Veteran actor, comedian, screenwriter, and director Rob Schneider shared a satirical tweet on October 17, mocking California Governor Gavin Newsom’s overreaching Thanksgiving coronavirus guidelines. It was fitting that Schneider unleashed his satiric tweet on a Saturday, since he is well known for his roles in the early 1990s on Saturday Night Live.
The pre-holiday “Guidance for Private Gatherings” that Schneider ridiculed were issued by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) on October 9, under a heading bearing the names of CDPH Director Sandra Shewry and Governor Newsom. Among the rules listed in the guidance were:
• Gatherings that include more than three households are prohibited.
• Gather outdoors: “Gatherings that occur outdoors are significantly safer than indoor gatherings. All gatherings must be held outside. Attendees may go inside to use restrooms as long as the restrooms are frequently sanitized.”
• The gathering space “must be large enough so that everyone at a gathering can maintain at least a 6-foot physical distance from others (not including their own household) at all times.”
• Shared items should not be used during a gathering. (Presumably, you cannot share a piece of your homemade pie with someone from another family who thinks it looks delicious.)
• People may remove their face coverings briefly to eat or drink as long as they stay at least six feet away from everyone outside their own household, and put their face covering back on as soon as they are done with the activity.
• Singing, chanting, shouting, and physical exertion significantly increases the risk of COVID-19 transmission, therefore singing, chanting, and shouting are strongly discouraged.
In his tweet, Schneider posed a hypothetical scenario to illustrate how ludicrous these “guidelines” were:
This was not the first time that Schneider used satire to point out Newsom’s irrational policies. On October 13, he tweeted critical remarks at Newsom for closing wineries across the state — except for those he owns. At a time when California wine country was overrun by a series of out-of-control wildfires, Schneider tweeted a mock review of the wine produced at Newsom’s winery:
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