GUEST COLUMN: With Whitmer, it’s do as I say, not as I do

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Meghan Reckling

An ailing father. A concerned daughter. A risky visit across state lines during a pandemic.

It could be anyone, but in this case, it was Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer who undertook a trip to Florida to visit her father, who is ailing.

Does this action deserve condemnation? Of course not. The governor is human, and she wants to be with her dad when his health is poor.

However, what does deserve condemnation are the governor’s many actions and orders that prevented the rest of us from making the same visits to our loved ones during the past 13 months.

How many photographs have we seen of people standing outside windows, on ladders, watching their own parents as they suffered and died in skilled care facilities? How many parents have been forced to choose who will be in the room as their beloved infants and children pass away due to cancer and other tragic conditions?

As someone who is privileged to hear from residents all throughout Michigan, I can assure you it’s not just a handful, or even a hundred. I have taken hundreds of phone calls, wept with hundreds of grieving and concerned daughters, sons, spouses, moms, and dads. There are thousands of families here in Michigan that have been prohibited from seeing their precious loved ones before they passed away, and I imagine they have something to say about this week’s headlines.

The governor — whose husband last year was more concerned about getting his boat into the water than about obeying essential COVID-19 restrictions — has deprived so many Michigan residents of their ability to provide love, comfort, and care to their family members, and yet she freely goes to Florida to visit with her own father when it suits her to do so.

That is more than unconscionable. It is sickening.

Although the governor has refused to share the precise dates of her visit, the fact that it comes at a time when she appears on national television to blame Michigan’s rising COVID caseload on people who are not following state guidelines is of interest. She blames people who traveled out of state and yet travels herself.

She bars Michigan residents from the sides of their dying loved ones but hops on a plane when she wants to visit her own.

It’s yet another case of “do as I say, not as I do” in the Whitmer administration. Indeed, in the Whitmer family.

The governor has made it clear what matters most, and it’s herself. It’s not the sobbing parent, the grieving child, the spouse whose loved one has just died alone while they watched helplessly through a pane of glass. For thousands of families across our state, the option to see their loved one for one last time no longer exists. And to our governor, those experiences are apparently dispensable and worth sacrificing.

But not her own. And that’s a double standard we need to keep in mind next time she places a COVID restriction on the rest of us.

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7 Comments

  1. There is a big difference between going to Florida to see/help an ailing parent and going to Florida on a vacation and bringing back a variant. Yes we all have made decisions during this pandemic but it seems your decisions come out of selfishness. I want to do what I want. I do not care that the Michigan hospitals are now full again with Covid patients because I want to do what I want. This is not a nation who cares for their vulnerable because I will not be told what is a safe action. I want an hair cut., I want a vacation, I do not want to wear s mask, I am more important then the whole. This is the values you now push, the values of I.

  2. The solutions are implied: Public condemnation of The Gretch by the media and to vote her out of office as we keep in mind the double standard (without which The Gretch would have no standards at all). It does take a bit of reading comprehension to pick those out. Condemnation and recollection when it matters are the solutions I see that are clearly proposed.

  3. I agree with every word in this article except these: essential COVID-19 restrictions. The gov’s husband did no harm to anyone by putting his boat in the water. AND NEITHER WOULD ANY OTHER SOUL DOING THE EXACT SAME THING. The flippant manner in which he disregarded his Mrs’ decrees indicated just how silly, arbitrary, and ludicrous they were – which was a service to the rest of the citizens of Michigan most of whom knew it anyway. The restrictions were counter-productive in almost every way and in no way essential.

    The rest of the article is right on. The Gretch is despicable.

  4. And your solution? You just did the same thing! Criticized! Hypocrite. Why don’t you think before you speak! (That’s my solution to your ignorance)

  5. As normal; just criticisms, no solutions. What’s sickening is this article.

  6. Totally corrupt, heartless person. Want her held legally responsible for actions, especially for nursing home deaths but sad part is cant bring comfort to those grieving families

  7. Oh please. She has wept with thousands. She doesn’t have one compassionate bone in her body

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