C2 eZ re the washington post.monday, april 6 , 2020
mer (D) banned gatherings of
more than 50, but she exempted
places of worship, as have several
other governors.
States can’t agree on size.
many prohibit groups of more
than 10 residents, consistent with
the Trump administration’s rec-
ommendation. Connecticut and
rhode Island limit groups to five.
Penalties are in place in some
states, like oregon, for violating
stay-at-home orders, including
up to 30 days in jail. Then again,
jails pose a greater risk of the
virus spreading for violators and
law enforcement.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom
(D) views gun stores as nonessen-
tial, leaving discretion up to
county law enforcement. Gun
rights activists filed a federal
lawsuit. New York G ov. Andrew
m. Cuomo (D) viewed gun stores
as nonessential. The NrA filed
suit there, too.
orders are changing by the
day, even hourly. “Some of the
leeway makes sense, and some of
it doesn’t at all,” says Jennifer
To lbert, the Kaiser family foun-
dation’s director of state health
reform, who is constantly updat-
ing state actions.
The situation remains fluid,
even in alcohol-restricted Penn-
sylvania, where the state controls
sales.
on march 17, Gov. Tom Wolf
(D) closed the nearly 600 state
liquor stores and ceased online
orders. The previous day, the
control board registered almost
$30 million in sales, a six-year
record. on Wednesday, due to
pent-up, shelter-in-place, we-
can’t-stay-sober-during-a-global-
pandemic demand, Wolf re-
opened online sales.
But the website was “random-
izing access,” which means it was
a formidable challenge to place
an order on Thursday. And on
friday. And, then again, on
S aturday.
[email protected]owns The Post.)
At some organizations, nones-
sential employees have been laid
off. At shuttered Disney theme
parks, nonessential staffers
learned Thursday they will be
furloughed April 1 9. In other
companies, “nonessential”
means working from home in
soft pants and socks, and may be
preferable to “essential,” which
requires reporting to offices.
But state orders are where the
most confounding conflicts re-
side. Despite mounting coronavi-
rus cases and criticism for failing
to curtail spring-break revelry,
florida Gov. r on DeSantis (r) did
not issue a “safer at home” order
and declare state beaches closed
until Wednesday. miami Beach
and fort Lauderdale closed their
seashores back in mid-march.
michigan Gov. Gretchen Whit-of funyuns?
Is it essential to keep ordering
more stuff, especially when the
essential stuff, like thermome-
ters, is back-ordered until June?
Amazon warehouse workers in
michigan walked off the job
Wednesday, requesting that the
facility be closed. They protested
filling nonessential orders and, in
a video that went viral, sex toys in
particular.
“Dildos are not essential
items,” said employee mario
Chippen in the video. “Books for
kids, yes, but dildos? No.”
Amazon told The Washington
Post in a statement that “we’re
not stopping or slowing down
orders where we already have
stock and where those orders do
not prevent us from shipping
priority items.” ( Amazon founder
and chief executive Jeff BezosHampshire, a spokesman f or Gov.
Chris Sununu (r) cited funerals.
“In many ways, it is a virtue
and a tribute to the way we make
decisions about public safety o n a
local level,” s ays robert Inman, a
professor emeritus of finance at
the University of Pennsylvania’s
Wharton School. “Do you worry a
lot about close contact in mon-
tana the way you might worry
about it in New Yo rk City? Imple-
mentation is going to vary com-
munity to community based on
geography and how people live
their lives.”
Essential has become an elas-
tic concept — not just a state
classification but a philosophical
question. Is takeout essential? At
the supermarket, where we put
ourselves at risk for germs and
contact anxiety, is that fifth box of
penne essential, that second bagsovereign powers are profound,”
says Arizona State law professor
James Hodge, director of the
Center for Public Health Law and
Policy. “one of the core mandates
of that power is to protect the
public’s health.”
ordinarily, natural disasters
like hurricanes, floods or wild-
fires strike a specific state or
region. “But never before in mod-
ern history have all 50 states
simultaneously declared an
emergency,” Hodge says.
During the pandemic, regional
distinctions fall by the wayside,
with contiguous states often go-
ing their own way. Some states,
such as Arkansas, North Dakota
and South Dakota, have yet to
issue stay-at-home orders or re-
strict businesses (at least as of
press time). Asked why florists
are considered essential in Newconsidered an essential business
or service can even vary from
municipality to municipality
within a state, since density poses
greater risk.
