This Lesbian Bar In Massachusetts Ended Their Mask Mandate. All Hell Broke Loose.

The Matt Walsh Show

Matt Walsh discusses a controversial report from the Boston Globe regarding the Last Ditch Bar in Massachusetts relaxing its mask mandate. H

Key takeaways

• Last Ditch Bar in Greenfield faced significant backlash after making KN95 masks optional on Saturday nights.
• Critics accused the bar owners of being 'complicit in a mass disabling event' following the policy change.

Main topics

• Mask mandates
• Intersectionality

Notable quotes

The event would speak for itself.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a satirical critique of what Walsh perceives as

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:04) We've established a pattern on this show, as I'm sure you've noticed. And the pattern goes like this. I bring up some kind of current event or cultural issue. I explain the event or issue, and then I offer my analysis of said event or issue. And that last step, the analysis, is typically very important because without it, I would just be reporting on things that are happening. And that would make me a reporter or a journalist, which is somehow a species even more debased than podcaster. And so to avoid any specious charges of journalism, I like to color my recounting of events with my own opinion, as opposed to journalists who come to think of it do the exact same thing. However, on rare occasion, there is a circumstance so momentous or bizarre or extraordinary that it leaves almost no room for subjective analysis. All I can do in these cases, if I'm going to speak of it at all, is simply relay it to you in stupefied amazement. So, for example, if aliens landed in my backyard or if I went hiking in the woods and I happened to see Bigfoot dash through the trees riding a unicorn or something, all I would be able to do is just report the event. And all you'd be able to do is listen and conclude that I'm a schizophrenic lunatic, just as you'd always suspected. But the point is, I wouldn't have much of a take to offer. The event would speak for itself. And that is the situation that we find ourselves in today, thanks to a now infamous article this week in the Boston Globe. Now, this article is not about Bigfoot, although it does feature a number of people who one can assume probably bear a striking resemblance. Instead, the article has this title. A Western Massachusetts lesbian bar required KN95 masks. When it changed the rules, all hell broke loose. Last Ditch Bar in Greenfield wanted to build community. They got a firestorm instead. Now, I'll reiterate here that this article is from this week, and this week did occur in the year 2026. We have not entered a time warp that sent us barreling back to 2021. So this is a firestorm over a relaxed mask mandate in the current year A.D. So already we have a situation that's obviously quite funny, but it gets so much better. Or so much worse, depending on whether you're cynical enough to find the collapse of Western civilization somewhat amusing, as I do. I fear that if I try to summarize the article, you'll be deprived of the Alice in Wonderland journey that those of us who read the entire thing experienced. And so we're going to go through this piece by piece. Bear with me. Here goes. Quote, the August 31st Instagram post from Last Ditch Bar and Arts Venue, a lesbian bar in Greenfield, was upbeat, teasing a new DJ lineup and a volunteer meetup. But partway down the rainbow-hued post labeled updates was a sentence that would splinter the queer community in this small Pioneer Valley city and beyond. It's with love we inform our immunocompromised disabled divas will be opening Saturday nights as mask optional, wrote Last Ditch. Previously, patrons were required to wear a well-fitted KN95 mask or better at all times. The new policy was not received with love. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that immunocompromised disabled divas sounds like the worst 70s disco band of all time. You're also wondering what KN95 or better means. What would be better? A gas mask, a hazmat suit, a full scuba diving outfit? Maybe those are all safer alternatives. I don't know. Of course, if you're really serious about public health, then another option is to have your lungs surgically removed so that you aren't expelling or breathing in any infected air at all. And those are all perfectly valid points, but let's stay on task. We've barely started reading on. The new policy was not received with love. Just say you're being complicit in a mass disabling event and get it over with, wrote one commenter. People like you kill disabled people in the name of your own leisure and convenience, posted another. I hope your venue gets firebombed for robbing my fellow immunocompromised people of their Saturday plans just to scrape extra revenue from ableists, wrote a third. The thread grew to 442 comments, some supportive, but many furious. People running the bar were accused of being ableist, eugenicist even, for relaxing their signature policy in the face of what commenters consider an ongoing pandemic. Greenfield has not reported any COVID cases in more than two months. I will say that Mass Disabling Event is a much better band name. So there's that. But that aside, keep in mind as we continue that the illustrious Last Stitch Lesbian Bar had only announced a relaxation of the mask policy for one day of the week. And even then, masks are optional, not prohibited. So according to the let's be polite and call it strained logic of these let's be polite and call them fanatically delusional whack jobs. They're only being potentially exposed to deadly COVID fumes on one night of the week. And then only if they choose to go to this bar, which they don't have to. And then only if they also are forgoing their own mask and hazmat suit, which they don't have to. So it seems that even if we make the astronomical leaps of logic required to grant them their underlying premises, you know, that there is a COVID pandemic currently happening and that masks are necessary to protect against it, and that COVID aside, there's any personal protective equipment in the world that can save you from the hellish primeval diseases and afflictions that must cover every square inch of a seedy lesbian bar in Massachusetts, there still wouldn't be any reason to be overly upset at this lesbian bar with its slightly relaxed mask policy on one day of the week out of seven. And yet these people are upset. In fact, they're so upset that they think the bar should be burned down with everyone inside it. In the name of public safety, of course. Note, too, how the person who makes the firebomb threat isn't even trying to justify it using any kind of, like, tortured self-defense argument. Instead, they wish a fiery death on everybody associated with the bar for interfering with, quote, their Saturday plans. I mean, at least the other angry commenters have the decency to pretend that the bar is actively eradicating the entire disabled population or whatever. This one, on the other hand, is just casually saying that anyone who causes them to have to like