Michael Schur says anti-maskers aren’t headed for The Good Place
The acclaimed TV creator and author also grew back his Mose beard for a good cause
TV News Michael Schur
The “celebrities should keep their opinions to themselves” crowd runs into a real problem with Michael Schur. After all, anybody who’s been in COVID lockdown for the past two years has gratefully binged something that Schur had a hand in, likely more than once. The Office, Brooklyn Nine Nine, Parks And Recreation, The Good Place, Rutherford Falls, Hacks—these are the sort of delicious yet nutritious TV comfort foods that we as a nation have been turning to en masse for warmly hilarious but still challenging immersive power-watching.
Schur, appearing on Tuesday’s Late Night, told Seth Meyers about his own, slightly more taxing go-to pandemic project, a book of philosophical and ethical queries worthy of The Good Place’s Chidi Anagonye himself. Entitled How To Be Perfec: The Correct Answer To Every Moral Question, the humorous collection of personal essays allows Schur to put all that The Good Place research into practice, as he confronts a world where such Eleanor Shellstrop-stumping concepts as The Trolley Problem and The Free Rider Problem are daily moral tests a whole lot of Americans very publicly and loudly flunk.
“It was awfully hard not to make the whole book about the pandemic,” Schur told Meyers, with the rueful demeanor of a guy who decided to embark upon a thoughtful examination of human behavior right when a pandemic exposed just how many of us are willing to strip off all semblance of the common good in favor of screeching at baristas about personal freedom. Explaining that How To Be Perfec (a title destined to piss off editors and autocorrect equally) amounted to “an exit interview” for himself after constructing an entire moral universe for The Good Place, Schur admitted that the average maskless Jamba Juice screamer is unlikely to be receptive to a calm and introspective give-and-take about the moral imperatives attendant with being part of human society.
Showing that Schur’s willing to put his money where his mouth is, however, Meyers produced a photo of Schur making some serious sacrifices. And by “put his money where his mouth is,” we mean, “put his unflattering The Office beard where his neck is,” as Schur explained how his offhand offer on behalf of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank during the pandemic saw him not only growing back the “badger” beard of his Office character Mose Schrute, but also donning the most galling article of clothing imaginable for a Red Sox fan—a Derek Jeter game jersey.
With pal Meyers’ donation helping to put Schur’s Good Place-worthy campaign over the top, Schur dutifully grew back the beard, put on the Yankees gear, ate a hot apple pie (apparently a real gross-out for Schur), and even proclaiming, on camera, that “Spygate was real.” Now, none of that can compare to, say, Eleanor, Chidi, Jason, Tahani, Michael, and Janet remaking the entire universe into a more just and fair place for all humanity, past, present, and future. But, for a Red Sox and Patriots fan as Schur famously is, that’s worth a whole lot of Good Place points, certainly.
76 Comments
Why not send them to The Good Place, and i mean the test Good Place Shaun wanted to put into production.
Cue the anti-maskers to drop “it’s better to rule in hell then serve in heaven” quote.
Seems apt, especially now.
Oh God that thug on the left looks like Stephen Root
Well, he does eventually show up in just about EVERYTHING, so maybe it is him.
Unfortunately this one didn’t set the building on fire
Ruling in hell sounds pretty good, but they’re not going to be ‘ruling’ so much as they are going to be ‘desperately fleeing the new, larger butt spiders’
I mean, the whole premise of the show is that literally no one is going to the Good Place, but yeah, I assume throwing a spittle-flecked tantrum in the middle of a Trader Joe’s over one’s medical inability to wear a piece of cloth over one’s face for 20 minutes is worth -10,000 points or so.
Did you not finish the show? Because at the end of The Good Place…..SPOILERSNearly everyone eventually ends up in the Good Place.
Yes, eventually, but the central conflict of the show is driven by the fact that it’s basically impossible to behave ethically in the modern world and thus impossible to make it to the Good Place.
But missing the back half of that argument. It’s nearly impossible to behave ethically based on rules that hadn’t been changed or updated in hundreds / thousands of years. It’s not that it was impossible to get there, it’s that that the rules had to change to address. So spittle flecked person tantrum would get -10,000 points under the old system, but would be mitigated by the circumstances that led up to it.