Unsurprisingly, there is dis-
cord between some governors
and mayors, particularly when
they are members of opposing
parties, s ometimes when they are
not.
A beauty of an intrastate battle
raged in Arizona over salon ser-
vices. Gov. Doug Ducey, a repub-
lican, declared “personal hygiene
services,” such as hair and nail
salons, essential.
He did not clarify why. The
very nature of “personal hygiene”
requires proximity. Try snipping
locks or lacquering nails at the
recommended safe distance of six
feet.
Arizona’s Democratic mayors
lashed out at Ducey for being too
lax and imposed more austere
guidelines. He responded by bar-
ring them from enforcing stricter
orders than the state. When he
issued a state stay-at-home order
last week, personal hygiene ser-
vices remained on the list of
essential businesses.
“I don’t know what message it
sends when manicures are essen-
tial,” Phoenix mayor Kate Gallego
told a local radio station. “There
are so many holes in this you can
drive a freight train through it.”
on friday, Ducey told the sa-
lons to close.
Times are tense. Politics are
constant. Logic is often elusive.
Battles are bound to occur in
matters concerning religious
freedom, the Second Amend-
ment, alcohol, marijuana and
now, it seems, hair and nails. (Not
to mention abortion, which some
states are deeming an unneces-
sary procedure.)
“States in our federal system
are sovereign governments. They
have sovereign powers, and these
essentials from C1
What’s ‘essential,’ anyway? States have very different ideas.
ringo h.W. chiu/associated press
People outside a gun store in Culver City, Calif., on March 15. Gov. Gavin newsom views gun stores as nonessential during the pandemic.levity may take an unpredictable
turn, as it did Thursday when, in
his briefing cameo, Chris Cuomo
described a feverish
hallucination to his brother.
“ You came to me in a dream —
in a ballet outfit, you were
dancing in the dream waving a
wand and saying I wish I could
[make it] go away.” Employing
his trademark deadpan
expression, the governor stated
there might be some
“metaphorical reality” t o Chris’s
vision and pondered the mental
toll of the disease on the man he
calls his best friend.
The Cuomo Brothers show
may get darker, as these dire days
tick past, but it’s hard to imagine
it getting much weirder.
[email protected]For more by Margaret sullivan visit
wapo.st/sullivaneditor and former CNN executive
mark Whitaker said in a recent
interview with the Associated
Press.
And so it seems: The ratings
for “Cuomo Primetime” more
than doubled from their average
in m arch of 2019 to 2.8 million on
Tuesday, shortly after his positive
diagnosis was announced.
Before the diagnosis — and
before the New York death toll
moved into the thousands —
Andrew Cuomo’s appearances on
his brother’s show were partly an
excuse for fraternal sparring over
who’s really mom’s favorite. (The
nation is now on a first-name
basis with 88 -year-old matilda;
as well as Andrew’s 22-year-old
daughter, michaela, who
sometimes appears at his
briefings.)
These days, with the death toll
soaring and fevers raging, theIt’s true, in theory
interviewing one’s brother isn’t a
journalistic practice to be eagerly
sought.
Still, the familial episodes have
served a worthwhile purpose —
giving Andrew Cuomo another
venue to get his “stay home”
message across to New Yorkers,
and perhaps all Americans.
And, as of a few days ago, Chris
Cuomo’s own experience with the
disease may help people
understand how difficult it is to
have even a mild case.
“It was like somebody was
beating me like a piñata, and I
was shivering so much that... I
chipped my tooth,” he said,
describing one agonizing night
with the illness.
“I wouldn’t call it reassuring,
but I think it’s something that
people want to know and to see
and to hear,” f ormer Newsweekviews from a White House
podium, this is pretty harmless
stuff. It’s akin, perhaps, to New
York Times columnist maureen
Dowd occasionally turning over
her column to her conservative
brother — not exactly a case for
the journalism-ethics police to
come battering down any doors.
(Dowd observed recently that the
dinner-table vibe of the
gubernatorial briefings was
causing viewers to “crave Chianti
and meatballs.”)
