Washington Post Analogizes Gavin Newsom to Marie Antoinette

Over the past week, we have mentioned a couple times that California governor Gavin Newsom violated his own COVID-19 guidelines to attend a birthday dinner for a lobbyist at French Laundry, a swanky $350-a-plate restaurant in the Bay Area. There were a dozen people at the dinner, from several different households, and they dined indoors.

Helaine Olen wrote a column in the Washington Post criticizing Governor Newsom and New York governor Andrew Cuomo for the "contempt" they have shown their constituents in acting like they have all the answers. In the column, Governor Newsom was compared to Marie Antoinette (the queen of France who infamously said of peasants starving for bread to let them eat cake, and was beheaded in the French Revolution):

"The California governor didn’t fall from his throne this week over a matter as pedestrian as cheesecake, but over a haute cuisine meal he shared with 12 people — indoors no less — at the Michelin-starred restaurant French Laundry in the Napa Valley. Yes, the same Newsom whose office recently asked people to put on their mask “between bites” if dining out with family members at a restaurant.

"Pandemic fatigue is a thing, tempers are short all over, and no one likes scolds or hypocrites — especially when it occurs at a Marie Antoinette level of obliviousness — but that’s hardly the only problem here. Americans are at a breaking point, and instead of rising to the occasion, Cuomo and Newsom demonstrated contempt for the people they are responsible for governing."