Mayor's Haircut In Stay-At-Home Chicago, City Of Big Whiners

CHICAGO — Mid-pandemic, weeks into a stay-at-home order while new coronavirus deaths double every few days, we're now living in the City of Big Whiners.

"How is it that the Mayor Lori Lightfoot can leave and get a haircut and no one else can?" some writer, a foodie-dreamer named Susan, groaned three times on Twitter to two different TV news outlets.

She was among a chorus of social media crybabies calling Lightfoot a hypocrite for getting her hair styled while constantly calling on folks to practice social distancing and to "Stay home. Save lives."

Some guy who went to my high school seconded Susan the Tweeter's social media grumbling in a private Facebook message: "Maybe you can do a story on this. My wife & I had to close are salon in Lansing, but this is ok?"

Of course it's OK. There's a huge difference between closing hair salons and barbershops, where asymptomatic COVID-19 carriers could cough on strangers, and a lady wearing a mask and gloves trimming mayoral split ends.

It's not the haircut. It's the congregating that's banned in the name of saving lives.

Lightfoot doesn't need anybody to defend herself when reporters demand that she respond to a growing minority of groaners who have grown tired of staying home to save lives.

“I’m the public face of this city. I’m on national media and I’m out in the public eye. I’m a person who, I take my personal hygiene very seriously. As I said, I felt like I needed to have a haircut,” an visibly aggravated Lightfoot said. “I’m not able to do that myself, so I got a haircut."

The mayor couldn't even order a Flowbee, the vacuum-hair clipper hybrid from the '80s that was available in "As Seen On Tv" aisles at Walmart pre-pandemic. Due to coronavirus stay-at-home orders, the Flowbee factory temporarily shut down.

Apparently, even national Flowbee shortage during the coronavirus pandemic was not a suitable excuse for stay-at-home Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa — a millennial ward boss known for prolific complaining on social media — to cut Lightfoot some slack.

"Really? She is under no obligation to look good on national TV. She is under no obligation to book national interviews. But she is under an obligation to follow and promote social distancing in order to save lives," he wrote. "This is a bad example for our city."

To make his point, the alderman claimed he did several interviews with a bad haircut last week. Then, Ramirez-Rosa posted a picture of the bad haircut his partner gave him and engaged in mini Twitter war with a guy who has 18 followers, and common sense.

"Being grilled [about] a haircut when she’s holding a presser to highlight the racial disparity in COVID deaths in our city misses the point," Michael Drew wrote.

And that point is: Stay home. Save lives. Stop whining.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN. He was a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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