Had Sean Hannity last night not made Thomas Friedman’s point for him, Friedman’s often breathless prose might have gone unread, as usual. But Hannity did. In addressing Sarah Palin’s lawsuit against the New York Times over an editorial, Hannity suggested he, too, could sue the Times over an April 2020 article he claims “falsely accused” him as responsible for coronavirus deaths. Or at least issue a demand letter.
Hannity has his rights, dontcha know. Responsibilities? Not so much.
Friedman’s column addresses the Spotify controversy that Neil Young sparked over the platform’s popular Joe Rogan podcast. Sure, Rogan has the right to his opinions, Friedman writes, “but where’s your sense of responsibility to your fellow citizens, and especially to the nurses and doctors who have to deal with the fallout for your words?”
The dispute illustrates how the decoupling of rights from responsibilities is “unraveling our country today.”
Friedman writes:
“We are losing what could be called our societal immunity,” argued Dov Seidman, founder of the How Institute for Society. “Societal immunity is the capacity for people to come together, do hard things and look out for one another in the face of existential threats, like a pandemic, or serious challenges to the cornerstones of their political and economic systems, like the legitimacy of elections or peaceful transfer of power.”
But societal immunity “is a function of trust,” added Seidman. (Disclosure: Seidman is a donor to my wife’s museum, Planet Word.) “When trust in institutions, leaders and each other is high, people — in a crisis — are more willing to sublimate their cherished rights and demonstrate their sense of shared responsibilities toward others, even others they disagree with on important issues and even if it means making sacrifices.”
You are not required to like everyone in your platoon, but duty demands you bear the responsibility of fighting beside and for them. Once, that was considered patriotic. Today, it’s a violation of personal freedom.
Statistics demonstrate how much additional burden the unvaccinated place, not just upon themselves, but upon the hospital staff that have to treat them and watch them die unncecessarily in droves. Rogan’s spread of Covid and vaccine misinformation on his popular podcast further impairs the country’s capacity to end the pandemic. A Rogan podcast from December drew a response from medical experts condemning his promotion of “baseless conspiracy theories” and “false and societally harmful assertions.”
That was Rogan’s right. That was Spotify C.E.O. Daniel Ek’s right. But who was looking out for the doctors and nurses on the pandemic front lines whose only ask is that the politicians and media influencers who are privileged enough to have public platforms — especially one like Rogan with an average of 11 million listeners per episode — use them to reinforce our responsibilities to one another, not just our rights.
Neil Young, in fact. In a statement pulling his music from Spotify, Young wrote, “I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the frontline health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.” Young takes his responsibility to others seriously.
Friedman concludes:
Rogan has vowed to do better at counterbalancing controversial guests. He could start by offering his listeners a 186-minute episode with intensive care nurses and doctors about what this pandemic of the unvaccinated has done to them.
That would be a teaching moment, not only about Covid, but also about putting our responsibilities to one another — and especially to those who care for us — at least on a par with our right to be as dumb and selfish as we want to be.
We might call it the Ayn-Randification of America. Where once we had the ability to pull together and sacrifice in the midst of national crisis, now it’s everyone for themselves. The right has rebranded juvenile behavior and the spreading of misinformation “freedom.” Responsibility, Donald Trump knows, is for suckers.
Don’t Look Up lampooned that national malady. Sean Hannity lives it every day.
900,000 Americans have died during the pandemic.
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