Counter-Currents
Anthony Fauci, the much less funny new incarnation of “Dr. Science,” with an unintentionally hilarious President.
1,549 words
The New Year is upon us and so is the tradition of making resolutions to be done with bad habits. I kicked my bad habit of listening to National Public Radio (NPR) long ago after concluding — being the slow learner that I am — that NPR functioned as a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Its target audience is the affluent, Prius-driving, “progressive type”; its voice, when I used to listen to it, a choir of feminist-activist busybodies: Linda Wertheimer, Susan Stamberg, Nina Totenberg, and the intrepid Cokie Roberts. Collectively, they confirmed H. L. Mencken’s sally: “No woman is really humble; she is merely politic.”
I must add that Cokie Roberts, in full conformity with the mainstream media’s journalistic ethics, coauthored with her husband a hit piece on Donald Trump in 2016. It was on behalf of what they called “the rational wing” of the Republican Party — “rational” meaning, perennially eager to serve as controlled opposition for the Democrat party.
“[Trump] is one of the least qualified candidates ever to make a serious run for the presidency,” Roberts and her husband wrote. “If he is nominated by a major party — let alone elected — the reputation of the United States would suffer a devastating blow around the world.” Not original, but those enlightened folks who populate the DC Beltway bubble, then in panic-mode, needed to show solidarity against the rude interloper threatening to crash their invitation-only party in the upcoming election, aka the coronation of Hillary Clinton.
Upon her death at the age of 75 in 2019, Barack and Michelle Obama called Roberts “a constant over 40 years of a shifting media landscape and changing world, informing voters about the issues of our time . . .” Nancy Pelosi: “Roberts’ death was “a great official loss for our nation and a deep personal loss for all who were blessed to call Cokie a friend.” Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, “called Roberts a talented, tough and fair reporter.”
There you have it: fulsome tributes from the grandees for one of their favorite courtiers, one with a long career devoted to selling the fiction that the privileged, “important” people standing far above us, the demos, were exactly where they deserved to be. You can understand why they felt “blessed” to call her “a friend.”
Unlike other non-profit media giants like the Associated Press, NPR was created by an act of a Democrat-controlled Congress and signed into law by — who else? — Lyndon Johnson. What could possibly go wrong? I prefer to think of NPR now as National Pravda Radio. It never disappoints.
According to Wikipedia, NPR member stations “are owned by government entities (often public universities”) — speaking of government-subsidized propaganda entities. Its funding comes from the feds (about 11%), grants, business entities, and foundations (billions from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations). Soros’ foundation is just one of a number of corporate/foundation contributors that decline to use on-air credits; best to keep the identities of the paymasters who call the tunes of the NPR fiddlers their little secret. NPR took some flak for taking money from Soros, but not to worry: “‘OSI Foundations met NPR’s qualification criteria for funders,’” said Dana David Rehm, NPR’s spokesperson. ‘They understood and accepted our terms — chief among them the prohibition of any effort to influence editorial decision making. Our acceptance of the grant was based on principles of independence and fairness, and we stand by it.’” It’s not clear what the “it” at the end of this last sentence refers to. No matter. If you can’t trust an NPR spokesperson, who can you trust?
You can buy Stephen Paul Foster’s new novel When Harry Met Sally here.
Still, one of NPR’s few worthwhile segments was the satirical Ask Dr. Science, produced by a troupe called Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater. It was composed of a straight man, a “concerned citizen” who would ask “Dr. Science,” a pompous blowhard, a question that would provoke a humorous, non sequitur monologue. The skit would always conclude with a “disclaimer” that he “is not a real doctor,” thereupon Dr. Science would chime in: “But I have a Master’s degree . . . in science!” It was a very clever parody of a staged interview with a “credentialed” pretender. The skit’s motto, “He knows more than you do,” completes the mockery of naïve listeners who are encouraged to trust the wisdom of any yahoo off the street who calls himself an “expert.”
“Dr. Science” no longer appears on NPR as a comedic character of Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater creation. In a remarkable, irony-charged illustration of life imitating art, “Dr. Science” has reemerged: a yahoo known as “Dr. Fauci.” This doctor, who “knows more than you do,” presents himself frequently on NPR – and everywhere else – with fawning interviewers, although with an immense pomposity and self-regard that is real rather than staged. I suppose in a way he can’t help himself. His swollen ego and assertions of omniscience are enabled by the mainstream media’s talking heads, who cannot seem to find enough superlatives to bestow on him. Here is NPR’s Terry Gross introducing him on the brink of her interview:
This is Fresh Air. I’m Terry Gross. My guest, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, has become a hero to many Americans for his scientifically-based straight talk about the coronavirus. He became a medical celebrity during the press briefings from President Trump’s coronavirus task force, which Dr. Fauci served [sic] on.
