We recently learned that Los Angles Mayor Eric Garcetti was among the prominent elected officials (along with Governor Gavin Newsom and Oakland Mayor London Breed) who showed up at an NFL playoff game and posed maskless with NBA legend Magic Johnson, despite the stadium falling under various mask mandates, some imposed by Garcetti himself. The story appeared to be yet another obvious example of hypocrisy and the “do as I say, not as I do” attitude of too many state and municipal leaders. But now we’re being told that Garcetti had a good excuse for his rule-breaking photo ops at SoFi stadium. You see, when he posed for the pictures he was holding his breath. (Deadline)

Today, at an afternoon press conference to go over safety and security for next week’s Super Bowl, which is also to be held at SoFi, Garcetti said he held his breath to take the photo.

“I’ll take personal responsibility,” said Garcetti in answer to a reporter’s question about the photos, “and if it makes you and everyone else happy — or even the photographs with people where literally I’m holding my breath for two seconds — I won’t even do that.”

Garcetti defended L.A.’s mask mandate because, he pointed out, the region is still experiencing a high rate of transmission.

Eric Garcetti hopes you’re dumb enough to believe that he held his breath every single time he took his mask off at the Rams game. pic.twitter.com/r4FQeE24FY

— Kevin Dalton (@NextLAMayor) February 3, 2022

Garcetti went on to say that he had been “very judicious” in his personal masking, only taking it off for photos and when he had “a glass of water.”

But there were a lot of cameras being used at that game and some of the pictures that have been surfacing since then tell a different story. To be sure, Garcetti was seen wearing a mask at times. But one photo (taken from the rear) shows someone who looks an awful lot like Garcetti greeting both Magic Johnson and Jessica Alba without a mask on. Others show him in the stands, both with and without a mask. Whether he was actively drinking water at those times is unknown.

Garcetti is still sticking to his guns and telling everyone else to continue wearing masks, saying that it’s “important.” Apparently, it’s at least somewhat less important when there are celebrities in the vicinity.

These instances should serve to remind us of something I’ve been questioning from the beginning of all of this mandate madness. Even if you believe that face masks are effective in preventing the spread of the virus (and the jury is still out on that in the medical community), face masks don’t do anything if you’re only wearing them part of the time. Making exceptions for when people are eating or drinking (or posing for pictures with celebrities) shoots holes in the entire theory.

The moment you lower your mask to take a bite of food or a drink of your beverage, you are breathing in unfiltered air. Or you’re breathing out contagions air if you are already infected. There’s no magical intelligence behind the novel coronavirus causing it to say, ‘oh, I’d better not go in that guy’s nose. He’s eating a hot dog.’ If the virus was floating around in the stands near Garcetti, Johnson and Alba, they were all exposed to it. Putting their masks on later would not retroactively remove the virus from their systems.

With that in mind, saying ‘oh, I only took it off for a minute’ simply doesn’t wash. And “holding your breath” is an even more preposterous claim. Are we to believe that Garcetti and John never exchanged a word while greeting each other and posing for pictures? If they were speaking, they were exhaling air.

How stupid do these people think we are? They are flaunting the rules that they impose on others and doing so in a very public fashion. Then, when they get called out over it, they make up these ridiculous stories in an attempt to deflect criticism over their hypocrisy. None of them take their own rules seriously and they’re simply engaging in an extended power trip using a declared state of emergency as cover.