CORONAMANIA, TELEVISION, FAUCI AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY

In September, 1987, I visited the northwest of Ireland with my wife, Ellen, whose father was raised in thatched roof farmhouse in County Mayo. Ellen still had cousins and aunts and uncles there.

We stayed in her Aunt Anne’s modest rowhouse, which lacked heat, except for the peat fire in her hearth. Each night, Anne, a retired schoolteacher who lived alone, cooked us salmon that had just been running in the River Moy that flowed through Ballina, her town of 10,000.

After dinner, Anne would turn on her black and white TV for the 7 PM news on the national TV station, RTE-1. One man simply read stories from 8.5 x 11-inch papers that he held in his hands. Very little video footage was shown. One night we briefly saw a funeral procession for someone killed in The Troubles. I also remember a report about some unrest in some African country that US news shows would never cover. And a similarly not-played-in-Peoria report that Peter Tosh, the reggae singer, had been shot during a home invasion in Jamaica.

Unlike most Irish people we met, Irish news was terse and sober. There was no flash or dash, no dramatic intro music with ominously “teased,” urgent top stories, no obvious political bias—though, as a foreigner maybe some Euro bias went over my head—and no commercials. The news lasted 17 minutes. It ended by showing an analog clock with the little hand on the 7, the big hand just below the 3. Each night, Anne shut off the TV right after the second hand ticked past the 12.

A conspicuous silence descended on Anne’s western edge of town, where the rowhomes gave way to rolling grassy fields. A very lightly used road stretched for tens of miles until the next towns in each direction. We drank tea and talked until bedtime, two hours later.

Muy tranquilo.

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Compare minimalist Irish news of yore to the latter-day American version, with its dramatic openings, its mix of sensationalistic and apocalyptic stories, its political and Med/Pharma propaganda and multiple video clips.

Instead of being objective investigators or thoughtful observers of events or trends, the American media presents most stories by showing government and/or NGOs’/public relations firms’ talking heads and other people said to be in charge of a given situation standing behind podiums and microphones, delivering self-serving sound bites, citing dubious stats and displaying inflammatory images. The media either glorifies or vilifies various officials, depending on how it wants to shape public perception.

This lazy, superficial and partisan approach to journalism reflects the daily, and even 24-hour, need for material to broadcast or post in order to sell Pharma ads or subscriptions. The news is largely expendable entertainment. It tells us far less about what we need to know than do our own eyes in our daily realm.

The news’s focus on spokespersons also feeds the long-standing American misimpression that we live in a meritocracy and are led by the brightest, best-intentioned individuals.

In the above-described context, truth matters little.

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During the Scamdemic, given their political bias and need to make money, especially from their Pharma sponsors, the media and PR industry have conducted a relentless, multi-front crusade to promote Anthony Fauci and thus, indirectly, the governmental Public Health apparatus and the overarching notion that we all owe our survival to drugs and hospital systems.

I’ve never understood why people liked or believed Fauci. I’ve heard people say they thought he was “smart.” After all, he was a “doctor.”

But he was really a bureaucrat, and seemingly, during his many years of disservice, a bad one. None of his Coronamanic recommendations ever made sense. Given his Scamdemic performance, Fauci is Exhibit A for a mandatory federal retirement age or administrative term limits. He was the J. Edgar Hoover of his time. Though I guess I’m missing the point: the bureaucracy is used largely to effect political and economic control, not to improve human lives.

Perhaps his New Yawk accent impressed or charmed people. But I’ve spent much time around New Yorkers. Though they’ve long portrayed themselves as sophisticated and street-wise, many of the New Yorkers I’ve run across are depressed and/or hostile, star-struck conformists. Most bought the Covid Scam. That alone tells you how smart they aren’t.

Viewing Fauci’s fans more charitably, one might say they were irrationally fearful news junkies. They felt they needed an “expert” to protect them and Fauci was the designee. If Fauci didn’t exist, someone would have invented him.

I’ve never been intrinsically impressed by either people appointed to positions of authority, MDs or those who attended big-name colleges. I’ve seen people from each of these three categories make multiple poor decisions. Professional respect is earned, not bestowed. Everyone’s performance is subject to continual evaluation.

Fauci repeatedly made illogical or dishonest statements that were somehow considered authoritative. For example, while he insisted that the shots would stop infection or spread, they didn’t; coronavirus vaccines had never worked. Neither had masks, lockdowns, school closures nor asymptomatic testing stopped the transmission of respiratory viruses.

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Following a hiatus, Fauci has been back in the news lately, promoting his characteristically boastful and dishonest autobiography, for which he received a $5 million advance from his politically-aligned, liberal publishing industry backers.

During his recent book tour, as he has since March, 2020, Fauci continues to avoid interviews with those who might confront him regarding the pervasive illogic and untruths in his public pronouncements. Instead, he fields only softball questions from fawning interviewers, e.g., “Does it bother you that the people who criticize you now have the benefit of hindsight?”

Fauci said this did bother him and recited the phony, self-exculpatory “We didn’t know” mantra.

Meanwhile, back in reality, I and many others called out the folly of Fauci’s beloved “Mitigation” crusade from Day 1. We were told we knew nothing and received little exposure.

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Fauci’s recent book is just the latest installment of the Coronamania propaganda onslaught that began in February, 2020.