Yeah, sure. I’m not really trying to make an argument here, just pointing out that according to the (initial) premise of the show, pointing out that X group won’t make it to the Good Place is kind of a meaningless statement.
Meaningless to be sure, but fun nonetheless.
I have my doubts that masks are very effective.Having said that, I go everywhere with one in my pocket. If the place I’m going wants me to wear, I will. It’s not a big deal, bro.And if the only reason for a place to have a mask policy is peace of mind for customers and employees – that’s good enough for me.I have personally seen someone yelling at a cashier, as if she set the policy at Kroger. It’s so embarrassing.
+10,000 points for you. As far as I can tell from reading the (evolving) science on it, masks are far from perfect but they help a bit and every bit helps. And of course, unlike vaccines (which help a lot more) and drugs, masks have exactly zero side effects, so why not wear. If I’m getting in an elevator with a bunch of people who have recently binged on Taco Bell, I’d prefer if they were all wearing pants – it’s not going to be perfect, but it’s better than the alternative.
So cloth masks reduce micro droplets by only 5 to 20 percent depending on layers, weave and fit, with N95 or N100 masks being much higher.To me, I think the annoyance vs effectiveness is still worth it, mainly because masks don’t annoy me much and if that means one less ass hat with cold/flu symptoms doesn’t cough/sneeze on me while I’m out then that’s a win. Having encountered way too many people over the years that refuse to cover their mouth & nose with a handkerchief, tissue, sleeve, or heck their hands when coughing or sneezing at work, at school/college, at stores or restaurants — anything that moves towards a new normal where people are more considerate of other people’s health is a good thing ™
Depends on what mask, and what you mean by ‘effective’. The surgical masks aren’t very effective at blocking the inhalation of microscopic water droplets, but that’s not what they’re for. They keep the exhaled moisture from making it out into the atmosphere, and they’re pretty good at it. That’s why surgeons wear them – to keep their bacteria and viruses from winding up in a patient’s open body. If they’re worried about catching something from the patient, they have a different set of PPE.Cloth masks are like surgical masks, but less effective.N95 masks are quite effective at filtering incoming air, as well as outgoing air. But they’re also kinda ugly and in high demand, so most people stick to the more flattering cloth masks.
By effective I mean, a little better than nothing, and of very marginal value to a fully vaccinated person. N95 seem better, but like you said, most people go cloth.https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/cloth-masks-useless-omicron-expert-b1980394.html
Your article is the opinion of a CNN doctor, *** NOT AN OFFICIAL STUDY ***. Just point this out now before people believe you without checking the link/source of this nonsense.A mask limits OUTBOUND bacteria, so it definitely helps in combination with other measures (read: get the Fauci Ouchie, but I’m preaching to the choir here, as most the readers here have commonsense).
Then you’re pretty dumb because that they work is fact. It isn’t debatable.
I have my doubts that masks are very effective.Your doubts are completely unfounded.
Are you “doubts” based on anything other than opinion? Like, idk, science? Lol you aren’t special. Your “doubts” are horseshit and the idea that your opinion or beliefs are worth endangering others is laughable (and also why America will never have anything cool like the Autobahn)
How am I endangering others, exactly?
Lol the “you” in this is more of a general “you”, but if the shoe fits.
As a lifelong Red Sox fan – although it wouldn’t be my first choice – the thought of donning a Derek Jeter jersey for charity wouldn’t be the end of the world; he was a damn good all-around player, and I can respect that.A-Rod, on the other hand…
A-Rod… was NOT a damn good all-around player?
When I used that phrase I wasn’t just talking about his stats.
I hear ya but personally, I’m done swatting these guys’ hands for steroids.
Most real Yankee fans never really liked A-Rod anyways, so we’re on the same page there.Though we are hypocrites as none of us would give back that 2009 ring he had a huge part in delivering.I, myself, prefer to credit that to Hideki.
Yeah Hideki is another Yankee I grudgingly admire, lol
Irabu right?
I, myself, prefer to credit that to Hideki.Speaking as a Phillies fan, you should. They had no answer for Matsui in that series, and he pretty much won the clincher by himself.
Oh yeah, the actual WS is no question Hideki—but the rest of the playoffs, ARod was a monster.
This goes a looong way in bridging our ever-widening social and ideological divide, thanks!