Well, “top infectious disease expert,” “hero,” “medical celebrity,” “straight talker”: How does he manage to find a hat big enough to fit on his head after that? The Fresh Air host failed to mention that Fauci was 80 years old (now 81). Given that he hasn’t practiced medicine in decades, and given such an advanced age, presuming that he could still possess the high-level cognitive powers and the stamina required to stay competitive and current in the intensely technical, rapidly-developing fields of specialized medical research makes her “top…expert” claim laughable, if not an act of journalistic malpractice.
To complete the elevation of our “medical celebrity” to his throne as America’s Emperor of Public Health, Gross, by way of invidious comparison, then goes on for a bit to trash Donald Trump for being Donald Trump and, of course, anti-science. Dr. Science then takes the mic and leads off with,
Well, it was very clear what President Biden wanted [which is doubtful, since being “clear” is not how Joe Biden has ever distinguished himself], not only of me but of the entire medical team. And it was really very encouraging because he said it publicly and he said it privately to us, and that is that science was going to rule.
I think it was more likely that “privately,” Biden said, “Tony, since you’re going to rule, there must be, you know, a confidential way to get Hunter on your payroll. His science grades in that expensive, private high school I sent him to were above average.”
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has a different take on the “heroism” of Joe Biden’s Dr. Science than Terry Gross and the rest of the NPR sycophants who regularly imbibe Kool Aid from the publicity-hound Master. If only a quarter of Kennedy’s extensively-documented charges in his long book, The Real Dr. Fauci, are true, Fauci deserves to be put on trial for perjury, fraud, and corruption. The book is now a number one seller on Amazon. While understandably ignored for the most part by the mainstream media, Ron Unz has given it a lot of attention recently with three reviews, one of them quite long and available in an audio file. Think of RFK’s book as a kind of American samizdat publication now gaining an enormous popular readership, a work written to break through the mainstream media’s rigid control over what news gets covered and how its favored newsmakers are sanitized. Unz does mention a 4,000-word take-down piece on the Fauci book by six AP writers who did a smear on the author.
With the onset of the Covid crisis, Fauci quickly morphed into an unchallengeable authority on public health policy and, with the connivance of the mainstream media and the Democrats, has assumed dictatorial powers. He has unwittingly come to resemble the buffoon in NPR’s original Ask Dr. Science, since he presents himself as such for his interviewers.
In a recent Face the Nation interview, Fauci cried lèse-majesté and played his “my critics are anti-science” card with his version of the laugh-lines, “He knows more than you do” from the days of the original skit.
“Anybody who’s looking at this carefully realizes that there’s a distinct anti-science flavor to this, so if they get up and criticize science, nobody’s going to know what they’re talking about,” Fauci said. “But if they get up and really aim their bullets at Tony Fauci, well, people can recognize that there’s a person there, so it’s easy to criticize, but they’re really criticizing science because I represent science” (italics added). You get the point: “I have a Master’s degree in . . . science!”
Yes, he sees himself as a plenipotentiary “Dr. Science.” This doctor, however, is never funny. He is walking, talking proof that what the grandees call “our democracy” has gone completely off the rails. It’s long past time that this arrogant, octogenarian federal bureaucrat be toppled and held to account. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are trying to move him out. Who else will step up?
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17 comments
He was clear in the beginning that masks were not needed because they are ineffective. Someone must have not so gently pulled him aside and reminded him not to let a good crisis go to waste. Why do we need more testing? Because it helps keep the case numbers high while not really changing the outcome. He simply enjoys this spotlight too much to let it go. Do we test people for the flu each year? No we base treatment on the symptoms. What a revolutionary scientific breakthrough that’s been with us for centuries. Flu shots? Take them if you want but we don’t twist your arm or cut you off from living. Flimsy really doesn’t want this to end because then we might actually look into his history a little closer than he’d like. Too bad there’s no mandatory retirement for his ilk.
Globohomo and global warming are the same phenomena. Just different kinds of pollution. There are leftist science deniers like the late Alexander Cockburn who wrote for The Nation and co-published Counterpunch. The Harvard pseudos who dumped ice water on Edward O. Wilson’s head for simply applying natural selection to human beings. And the pseudos who hounded the Nobel prize winner and discoverer of DNA James Watson out of the country.
It seems that the Ren & Stimpy skit “Ask Dr. Stupid” is more fitting these days. I swear the only thing that Mike Judge got wrong with Idiocracy was there is no way in hell that it’ll take 500 years for us to get there.
Blasphemy! How dare you question The Science and the noble Lord Fauci? It’s against Our Values and Who We Are. Lord Fauci is the earthly vessel sent by The Science to communicate The Truth of The Science to the peasants. Drungleveld Blumpfkenheim and Putin himself must have colluded to pay you off in order to undermine and hack Our Democracy. There will be hell to pay for this heresy!
