Rosanne Cash has slammed the ‘ignorance’ and ‘hatred’ surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic after her daughter was apparently heckled for wearing a face mask inside a Nashville grocery store.
Though her father, legendary singer Johnny Cash, was famed for his rebellious and outlawish ways, 65-year-old Rosanne said her daughter was sensibly following government recommendations when she was accosted by a man inside a Krogers, in Green Hills.
‘My daughter lives in Nashville & wore her mask to buy groceries,’ Rosanne tweeted Tuesday. ‘Guy yells at her: ‘Liberal p****!’
Cash didn’t specify which of her four daughters was subjected to the apparent verbal lashing, though two of her children, Caitlin Rivers Crowell and Carrie Kathleen Crowell both live in Nashville.
Rosanne Cash has slammed the ‘ignorance’ and ‘hatred’ surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, after her daughter was apparently heckled for wearing a face mask inside a Nashville grocery store
Cash didn’t specify which of four daughters was subjected to the apparent verbal lashing, though two of her children, Caitlin Rivers Crowell (second left) and Carrie Kathleen Crowell (center) both live in Nashville
The outraged mother said she found the remark offensive for two reasons: firstly because the CDC recommends wearing the face masks to help curb the spread of the deadly disease, but also because her daughter his high risk should she ever contract it.
‘Back story: she nearly died of H1N1 [Swine Flu]. She was in the ICU for a week, on a ventilator for 3 days. She CANNOT get covid,’ Cash, a four-time Grammy winner, wrote. ‘The ignorance & hatred is so painful. She’s trying to survive.’
The tweet has since received more than 44,000 retweets and nearly 250,000 likes, Cash also received thousands of comments from friends and followers who shared her shock.
The incident happened at a Krogers, in Green Hills, Tennessee on Tuesday afternoon
‘Imagine some idiot calling Johnny Cash’s granddaughter a p****,’ actress Patricia Arquette tweeted in response. ‘May the ghost of Johnny cash hound him all of his days!!’
Carol Abney, a Democrat who is running for the Tennessee House of Representatives, also responded, saying: ‘I am so sorry some of us do not project the actual care for families and neighbors that most Tennesseans exhibit so proudly.
‘Tell her I’m from Tennessee, I care about her, I thank her for wearing a mask, and to just remember #WeAreTN, not the ignorant a** that yelled at her,’ she continued.
Though her father, legendary singer Johnny Cash, was famed for his rebellious and outlawish ways, 65-year-old Rosanne said her daughter was sensibly following government recommendations when she was accosted inside a Krogers, in Green Hills
One tweeter mused, ‘The sad part is, if she mentioned who her grandfather was, he would’ve probably bowed down before her.’
‘Or her mother,’ another added, while others called the alleged occurrence ‘awful’ and thanks Cash’s daughter for ‘being a hero’.
While the majority of the comments voiced support, some accused the singer of fabricating the anecdote in an attempt to make a political statement.
‘It reveals a lot about you, that you think I would make up a story that used my daughter’s compromised health to make a point,’ Cash wrote in rebuttal to a since deleted tweet.
Face coverings have proved to be a polarizing topic for Americans since coronavirus started spreading across the country in March. While politicians such as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has insisted wearing a mask is the new ‘cool’, others have completely objected to the idea, such as President Donald Trump who has repeatedly refused to wear a mask in public.
In many states across the country, including New York, businesses now require patrons to wear masks upon on entry, otherwise they can be refused service. Meanwhile, in Kentucky, one convenience store displayed a ‘No Face Masks Allowed!’ sign on its doors, telling customers to take off facial coverings or ‘go somewhere else’ for their goods.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended people wear cloth face coverings in public to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in communities, including among vulnerable populations.
Initially, the CDC instructed that healthy people shouldn’t wear the masks because it would not protect, but research about asymptomatic spreaders led the agency to reverse its recommendations.
Before her Tuesday tweet, Cash previously revealed that she had been reprimanded for not wearing a face-mask during a socially-distant visit with friends.
‘We took our masks off and they sat on the bottom of the stoop and we sat on the top and had wine and cake. We haven’t seen many people outside of Zoom so it was really fun. (We still got reprimanded by a passerby for not wearing masks while visiting,’ she wrote on Instagram.