Cuomo’s show, like other cable
prime-time programming, is not
straight news coverage any more
than this column is. It has to be
considered as commentary or
opinion-journalism, like
mSNBC’s rachel maddow or fox
News’s Tucker Carlson. In other
words, it must be truthful and
fact-based but it gets some
leeway in tone and content.proved too much for competitors
fox News and mSNBC, who cut
away from the New York
governor’s briefing soon after.
others have questioned the
journalistic propriety of
repeatedly interviewing one’s
brother on prime-time TV, as
Chris Cuomo has been doing for
weeks.
Jon Allsop at Columbia
Journalism review, for one,
disapproves. He reasonably
suggests a less fraught approach:
“There are plenty of ways Chris
Cuomo could communicate
about his health with CNN
viewers while also taking time to
recuperate. While he’s out, a
colleague could talk with his
brother.”
But to a nation inured to
nepotism by the likes of first
Son-in-Law Jared Kushner
spouting ill-informed policyKing.”
Not everyone approves of the
Cuomo Brothers show.
“This is something I cannot
wrap my head around,” fabian
reinbold, Washington bureau
chief for a large German news
organization, told me in an email
this week. “It would be
considered highly inappropriate
and corrupt back home.” He was
particularly taken aback by Chris
Cuomo’s choice to actually
participate in Thursday’s news
conference, piped in via
videoconference to hold forth to
the gathered press corps. He
wore a baseball cap emblazoned
with the name of his CNN show,
“Cuomo Primetime,” f urther
blurring the roles of brother and
anchor.
That moment may have
sullivan from C1
Margaret Sullivan
Cuomo brothers’ weird but compelling banter might have some public benefit
about six minutes, with her ador-
able mom as the bailiff. It makes
you wonder if there were any
pitches that Quibi actually reject-
ed.
“Dishmantled,” a cooking
competition, definitely feels like a
show from someone else’s reject
pile. Hosted by Tituss Burgess
(“Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt”), it features two chefs
who must don hazmat suits and
blindfold goggles so they can
have a classic entree shot at them
from a cannon, where it explodes
all over them.
Ta sting the bits of debris, they
have 30 minutes to re-create the
dish, whatever it was, for a panel
of judges. It’s a little gross, a little
weird and perhaps not as much
fun as the creators may have
hoped.
But, strangely, what happens
in “Dishmantled” i s much like the
experience of working one’s way
through Quibi’s lineup. It all just
sort of bursts open, and from
tasting the pieces, I get the feeling
there’s a network in here some-
where.
[email protected]Quibi, a new subscription streaming
service, launches Monday. to sign
up, visit quibi.com.Correia II, who was elected may-
or of fall river, mass., at age 23
and later indicted on a charge of
wire fraud.
As Netflix has already discov-
ered, reality TV can lessen the
stakes somewhat. The g enre also
more easily bends to Quibi’s for-
mat, able to present and execute a
concept quite efficiently in fewer
than nine minutes. Executive
producer Jennifer Lopez’s
“thanks a Million” is a treacly
but interesting charity show in
which a celebrity performer sur-
prises everyday, deserving people
with $100,000 in cash. (Lopez
kicks it off; additional episodes
feature Kevin Hart, Nick Jonas
and others.)
The catch, Lopez tells her re-
cipient (in the first episode, it’s a
San Diego single mom with a
daughter who has cerebral palsy),
is that they have to give half of the
money to another deserving per-
son. “It’s important to look for
any opportunity to express grati-
tude,” Lopez explains. “It’s about
paying it forward.”
So $50,000 then gets paid for-
ward as $25,000. for a hopeful
moment, I thought maybe
“Thanks a million” intended to
pay it along to the point that
someone was giving someone
else $1.52, and perhaps include
just a brief word about how the
tax liability works out on all this.
Alas, it’s mainly just a sunshine
infusion, designed to make every-
one feel better in the most fleet-
ing way possible.
Then there's “Chrissy’s
Court,” in which ubiquitous ce-
leb Te igen judges intentionally
ridiculous court grievances, inting a trap door beneath its cre-
ators, writers and performers and
then handing us the button so we
can hastily decide whether to
drop them or not.
Watching Quibi makes me feel
less like a viewer and more like a
network executive who is trying
to decide which pilot episodes get
the green light and which don’t.
These all feel like shows that
could be, or might have been.
Have they already been passed
over by another network? As a
critic, knocking them can feel
somehow unfair.