What are your suggestions for bridging our ever-widening social and ideological divide?
Well, I would start by ceasing calling everyone I don’t like “idiots” and telling them how awful they are.
You should stop starting by ceasing to begin with.
Why not? Both shame and “empathy” seem to be roughly equally (in)effective tactics, but at least by calling out the idiots you aren’t legitimating their delusions.
Just because they’re idiots, doesn’t make them our enemies.Some of you seem to think that the unvaccinated are remaining unvaccinated out of spite toward you. Many of these people are just legitimately scared of an ever-changing vax schedule, which no longer protects against transmission, and distrustful of the government/healthcare companies that are pushing it with all their might. Hell, I voted for Biden but I don’t implicitly trust his every press conference.Very, very rarely in my experience have these people refused the vaccine because they want to hurt you.
They refuse vaccines because they’re selfish cowards, which, in turn, hurts people. It’s as simple as that. This isn’t complicated.
Just because they’re idiots, doesn’t make them our enemies.It doesn’t, but they’ve made us their enemies because if you’re not with them, then you must be against them.Please tell me you understand this.
Sounds like a lot of (probably) internet-rooted projection mixed in with the smarmy attitude there.
These people exist in the real world, not just the internet.
There is no “legitimate” fear of a “changing vax schedule.” The only possible way to defend that is if the person already thinks vaccines are bad, which they are not.
Thank god most people under 50 are not like you, and have moved beyond the crippling handicap it is to expect outreach to lying Nazis. Fuck em to death.
I’m just under 35, and I don’t see it as a handicap to not insult people. The amount of people on the internet who constantly insult those they disagree with has made me determined to never do that no matter how much they do that to me.
lol grow up
Does “grow up” just mean “scream on the internet more”?
no, you seem really good at throwing a tantrum on the internet already
I have three doses of the Moderna vaccine in me. I got the first after having already going through a nasty bout of Covid. Each shot left me physically sick for 2-3 days after. I’m now told that a new variant is causing many many breakthrough cases, and given that there is no new vaccine and that in my experience roughly 50% of people I meet in public are not wearing a mask it’s likely only a matter of time before I get the variant too. Enlighten me if I’m wrong but how is this not going to go through the same cycle every year that the Flu does? Are we looking at yearly covid shots and permanent masking up in public? Is this just supposed to be the new normal? Am I supposed to wear a mask and quarantine and live in fear of public events for the rest of my life now? I keep hearing how important it is to do these things but I don’t seem to hear anyone talking about the long term effects on society this pandemic will have in the day to day of our lives. There’s no end game right? This is the new normal, a normal half of us are already ignoring right? Fuck me.
I’d happily wear a mask every winter for the rest of my life. I haven’t had a cold for almost three years now, it keeps my face warm when I’m walking outside, and I don’t have to make small talk when I run into someone I sort of know from that job a few years ago. However, it’s time to just start living with this thing. We can’t keep shutting down businesses and separating people from their families on holidays. The worst of it is over. Each variant seems more infections and less dangerous because this virus is evolving to keep its host alive. If you have strong reactions to the COVID Vax, it means your immune system is working. Unless you suffer a serious illness, you probably don’t need to keep getting boosters. Canada’s public health only recommended them for vulnerable people, or people who didn’t have strong reactions to the first rounds of vaccine (last I’ve checked), so I’m not sure why so many 20-40 year olds have been waiting in line for hours in the cold to get them.
Yeah. I guess it’s sort of an excuse but thinking about it logistically and understanding human nature enough to know that you can’t turn back the clock it’s obvious that people aren’t going to keep wearing masks and quarantining. I’ve lost 3 family members so far to Covid. My mother is an home and I fear every time I visit her that I’m putting her at risk. It sucks. Makes me wonder what would happen if we had a really dangerous plague/pandemic hit? It would wipe out a large portion of the population of the world. That’s how selfish we are as a species. That said… I really miss going to concerts.
