Likely inspired by Jussie Smollett, who claimed his imaginary attackers called homogeneously left-wing Chicago “MAGA country,” Jared Rabel pulled a hoax that substitutes failure to maintain panic over Covid for the usual race hate by tweeting this:

I boarded a plane today with my son and mid flight, the pilot announces that the mask mandate is over. Flight attendants pulled off their masks and sneezed directly into their hands while screaming “this is MAGA airspace”. My son turned to me in tears. I don’t know what to do.

He was looking for laughs rather than expecting someone to believe him. But he failed to take into account the eager credulity of the Paper of Record. He received the following response from Victoria Kim:

Hi Jared, I’m a New York Times journalist, I’d love to speak to you over the phone about what happened on your flight this evening. Can you please give me a call at [DELETED] or let me know how I can reach you?

His response rammed the trolling job home:

Hello Victoria, I would love to discuss the incident at your earliest convenience. … Unfortunately it’s satire that only someone at the NYT would believe. … I was wondering how your team deals with the multitude of false stories that you peddle out daily to use as political propaganda and if you could give me advice on how to take my satire to the next level?

A more reliable news source reports on why the Times seized on the scoop so eagerly:

Airline companies and more have dropped their mask mandates after a federal judge lifted the national face covering mandate on Monday.

No doubt Times reporters will still have on their Covid muzzles when the next bug comes around.

On a tip from Occam’s Stubble.

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