The following letter was published in this week’s issue of the Gazette.

To the editor:
We have become accustomed to the daily excuses as to why some people are exempt from mask requirements, the winner being Los Angeles’ Mayor Garcetti saying it was ok for him to go maskless since he can hold his breath.

Criticism from the common folk is met with throwback 50s sexism from Ms. Ocasio-Cortez (“Republicans are mad they can’t date me”) or that favorite go-to of charging your opponents with racism, as when Stacey Abrams’ spokeswoman fired back by claiming that a maskless Ms. Abrams was being criticized because she was at a Black History Month event.

The power dynamic is even more clear at gatherings of the elite, such as campaign fundraisers at the Michelin-starred French Laundry ($300 per person, wine not included) or the Met Gala ($30,000 per ticket). At the French Laundry, VIPs such as the Governor of California partied maskless while the servant waiters humbly toiled in masked deference. At the Met Gala, the omnipresent Ms. Ocasio-Cortez staged a scene worthy of Marie Antoinette: an over-the-shoulder smirk at the camera, while at her feet (literally) a masked “Black woman immigrant designer” fitted AOC in a gown logoed “Tax The Rich.”

By those standards, the Croton government photo this week is tame stuff. But the point is the same.

The photo shows the staff lined up wearing red to raise awareness for heart disease in women. Save for two people, the rest are maskless. Of course, most of us would not have been aware of the fact that almost nobody wears a mask in the Municipal Building. That is because unlike the French Laundry or the Met Gala, our Croton Municipal Building is a secure fortress: much like a drawbridge over the moat of a medieval castle, a static-filled intercom system ensures that the taxpayer serfs of Croton are banned from entering the building.

Outside the sealed doors of the Municipal Building is a different story. I heard of three incidents in the last two weeks alone.

The first involved a Croton store with one patron inside. A new patron entered and rather than wait in the otherwise-empty store, decided to get into a mask argument with the first patron. The new patron retreated to a safe social distance after his target proposed applying a mask to his adversary in a manner which would have been anatomically painful if not impossible.

In the second instance, a Croton resident eating at a local diner heard a woman picking up a to-go order saying she wasn’t feeling well. The resident took this as a justification for demanding that the woman disclose her vaccination status and test results to the resident. The woman left the restaurant, followed by the resident. It was the resident (!!) who got offended and called police, claiming that the woman had coughed in his face after he pursued her into the parking lot.

The third instance was similar to the second instance in that it involved someone in a food establishment who had nothing better to do than eavesdrop on the next table. A comment about a relative being ill triggered the intervention of the eavesdropper, and inquiries about the health status of the sick relative and the covid status of the relative discussing the matter. In that instance there was no escalation, probably due to the eavesdropper being an adult and the neighboring table being teenagers.

Occupants of the Municipal Building are nice enough folks, but their restricted-access cocoon seems to have led them to do a tone-deaf social media posting. In olden times, it was common for the lord of the manor to go out among the common folk at least one day a year. Sort of like the village fair episode of Downton Abbey. I know that the Municipal Building is open to the public one day per year, but that is on Election Day so that we can go and signify our gratitude by seeking their continued wise rule over us. My thought is to open the Muni Building on at least one day per month, during which even the Muni Building folks would have to follow the same mandates (including mask mandates) as apply to the rest of us.

And to those hall monitor wannabes in Croton: that behavior was scuzzy when you were in fifth grade, and it has not changed now that you got old. Stop listening in on other people’s conversations, and don’t think that you are deputized as a junior G-man (or G-woman), charged with the responsibility to patrol Croton in search of violators. If you see a mask rule violation, report it immediately to the Municipal Building staff—they know all about people refusing to wear masks.

Paul Steinberg