If you’ve never seen the hilarious 1990s cartoon Eek! The Cat, you don’t know what you’re missing. Eek’s catchphrase was “It never hurts to help,” and each episode demonstrated the disastrous consequences of his naive optimism.
Perhaps even funnier than Eek! was its companion series The Terrible Thunderlizards, which was set in prehistoric times and featured a pair of cavemen named Scooter and Bill. Scooter was always inventing things and persuading Bill to test them, with dire consequences for Bill, whose catchphrase was “When does the hurting stop?”
Both phrases are particularly apt in this time of covid idiocy. Like Eek, government officials seem to think that it never hurts to help, but the victims of their assistance may demur. We may, like Bill, wonder when the hurting will stop.
The shutdowns, the quarantines, the social distancing, the ludicrously ineffective and counterproductive masks – all these things were supposed to help protect us from a virus with a fatality rate of less than one percent.
Instead, they’ve destroyed our economic and social relationships and ruined our lives.
As if that “help” hasn’t done enough damage already, we now have to wonder if the hurting will ever stop – once we’re allowed to reopen to an avalanche of lawsuits. Did we open too soon? Lawsuit! Did we open too late? Lawsuit! Did we open in a manner somehow not in complete compliance with the vague dictates of martinets? Lawsuit!
Sen. John Cornyn is trying to make the hurting stop by addressing the threat of covid-related lawsuits with the “Safe to Work Act” he introduced in the U.S. Senate last month.
Several Texas groups are among the nearly 500 businesses and organizations petitioning Congress to pass the proposed bill and “stop a growing wave of lawsuits from inhibiting our return to a robust economy and healthy citizenry.”
Cornyn wants to provide a “safe harbor” for reopening businesses. “The cost of litigation could make the difference between survival or demise,” he observes, and he’s right. His bill might actually help – and make the hurting stop.