A former spokeswoman for last year’s failed effort to recall Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) says if she’s forced to wear a mask, “you might as well put a yellow star on my chest.”
Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow stars during the holocaust.
Karen Kataline, a Denver talk radio host and communications consultant, made the comment to conservative podcaster Kim Monson during a protest Friday to re-open Colorado. Kataline was present at the protest.
She also said, “A face covering. Do they want us to be in burkas, or what?”
Kataline was irate about the requirement in Lone Tree, Colorado, for mask-wearing in retail businesses.
Reached by phone, Kataline stood behind her comments.
“Since when does the government get to tell you what to wear and what to put on your body. It’s unconstitutional,” she said, calling it “collectivist insanity.”
“The pushback has to happen now,” she continued. “Or it’s just going to go worse. Why is it so important for the left to demonize anybody who doubts or who has a question. This virus is not the bubonic plague. The numbers prove it. Yet Polis continues to clamp down on our constitutional rights.”
The governor’s office “guidance” on masks states, “Research shows that people who have no symptoms can spread COVID-19. Wearing a non-medical face mask helps minimize the spread of the virus. Everyone should wear a mask when out in public. Employees should wear a mask when working.”
Kataline doesn’t buy it.
“It is phenomenally scary!” Kataline told Monson. “And I’ll tell you something, Kim — you know, of all of this, you know how it is that there is some little small thing –that’s seemingly small after these all massive, drastic changes in the very idea of America that these Democratic governors are trying to impose upon us, using coronavirus as the excuse!”
Kataline believe masks to be dangerous, and posed one alleged danger on her Facebook page. (See below). The post was flagged by Facebook as being partially true because he Hypercapnia danger, cited by Kataline’s Facebook post, is widely considered to be low or nonexistent.
Facebook’s fact check cites a Reuters report, which states that a representative from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told Reuters: “The CO2 will slowly build up in the mask over time. However, the level of CO2 likely to build up in the mask is mostly tolerable to people exposed to it. You might get a headache but you most likely [would] not suffer the symptoms observed at much higher levels of CO2. The mask can become uncomfortable for a variety of reasons including a sensitivity to CO2 and the person will be motivated to remove the mask. It is unlikely that wearing a mask will cause hypercapnia.”
Kataline, who speaks frequently about being Jewish, compared the requirement to wear a mask to the Nazis forcing Jews to wear yellow stars as a means of identification.
“And yet when I hear that I’m going to be required — or I’m going to be penalized, or fined, or put in jail for [not] wearing a mask — I just see red! It is like, you might as well put a yellow star on my chest. I’m not doing it! Put me in jail! Put thousands of people in jail, because that kind of forced submission is tyrannical to the point that it is is not America anymore!” she said.
Polls show Americans generally support social distancing and stay-at-home orders to fight COVID-19.
Listen to Karen Kataline and Kim Monson discuss the Lone Tree mayor’s executive order to wear masks, on Kataline’s radio show from May 1, 2020:
UPDATE: This post was updated with Kataline’s Facebook post and a fact check of it by Facebook.