Recently, PBS re-aired a year-old documentary, in the American Masters series, about Fauci. Initially, this film made me wonder how PBS defines a “Master.” There’s plainly a political/ethno-racial litmus test; nearly all of the over 270 Masters profiled in other episodes are in the liberal Pantheon, as is America’s purported “favorite doctor” and “foremost infectious disease expert.”

Media labels can badly mislead a hero-worshiping public. Before being exposed as frauds, or worse, Jeffrey Epstein was called an astute “financier,” Sam Bankman-Fried was an “altruistic visionary” and Bernie Madoff was a “trusted money manager” and “philanthropist.” Numerous media-hyped politicians and sports figures have later performed poorly and have been found to have professional or personal skeletons in their closets.

By any objective measure, Fauci has done a terrible job over the past four years. Instead of exhibiting mastery, he’s caused vast, deep harm. But by being photographed in a white coat, by invoking something that sounded sort of technical and by helping to oust Trump, Fauci became a hero to news addicts.

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The two-hour PBS show’s manner of presentation is odd. There’s no narration. The vast majority of it is a camera crew following Fauci around as he praises himself for his purported brilliance, tirelessness, selfless—though lavishly paid— commitment to public service, and his self-proclaimed Brooklyn street-toughness.

LOL. To all that.

In the PBS show, although the American Master Fauci stresses that he’s “not political,” he claims, and the footage suggests, it’s the “right-wing Republicans” who were thwarting the fight against The Virus. Fauci exults when Biden takes office. Fauci declares how much better things will be as we “Follow the Science—” I thought we had already been doing that—and rejoin the WHO. No one ever explained to me how that latter step would help.

Fauci wipes away tears as he hears Amazing Grace at Biden’s inauguration. I didn’t know someone so profane, boastful and dishonest could be so sensitive and spiritual. A few months later, Fauci bows his head in grief for the camera when he hears that more people are said to be dying of Covid than before Biden became president. To build poignancy, PBS plays slow, soft, mournful piano and violin music under this, and other, footage. I’d call it cinema verite, but its hagiographic agenda prevents the overall product from being taken seriously.

During this show, as during the Scamdemic and the recent media tour, PBS never presents any anti-Apocalyptic perspectives. Plenty of credentialed people had negative things to say about Fauci, personally, and about the destructive measures he sponsored. None of these critics appears in this program.

Fauci and some Washington, DC city employees proselytize on foot for the jabs in Anacostia, a predominantly black neighborhood, because many residents—presumably non-Republicans—refuse to inject. He tells Anacostians that if they take the shots, they’re “very, very unlikely” to get Covid or to die. As is so much of what Fauci has said, these assertions are plainly false. Seemingly, the show’s presenters intend to portray these vaxx skeptics as ignorant.

On the same stroll, a neighborhood man opposes the shots because they were developed so quickly and because people were being given incentives to take them. This urban vaxx rejector observes that the whole Covid response is just a fear campaign. Confronted with the truth, Fauci and his entourage meekly slink away. Why won’t Fauci, the self-described tough, compassionate man-of-the-people engage in extended dialogue with those who disagree with him?

In one scene, Fauci says he took his vaxx the day before and “felt like shit.” Though the show’s producers don’t so note, Fauci got The Virus anyway. Twice. Was PBS trying to show that Fauci was willing to suffer for his art and that, therefore, we all should be willing to take one—really, at least two—for the team?

Why was someone so ostensibly busy giving PBS filmmakers so much of his time and appearing—as shown in the PBS film—on so many talk shows of politically-aligned hosts? Why was a self-described-as “brilliant” MD who professes his commitment to “transparency” afraid to answer questions from the full range of newspeople?

During the show’s second half, Fauci praises himself for his 1980s AIDS response. It’s not clear how he excelled at that time, either. RFK, Jr. and Celia Farber tell a much less favorable story about Fauci’s AIDS Era work.

Fauci congratulates himself for doing a great job on Covid, too. Yet, nations whose officials understood that government disruption of normal life for all people—including the vast majority who are those under 80 and reasonably healthy, were never at risk—had better outcomes than did the US. Despite having only 4% of the world’s population and the world’s best-capitalized hospitals, the US had over 30% of the world’s reported Covid deaths. Did US hospitals kill ostensible Covid victims?

Neither while portraying himself on PBS or in other appearances I’ve seen, as the nation’s guardian of public health, does Fauci ever mention the core reality: SARS-CoV-2 simply didn’t threaten the vast majority of people. If Americans had lived normally, all reasonably healthy people would have survived without causing all of the consequent societal, economic and vaxx-induced physical damage. It seems likely that NIAID’s $6 billion budget, which Fauci boasts about managing, could be cut with very little health effect.

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Various individuals familiar with the Covid response have observed that while Fauci was the most visible player in the federal Covid response, he was simply a front man for the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s”) Biosecurity apparatus/Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (“DARPA”).

Even if true, this ignores that the undersized Fauci had an outsized role in shaping public opinion. He could have told the truth and chose not to. Perhaps someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. But ultimately, with great titular power comes great responsibility. One in such a position must, per Kant, do the right thing, regardless of consequence.

To tens of millions, Fauci was a media-created hero. It was easier for Americans to go along with the crowd and worship and obey this charlatan than it was to think critically about, and dismiss, all of the double-talk and lies he spouted.

Ultimately, if there were no TV, there would have been no “Pandemic.”