“Makes me wonder what would happen if we had a really dangerous plague/pandemic hit? It would wipe out a large portion of the population of the world. That’s how selfish we are as a species.”Covid is kind of in the sweet spot to do the most society-wide damage. If it were, say, Ebola-level deadly then there’d be a hell of a lot more motivation to track and trace it. Plus if it killed as quickly as Ebola it would be far easier to contain from logistical standpoint. Instead, Covid is “merely” 10 times deadlier than the flu, but most people who get it will still be “fine” (setting aside Long Covid worries), a lot of its symptoms can be handwaved away as allergies or a cold, and the people it does kill tend to be the sort who many callously expect to die soon anyway. All in all, it’s a perfect disease for breeding ignorance, complacency, and selfishness.
The black plague killed off 30 to 60% of Europe in a time before modern travel and widespread public events. Of course we have much better medical knowledge now but we are also seeing a growing percentage of the population (in the USA at least) who feel that anyone dictating they must do something is inherently evil and trying to fuck them over, hence they automatically go against it. If we got hit with a plague today you’d have just as many people refusing to take it seriously. It’s a scary proposition any way you look at it.
Call me a starry-eyed optimist, but I do think if 30-90% of people started developing weeping sores and dropping dead within a week even the most obstinate of skeptics would start taking it seriously. The same plague that caused the Black Death is still circulating today; we’ve just gotten better at identifying and containing it when it threatens to go pandemic. And globalization cuts both ways—a large part of the reason we had a viable vaccine within a year was because of the reams of data we were able to collect and communicate instantaneously. But I’m really not trying to say that people would be less stupid, cowardly, or selfish if we ever get hit with another Black Death—it’s just that the contagiousness and mortality of Covid is kind of ideal to maximize the impact of that stupidity, cowardice, and selfishness. Hypothetical Plague skeptics would be less of an issue because, well, they’d all be dead within a month.
fear the marmots.
You aren’t wrong. C19 like the flu, mutates relatively quickly and as such will not be widely eliminated like some very stable diseases (smallpox for example.) Like the flu vaccine, we’ll likely get a yearly C19 vaccine tailored to each year’s predicted most likely dominant strains. An omicron specific variant of the C19 vaccine has already been rolled out into testing, last I heard it’s projected to be mixed in with the existing vaccine in March give or take. Just like the flu, we’re going to get 10s of thousands of deaths every year (flu is the largest contributing factor in 45,000 to 60,000 deaths in the US every year) but unlike the flu, C19 is much more infectious, so even though its mortality rate is about the same, many more people will get it every year, resulting in more overall deaths.What does this mean long term? A new normal where people are much more vigilant that if they get any symptoms of a respiratory infection, that they refrain from “powering through it” and going to work/ school/crowded sports or concert events. It means that Doctors and clinics/hospitals will need to have established known “best practices” for how to treat ppl with C19 (we’re getting there quickly, and for a bit of background it took decades for similar best practices to be adopted for influenza so 2 to 4 years for a new disease is lightning quick.) Another thing we need is clearly established and verified drugs for treating people with severe cases, there’s 2 or 3 very good looking anti-virals in drug trials now, so hopefully widespread emergency use approval mid-year.Personally I wouldn’t mind society developing a few new social norms, for 40 years I’ve had to deal with waves of the flu hitting either the schools I’ve attended or my work places because people with a cold, or the flu decided to not stay home or to at least cough/sneeze into a handkerchief, their shirt, or hands and instead just spray droplets everywhere. I’ve never been fond of inconsiderate ass hats coughing/sneezing on me in grocery stores or restaurants. If we can adopt some new social norms around all communicable diseases where people self-isolate when showing symptoms for flu, common cold, C19, etc and wear the best face covering/mask that they can when they have to go out in public — then all those common illnesses will have less impact on all our lives and businesses.
Well said. thank you. I just wish I could wear a mask without causing my glasses to fog up essentially making me partially blind at all times, heh.
As someone who went through the first Covid winter frequently walking around blind without my glasses on, I feel your pain. A lot of that is finding the right mask. I’ve had good luck with Korean-made KF94s, which make it relatively easy to create a tight seal around my nose and rest my glasses on the mask. Cloth masks with filters (which make them roughly equivalent to KF94s or KN95s) like Happy Masks and Enro also do a good job of keeping my glasses fog-free most of the time.
Thanks!
And all efforts to fight it are always going to be hampered significantly by all the people refuse to go along with them.
Hey those people did their own research! Who are you to tell them that the entire scientific community of the world is right and that that doofus on Youtube is wrong about vaccines making people magnetic and sending brainwave data to Bill Gates?!? You’re obviously an Illuminati plant.
