The Puppet Show Of Normalcy

Plus trouble at Square, Marco Rubio & UFOs, pronouns & book marketing: The Neal Ungerleider Newsletter 6/26/20

Greetings from the Great Lakes, where Los Angeles June Gloom is traded in for some serious cloud action.

Like most of us, I’ve been thinking about COVID-19 a lot lately.

One perspective I heard recently stuck with me. Block Club is a local news site here in Chicago that spoke with restaurant owners about whether they’re opening for indoor dining or not. Chicago and Illinois laws allow for indoor dining at 25% capacity as long as they meet requirements around size, ventilation, and similar things.

Mike Simmons, the co-owner of a small restaurant called Café Marie-Jeanne, nailed it:

“It’s real and it’s deadly and there’s no clear way to prevent the spread [of coronavirus] other than not being around each other […] We’re not really looking to play into this puppet show of normalcy that seems to be wanted right now.”

The puppet show of normalcy. Man, man, man… that is exactly how it feels. Things are weird. We’re in the middle of a pandemic with a virus that either won’t cause any effects in…