I don’t mean to make Minaj family Thanksgivings any more interesting than they must already be, but I got the vaccine and my head did not touch the ceiling of my car on the way home. Is this a Johnson & Johnson thing? Because we Pfizerites have been walking around with good back posture for months now. And it’s here that journalism requires me to issue the usual disclaimers: impotence is not a known side effect of coronavirus vaccine. If your life gets ruined for more than four hours, consult a doctor.

Minaj’s anecdote might have been, to put it charitably, specious, but then doesn’t the postmodern left regard truth as less important than championing victims of power structures? And while Minaj might be a recognizable celebrity, no one wields more power than a social media mob during a full moon. Yet Minaj was still dragged. MSNBC host Joy Reid ranted, ‘For you to use your platform to encourage our community to not protect themselves and save their lives, my God sister, you can do better than that!’ Meghan McCain finger-wagged, ‘That’s entirely enough internet for today.’

Apparently that ‘I’m no role model!’ individualism goes straight out the window the moment it’s a public health shibboleth that’s at stake. So too with all the stuff about trusting women. And from that perspective, it’s difficult to see what Minaj did wrong. Are not women, especially women of color, supposed to speak out? To make their own choices about their own bodies? I’m being somewhat cheeky here, since I’m as sick of this pandemic as anyone else and I really do want everyone to get vaxxed. But for Minaj to be maligned for playing by what 14 seconds ago were the rules has got to be one of woke religion’s greater paschal mysteries.