Virus Nazis Shame Actor Josh Brolin into Apologizing for Visiting His Dad Next Door
Hollywood actor Josh Brolin issued an apology on social media for visiting his father, who is also his next-door neighbor, after he was shamed by hordes of fascist do-gooders on social media.
The “No Country for Old Men” star posted a photo to Instagram last week of him visiting his father, actor James Brolin, and his stepmother, actress and singer Barbra Streisand, at their California home, The Guardian reported.
Brolin was wearing a mask in the photo, which was taken outdoors, and the caption read: “There’s nothing like a good meeting up with family when all you can hear is a distant muffling of what used to be called words.”
Following an avalanche of criticism, according to NBC’s “Today,” the post was deleted and the younger Brolin apologized.
“My father lives next door to us and we had a plan to go see them and not be near them and that plan was broken and that’s our responsibility,” Brolin said in a video apology on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_Fuc_uAfXU/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading
“We were going to pick something up and show [his young daughter Westlyn] the pool because we don’t have a pool and yeah, I think it was irresponsible,” he added.
“You know, it’s hard to be honest sometimes … and say, ‘Maybe I screwed up.'”
“The responses brought me back to my own truth and it’s humbling as hell, man,” Brolin said of the negative comments. “Even if we go overboard and are too protective, at least we’re doing it for a reason.”
But people, including celebrities, should not be shamed into avoiding their families.
The health of each family should be private, and not the business of online commenters or of the government.
While people have generally taken social-distancing guidelines seriously, it’s important to remember that they ought to be just that: guidelines.
Despite various state and local governments using the coronavirus pandemic to surveil citizens with drones, harass families, prevent people from attending religious services and ask residents to tell on each other, there’s an argument to be made that legally, the guidelines we are being ordered to follow are just suggestions.
This is not to say that we should take the virus lightly or stop following public health experts’ guidelines (we should do neither), but only that it could be strongly argued that the U.S. Constitution supersedes government-imposed lockdown orders — national emergency or not.
In fact, a number of lawsuits have been filed arguing just that.
As far as Brolin’s saga goes, the man is a talented actor.
He might even be one of Hollywood’s rumored closeted Republicans.
But, he is also human, and like the rest of us, was probably feeling a bit stir crazy.
(As an aside, if the actor and his wife made sure they and their daughter avoided physical contact with his father and stepmother, I don’t see the harm in him paying them a friendly poolside visit.)
Of course, seeing as how Brolin runs among liberal Hollywood’s elite, he has a thin line to walk.
The entertainment industry has proven it is not tolerant of dissent from its collective championing of progressive causes.
Brolin could have been using the apology to try to get out ahead of any perceived damage he had done by visiting his father and stepmother.
Perhaps Brolin is aware, like many of the rest of us, that the far left’s binary solution to combating the coronavirus is at times nonsensical.
But Brolin quickly he became a target of the online, fanatical (and metaphorical) quarantine police, who are more or less conveying a message that if you don’t stay home and blindly follow government lockdown orders, you are going to die and/or kill others.
And he had to pay the piper for the apparent infraction of saying hello to his family.
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