That said, nothing can class up
a struggling programming slate
quite like documentaries, two of
which stand out: “nightGowns,”
a docuseries that follows the life
and work of “ruPaul’s D rag race”
champion Sasha Velour; and
“Run this City,” which chroni-
cles the rise and fall of Jasiel“Flipped” stars Will forte (“The
Last man on Earth”) and Kaitlin
olson (“It’s Always Sunny in Phil-
adelphia”) as a delusional couple,
Jann and Cricket, determined to
become the next house-flipping
stars on an HGTV-like network.
Plunging in, they acquire a
dilapidated ranch house in the
middle of a desert and, during
their demolition phase, find sev-
eral hundred thousand dollars
stacked behind the drywall. Said
cash belongs to a drug cartel and,
well, the funny fuse just won’t
light. The characters, as written,
don’t deserve the sort of commit-
ment that forte and olson bring
to the party. It’s a dud.
or is it? As both a critic and a
viewer, I find that Quibi’s struc-
ture too easily invites a snap
judgment. It renders the hard
work of making a TV show into a
more ephemeral experience, put-Thankfully, what seems like a
dreary and possibly hapless se-
ries that glamorizes suicidal ide-
ation instead shifts into the tried-
and-true plane crash survival sto-
ry. Yes, the airliner smacks into a
snowbound mountain peak; Paul
and Jane are the only survivors.
He’s determined to live, but she
still wants to die. “Please just stop
being an a--hole!” she screams at
him as he tries to convince her to
get up and go on. Thus concludes
the third episode (out of an even-
tual 12). I suppose she musters
some desire to live.
Hemsworth, meanwhile, defi-
nitely wants to beat death in
“Most Dangerous Game,” an ac-
tion-thriller in which he plays
Dodge Ty nes, a financially des-
perate Detroit real estate devel-
oper who has just learned he has
a brain tumor — and no health
insurance. Instead, he signs up to
be the prey in a high-dollar hu-
man hunt, overseen by a mysteri-
ous game master (Christoph
Waltz of “Inglourious Basterds”),
with the promise of a big payoff if
he can survive the game.
It’s a hackneyed idea, but a
suitably classic one, which plays
right into Quibi’s strengths — by
the third episode, the hunt is on,
with the odds stacked against the
hero. It’s not outstanding TV, but
it does have the polish of some of
those elaborate, episodically nar-
rative advertisements that BmW
and others tinkered around with
back when Internet marketing
was new. Now it just bills itself as
entertainment.
Elsewhere on Quibi’s menu,
there are more disappointments
than delights. A comedy calledthem. They are expertly diced,
refined and tightly edited in a
way that convinces a viewer that
it’s easier to keep watching than
to consciously click away.
Even if your interest may wane,
your eye notices there’s only 90
seconds left, so you might as well
finish this episode. After which,
why not start another? repeat
cycle, mindlessly, until you’ve fin-
ished a whole series.
But are Quibi’s shows any
good? objectively, they’re not
that great, so far. But they are fast
(and sometimes furious) and, if
the game has become one of
quantity over quality (thanks,
Netflix), then Quibi cannot be
written off as merely some
strange experiment in modern
entertainment packaging. The
frenetic format feels spot-on,
even if Quibi’s launch is taking
place amid a national pandemic
that requires Americans to stay
home and try to calm down, for
once. Designed for people who
are always on the go, it will
instead be greeted by an audience
that has nowhere in particular to
be.
“survive” is one of Quibi’s two
marquee scripted dramas. It s tars
Turner (“Game of Thrones”) as
Jane, a suicidal young woman
coming to the end of her stay at
psychiatric rehab center. Still in-
tending to kill herself (and con-
vincing her doctor otherwise),
Jane boards a flight home. Even
though she’s met a cute seatmate,
Paul (Corey Hawkins), Jane re-
treats to the plane’s bathroom to
take an overdose of pills.
notebook from C1
The shows aren’t great, but Quibi’s fun-size format is something to watch
Janis pipars/Quibi
sophie turner stars in “survive,” one of Quibi’s marquee series.The
Reliable
SourceHelena Andrews-Dyer and Emily Heil
have moved on to new assignments at
The Post. A search is underway for a
new Reliable Source columnist. The
column will return.