YouTube silences more of Pekau’s “medical” observations on COVID
Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau uses taxpayer-funded Village Board meeting to make a political speech against COVID mandates and uses that speech in his campaign for Congress to solicit funding
By Ray Hanania
Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau, who has made himself a laughing stock among Illinois elected officials and the medical profession, again used the Village Board meeting at a forum this week to promote his misinformation on COVID and as a platform to promote his candidacy for Congress in the Republican primary election for the 6th District.
During a village board meeting, Pekau repeated five-day-old news that a Sangamon County Court judge had issued a Temporary Restraining Order on Friday blocking Governor J.B. Pritzker’s much-criticized mask mandate for schools. The TRO allows school boards to set their own policies for wearing face masks, a proven means of preventing the spread of the deadly Coronavirus, which has taken more than 900,000 American lives during the past two years.
Pekau posted the video on YouTube, but it was removed with a warning from the Social Media giant that read, “Our team has reviewed your content, and, unfortunately, we think it violates our medical misinformation policy.”
Despite YouTube’s ruling, Pekau made the comments in his capacity as a taxpayer-paid municipal elected official at a taxpayer-funded village board meeting, and then used the video of his lecture at the board meeting to promote himself for Congress and to ask email recipients of his eNewsletter to donate to his Federal political campaign.
Pekau noted correctly what everyone already knew, that High School District 230 and Elementary School District 134 had directed that the wearing of face masks was optional. Pekau then called on school districts 140 and 146 and the private schools “to do the same.”
If anything, School District 230’s board has demonstrated reasoned and commonsense medical practices to prevent the spread of the deadly COVID virus and its many deadly strains. District 230 deserves the accolades far more than a rightwing extremist who has used the COVID virus to viciously bully his critics and columnists like myself who have challenged Pekau to be accountable to the people who pay his salary, the taxpayers of Orland Park. (Even though it is no longer as much as he might have wanted.)
Pekau falsely implied that a village resolution urging that face masks not be mandatory which had been adopted by his administration last August some how had an impact in the TRO. It did not. And, Pekau arrogantly mocked Governor Pritzker for issuing 100 executive orders on COVID, orders that Pekau failed to note in many cases helped to prevent the spread of the virus in Illinois and especially to the state’s most vulnerable residents, senior citizens.
Pekau bragged that “we were right” when the board refused to follow the governor’s action and claimed that the village has been the leader in dealing with COVID, allowing businesses to make their own decisions about how to deal with COVID.
A lot of people were “right.” But it is so inappropriate to exploit the issue rather than develop smart policies to minimize the spread of COVID. Fortunately, most Orland Park residents are educated and smart and have done a good job of protecting themselves from the spread of the virus.
Many people questioned the wisdom of mandates, but Pekau took it further, implying on many occasions by his actions and his words that face masks were not important in preventing the spread of the virus.
Here is the campaign solicitaion from his campaign email sent Wednesday evening:
“It is time for the governor to follow the data, the facts, and the constitution. Stop issuing emergency orders and allow residents, businesses, and communities to make decisions that are best for them, like it should have been all along. I want to thank you for all of the trustees for having the courage to follow the Constitution. It was not easy. We have all been personally attacked and received vile emails and comments.”
Everyone gets vile emails and personal attacks, and Pekau is the leader when it comes to attacking people personally. But Pekau reads those emails to build up sympathy for himself.
Although Pekau’s comments play into the confusion about COVID he has helped to foment over the past two years through his constant rejection of the efforts by the state to apply CDC guidelines and medical experts, Pekau has no chance of winning the congressional seat.
The leading candidate in the Republican Primary is Scott Kaspar who also has openly and publicly BUT smartly challenged the issue of COVID mandates, which many people legitimately oppose. The only difference is Pekau did his best to take the issue to the extreme for his own political benefit.
COVID mandates are extreme, and most reasoned people oppose them. The wearing of face masks, which his administration allies have ridiculed often, is one that should be encouraged as a personal choice of each individual.
( Ray Hanania is an award winning former Chicago City Hall reporter. A political analyst and CEO of Urban Strategies Group, Hanania’s opinion columns on mainstream issues are published in the Southwest News Newspaper Group in the Des Plaines Valley News, Southwest News-Herald, The Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers. His Middle East columns are published in the Arab News. For more information on Ray Hanania visit www.Hanania.com or email him at rghanania@gmail.com.)
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Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.
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