Misty, Emotional Pritzker Still Didn't Address Pandemic Hypocrisy

CHICAGO — For the first time, Gov. J.B. Pritzker won't be spending Thanksgiving with his family.

While most Illinoisans don't know what it's like to choose which mansion to host holiday celebrations like our billionaire governor, surely the sadness that comes from being separated from the people we love has become universal during the pandemic.

For that, Pritzker deserves our empathy.

But the guy still doesn't get a free pass for his pandemic hypocrisy.

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Statistics show that Pritzker's pandemic response has been about as effective as states that didn't enact nearly as severe social distance restrictions. Now, the governor says there's nothing else to do but shut down public spaces and advise a struggling citizenry to stay at home and avoid traveling unless it's absolutely essential.

You'd think that after pushing Illinois into something like a coronavirus lockdown, Pritzker would be prepared to be asked if he plans to follow his own life-saving advice.

But what we found out Monday, when reporters asked questions about his family's holiday plans, was that the billionaire rookie politician isn't good at answering unscripted questions.

Despite the dire state of a second coronavirus surge, Pritzker said he wasn't sure if he would spend Thanksgiving in Illinois or travel elsewhere.

MORE ON PATCH: Pritzker's A Turkey For Saying He Might Travel For Thanksgiving

On Tuesday, after taking a well-deserved social media flogging for coming across as an out-of-touch elitist too rich for his own rules, the governor insisted he was "taken aback" when reporters asked about his Turkey Day plans because he was still deciding whether to travel.

He appeared to get misty with emotion at his pandemic news performance announcing his personal holiday travel plans that had become magically definitive overnight, along with his new statewide social distance restrictions that shut down entire industries, youth sports and even museums.

"I will be celebrating Thanksgiving in Chicago with our son. The situation is simply too grave for me to be elsewhere. My wife and daughter are in Florida and will remain there indefinitely," Pritzker said.

He could have stopped there, maybe thrown in a self-deprecating line, something like: "Sorry guys, I'm an idiot for even considering taking the private jet to Florida for Thanksgiving. But I'm really rich and new to being held accountable by, you know, non-billionaires."

That's what California Gov. Gavin Newsom did after getting busted for attending a dinner party at a Napa Valley French restaurant while urging Californians to avoid gathering with their extended families on Thanksgiving.

Newsom publicly apologized to the people of his state for breaking bread with a dozen people outside his pandemic bubble, the kind of behavior he publicly advised folks to avoid.

“I need to preach and practice, not just preach and not practice, and I’ve done my best to do that,” Newsom said. “We’re all human. We all fall short sometimes.”

Instead, Pritzker explained the tough decision to have his family celebrate Thanksgiving in separate mansions by unnecessarily holding up his family as a shield from jabs about his pandemic hypocrisy.

"Let me tell you why: Last week, my daughter came under attack in an attempt to have some political effect on me," Pritzker said.

The governor went on to detail unsourced fake news reports claiming his high schooler was a coronavirus mitigation scofflaw.

What the governor described was truly awful, but it had nothing to do with his bumbling public refusal to rule out joining them in Florida for Thanksgiving.

His scripted plea for privacy might have made more sense if the governor had expressed it when the fake news broke — a week ago.

Pritzker recounted how strangers sent "hateful, threatening messages" to his daughter. A lawyer offered "an actual cash bounty" to harass his family, including the kids. He referred to a sinister plot to kidnap Michigan's governor, and he asked Illinoisans to put themselves in the "shoes of a high school-age girl who is being weaponized against your father by his political opponents."

"I’m an adult. And I can handle people throwing my face up on anti-Semitic signs likening me to Hitler. But my kids? My kids are off limits. There was a time in American politics when the rule was sacrosanct: Kids are off-limits," he said. "I’m going to fight like hell to protect her privacy. I ask that you all respect that privacy. This is not a political fight. This is a fight to save people’s lives. Let’s remember that as we enter the holiday season."

Pritzker's outrage just doesn't track when you consider how his spin machine revived the attacks on his daughter because the governor was too cowardly to admit he was wrong, and threatened to erode his moral authority, to tell the public he might disregard his own stay-at-home advice while the coronavirus rages in Illinois.

The governor's chief of staff launched a Twitter-thread diatribe on "how the right wing misinformation machine works, how it churns up outrage, how supposedly 'civil' Republicans fuel it ... and what the real world consequences are for innocent people caught in its trap."

Well, changing the subject and getting emotional in front of TV cameras to deflect criticism and avoid personal responsibility is a favored tactic of the Chicago Democratic Machine spin machine.

Despite all that — and Pritzker's phony sympathy play — I hope the governor's family finds a way to enjoy their first Zoom-giving, like so many sad Illinoisans forced by the coronavirus to go without spending time with the people we're most thankful to have in our lives.

But Pritzker needs a reality check.

Illinois deserves a governor who leads by example.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

More from Mark Konkol:

• Pritzker's A Turkey For Saying He Might Travel For Thanksgiving
• Take It From A City That Knows: Rahm Emanuel Is Bad For America
• Why Did Pritzker Party In A Crowd Despite His Coronavirus Advice?
• Gov. Pritzker Has Nobody But Himself To Blame For 'Fair Tax' Fail
• Pritzker's Political Winter Coming After Voters Reject 'Fair Tax'