stutterin’ John Melendez, one of the program’s comic stars, would ambush celebrities in public and throw them with absurd and often scatological questions. On this particular day, Melendez confronted the Academy Award-winning actor Anthony Quinn, asking him, “Does it bother you when people speak to you when you’re on the bowl?”

Lots of stars lost it when Melendez caught them off guard with potentially embarrassing lunacy. Quinn calmly responded in a gentle, disarming tone, saying, “You’re a sweet boy. Why don’t you find something more useful to do with your life?”

He didn’t fall for the distraction. He didn’t raise his voice or break his stride. He just continued forward, refusing to dignify the farce.

We’re blowin’ it, America. The Pelosi momentarily unmasked haircut caper is both a symptom and manifestation of it. We’re falling for the distractions. We’re drowning in sound and fury signifying nothing.

I’m angry at the treachery of the salon owner who tricked Pelosi, and I’m outraged at the President, the Republican Party and Fox News for shining a spotlight on such nonsense while ignoring an astonishing and continuous barrage of serious law-breaking by Trump and his enablers. But that’s par for the course. I expect more from the political leaders and top-tier news organizations I support and trust. I look to them to help right the course of the country.

But right now we’ve sadly got more Stutterin’ John and less Anthony Quinn. And time’s running out.