SALENA ZITO: Coronavirus protesters just want to work.

“The center of the demonstration was the return of the dignity of work,” Gerow says flatly.

Gerow, who is a Republican media consultant, is irked at the mockery online of the attendees. “Pennsyltucky” trended on Twitter, an alleged derogatory description of people who are from the more rural stretches of the state and not the urban centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

“Well, first of all, there were plenty of people from suburban Philly and Pittsburgh at this event, so to try to pin on people you consider part of the ‘deplorable’ or ‘bitter-clinger’ crowd is a joke,” Gerow said, referencing derogatory terms used by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama when they were running for president.

“I think it’s a grossly unfair categorization, because I can tell you that the folks that I was standing with were all highly educated, professional people, at least one of them a Harvard grad,” he said of the friends he attended with that also included someone who made the three-plus hour drive from Pittsburgh.

“Those rural hills and valleys and small towns are made up of the places where our agriculture is grown and produced, but it is also where people from here and people who come to visit here hunt, and hike and camp and fish. So I don’t think they accomplished the insult they so cleverly thought they were accomplishing by using the word ‘Pennsyltucky,’” said Gerow.

“They all stressed they just wanted to work. And the one guy was carrying a sign that simply said, ‘I need a haircut,’ and we all thought that was pretty funny because we all certainly are in that boat,” he said of everyone’s rather shaggy appearance. “There was a woman standing there with us, and she said, ‘I’m a stylist, and I’m out of work.’ She said, ‘I would do anything to be cutting his hair right now.'”

Well, there are Two Americas: The one that’s still getting a paycheck, and the one that’s not.