I was this morning year’s old when I learned, from Violet Affleck, daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, that there’s such a thing called a … mask ban?! 

 

Violet was the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors public hearing yesterday not as a celebrity but a citizen, taking to the podium to make a public health appeal. She spoke for a short minute but did she ever pack a lot of information into her speech. You can watch below. 

 

I live in Canada where I’m pretty sure there are no mask bans which is why I’d never heard of it. But seriously, mask bans?! COVID is on the rise again, along with a number of other infections, like measles ffs, and whooping cough, and there are actually people out here trying to ban masks?! I’m not here to be all like that’s an over there problem either because here in Canada, as my friend Melissa Grelo likes to say, “When America sneezes, Canada catches a cold”. 

 

Anyway, back to Violet… this reminds me of when Ben Affleck was at that NYT business leaders conference back in 2022 and at some point during the session, when he’s talking about how his decision-making process has evolved and going from being the young hot stud in Hollywood to a middle-aged dude, and becoming “very uncool, very fast”, Ben namechecks Violet:

“I was able to realize, “Oh, so all of these other relationships were very artificial.” They had nothing to do with me. These are people who want to advance through business. I can understand that. I’m not going to fix a lot of emotional importance to those relationships…At the same time, I thought, “I’m going to live a life of which my daughter can be proud” — which is ironic because she’s a Marxist and I’ve now disgraced her by becoming a capitalist.”

 

Well, he doesn’t namecheck her but presumably, given that she’s the oldest and would have been around 16 at the time, Ben has to be talking about Violet. My takeaway assumption from this comment and from little things he’s mentioned here and there is that Violet has been given the space to independently develop her worldview and share it at home with her parents and siblings. We know Ben to be a lively talker, a debater, he went viral almost a decade ago for challenging Bill Maher on his show. Sounds like he's getting some of that in return from inside his house as his eldest might actually be “OK boomer”-ing him, LOL. 

But now Violet is going public with her passion. She’s nervous, she’s speaking quickly, but her remarks are prewritten, thoughtful, and effective – opening with a personal bit of information before supporting her own experience with research and facts, and then concluding with her demands. 

 

I’m proud of her, and I have no business being proud of someone I don’t know, so I imagine her parents must be very, very, very proud that their child is out here speaking up for her community from her place of privilege. Not doing it on TikTok but the old fashioned way – by showing up in person, in front of the people who, in theory, are making the decisions. 

Look at this nepo baby teaching us things! Let's Squawk! (app link here)

Photo credits: Backgrid

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