From my perspective, at this point it’s not about “living in fear” but rather coming to your own personal acceptable risk level.Around 18 months ago, I had similar panic. It seemed as if the rest of the world was going back to normal even though nothing about the virus had really changed. There was just a significant portion of the population who had become bored with the “cute” phase of the pandemic that involved baking sourdough bread and watching Tiger King for a couple weeks. I worried that the world was moving on without me.When I received my vaccine early last year, I set a reminder in my phone for a point two weeks after the second dose when my immunity kicked in. I joked to myself that that date was when the pandemic ended “for me”. I didn’t go around licking doorknobs, of course, but I did some things that I hadn’t done since March 2020 — got a haircut, went to the grocery store, had dinner in a restaurant. I still mask up when I’m in close quarters, even where it’s not required, but most importantly the fear isn’t there anymore. I know that the vaccine I received (and booster that I subsequently received) is the best measure of protection I can take. While breakthrough infections are possible and have become more common lately, the cases are overwhelmingly more severe for the unvaccinated and undervaccinated. It’s hard to get a good feel for things, but what I’m reading is convincing me that even with the new flavors of Covid, it has reached the point where it is about as dangerous to the vaccinated as the flu. I know that the flu kills many people every year, and while it has always been something that I’d take precautions against (I’ve gotten a flu shot every year since college (except for 2020), I wash my hands often, I avoid sick people, etc) I don’t panic about it. I see Covid in similar terms. It has joined the long list of things that are a threat to my health and well-being, and I’m doing my best to keep myself safe while continuing to live my life (just the same way I wear a helmet when I ride my bike, use my seatbelt in the car, and wash my hands to avoid all sorts of nasties).Of course, that’s just me. Everyone has unique circumstances that change their individual risk situation, and I respect that.
I feel ya. I’ll just give the following as a personal example. So a couple weeks back I had to go to an Urgent Care because of a nail bed infection (eww gross right?). Thing is, I was stuck in a jam packed waiting room literally filled with symptomatic patients getting tested. There are sneezing sweaty obviously sick people sitting inches from me with no way to create distance. A nurse who happened to be leaving her shift for the day stood in this waiting room talking to the ladies behind the front counter for a good 15 minutes, NOT WEARING A MASK. If a nurse in this establishment doesn’t bother to mask up how closely are they following CDC protocols? I thought about leaving and going to a different UC but with no way to insure my safety at any other random place I chose to stick it out. My primary care doctor was booked for months. So I stayed. And I’m not so fearful for myself but that event meant I made myself wait over a week before seeing my dying mother. That’s a week I couldn’t afford to miss. It’s equal parts terrifying and irritating and I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I’m just defeated by all of it.
Interestingly people had no problems with mask and vaccine mandates until we elected a gameshow host as president who screwed up the response to a pandemic.
Michael Schur’s response is a very reasonable one. My response?[Fart]
Despite appearances, the book IS called “How to be Perfect.” The “t” is on the right side of the cover.
“Entitled How To Be Perfec: The Correct Answer To Every Moral Question, the humorous collection of personal essays…”I thought How To Be Perfec was a funny title by Schur, but no, it’s just a typo by AV Club.
Holy fucking shit, you’re right
To be fair, I can see how they made the error…
“How To Be Perfec” is, in fact, how it appears on the front cover.Then there was this quote midway through the article “Explaining that How To Be Perfec (a title destined to piss off editors and autocorrect equally)“
Right, but the title is actually “How to be Perfect.” The cover is just playing off the joke (though the “t” is still there on another line):https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-to-Be-Perfect/Michael-Schur/9781982159313
Yes, but calling it a typo is inaccurate. They’re playing into the joke Schurr himself intended
They really aren’t. They just made a mistake. Seth Meyers says the title correctly in the clip, and this article gets it wrong twice. The second time “Explaining that How To Be Perfec (a title destined to piss off editors and autocorrect equally)“ just flat-out says this is the title. They totally missed the joke of the cover. It’s fine. People make mistakes. This site more than others.
a title destined to piss off editorsSo you definitely know that editors exist. Doesn’t it bother you that A.V. Club doesn’t have one?
“How to Be Perfec” … amusing, if not the actual title.