Fauci has been mostly right dealing with this disease. The media is the biggest problem by far, but even that has become background noise for most people. Life has been pretty much back to normal in most of the country for months now, and this Omnicron is supposedly not much different from the common cold. It’s time for the Right to move on from this conspiratard mentality.
What has he been “mostly” right about??
Everything beside his early comments on masks.
Care to give a few or more examples? “Everything” is a rather broad and generic answer to say the least. Didn’t he say that it was near impossible to have a vaccine by the end of 2020? Didn’t he say that getting the vax would prevent getting and spreading the virus? He continually denies natural immunity from natural infection unless of course you get one or two courses of the vax, then one will have “protection.” He still dismisses the lab leak theory and his careless, borderline criminal, funding of gain of function research in Wuhan, China, a country that would love nothing more than to have the U.S. on its knees. This guy is the dictionary definition of a hack. And just for shits and giggles, I quite honestly doubt this guy is of true Italian descent. I think he a jewboy along the likes of “Italians” with the name Simoni or Simonetti. I would love to hear what he has been mostly right about though.
He wasn’t too far off with the vaccine comments. It was about one year ago they started giving vaccinations and it was very effective against the original strain — then delta showed up. The lab leak thing is pure speculation.
@ Mike Ricci… You have produced nothing to further your argument. You get an F, as in Fail.
@Mike Ricci… Speculation? Ok, speculation with three solid “coincidences”….. Try again
You have it exactly backwards; the only thing he’s been right about is his early comment that masks do SFA against an airborne pathogen.
The Real Anthony Fauci points out that Fauci and his cohorts were never able to prove that HIV causes AIDS much like Fauci has currently been unable to prove “the coronavirus” to be the cause of the current mass illness that has plagued the world for the past two years.
Instead, these purported causes are merely labels meant to instill fear in the public while also serving as a basis for making drugs. But these “viruses” are actually more likely to be reflections of the respective illnesses, not their cause. Fauci needs to be able to point at something verifiable as the “cause” of the illness so as to pursue drugs purported to treat them. Never mind if he hasn’t proved his viruses actually have caused any illness. He’ll kill them with his drugs and people will feel better as they die of their side effects while also possibly going bankrupt paying for his expensive treatments.
Umm, no. He’s been wrong or lying about pretty much everything, just like the people that continue to support him.
Well, the difference between a “right wing conspiracy theory” and a “here’s why that’s a good thing” article is about 4 months.
Ugh, the sight of that pic gives me the skeeves. bill nye is now my 2nd most hated science guy (ask anyone who’s ever met him). The science-says people and their nerd-love for charts, graphs, and peer-review collegeship canons are the same insufferable look-at-me-atheists: the dawkins/harris/hitchens/dennett quartet and their fan club of “independent thinkers,” tumbler-in-hand, a Renaissance-wannabe philosophocles who castigate the faith-filled and churchgoing as retards with utter contempt. “I have a Ph.D.” In D-U-M-B, pilfered from a cracker jack box, about what the goddamn thing is worth. Much prefer Mr. Conductor to Dr. Science though I suspect George and Bill Hicks, like the dead counter-culturists would march in lockstep and acquiesce to the uber-weird left orthodoxy of today. “Experts” are to expertise like reality tv is to reality, and I’d rather have Dr. Heinz Doofenschmirtz and the Five Families running the show than this eyetie criminal bastard.
“Attacks on me are quite frankly attacks on science.” He repeated that line a second time to emphasize it during the same interview this past summer.
Dr. Megalomaniac, with his cult followers, will serve our future white generations as the quintessential mascot of this whole pandemic debacle and as a warning to the dangers of abandoning the scientific method. He’s got the perfect face for it all.
So many people believe that doctors are incorruptible, infallible, and that their motives aren’t to be questioned. Doctors are human just like the rest of us, but they are given carte blanche by the general population, so they develop a god complex. This pandemic has only taken that god complex and wrapped it in a “hero’s cape.”
But for those that do start to question why there is so much smoke and so many mirrors in the room, we can use “Lord” Fauci to our advantage to explain the dangers of swooning over a bureaucrat with “MD” after his name. Then that can lead to conversations about the billions that “Big Pharma” rakes in every year and doctor kickbacks for medication recommendations.
If today’s doctors want the prestige and trust they’ve been afforded throughout history, then we need to hold them accountable by constantly scrutinizing if they are upholding their oaths.
This whole ordeal has made me question the current racial breakdown of our MDs as a group. Are a bunch of non-white, “midwit,” diversity hire doctors just following along to the tune of Chosenite doctors? Why are bedrock scientific standards being played with fast and loose or outright abandoned?
Great article, Mr. Foster! Definitely going to start using the phrase National Pravda Radio.
Just when I thought I could not despise the Bushlet any more, CC ups the ante and gives us this photo. Well done.
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