I have a job for someone with video skills. A recent survey reports that men who don’t wear masks feel that “face masks make them look weak and uncool.” These are ordinary men, not the lunatics with guns outside the Michigan statehouse, and their behavior can be changed. What I’d like to see is a PSA that can blanket the country. It would be simple.

Part 1 would be this video or something similar, which shows how wearing a mask affects the airflow from a cough or sneeze:

Part 2 would explain that you might have coronavirus even if you feel perfectly healthy. Half of all people with COVID-19 have no symptoms, and many of the rest have only mild symptoms. So you might be passing along the virus without even knowing it. If you wear a mask, the life you save might be your neighbor’s, or your pastor’s, or the kids in the 4-H club that you work with. Given the target audience, maybe the PSA should even include a clip of President Trump telling everyone to wear masks:

Needless to say, you’d want to cut off this clip after about five or ten seconds. There’s no need to include Trump’s obvious distaste for the idea.

Anyway, that’s it. Have it narrated by Clint Eastwood or Bruce Willis or some other right-leaning tough guy. Add another few seconds of intro and outro, along with a nifty slogan, and you’re done. Anyone want to take a rough crack at this?

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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