PBS broadcast “Dr. Tony Fauci” in its American Masters series this past Tuesday evening. It is a two-hour episode that requires a toxic overexposure to the wit and wisdom of the fallacious Dr. Fauci. Unless one seeks a lesson on the perils of power and celebrity, two hours with Dr. Fauci is roughly two hours too many. It should have been subtitled “The light and the way.”
Ken Burns draws on the voice of Peter Coyote as the voice of God in his documentaries. His services were unnecessary here. Dr. Fauci assumes the role in this tribute to himself.
The episode is available for viewing at the moment here. I’m not recommending it. I’m just noting its availability. You can check out what I say here if you doubt what I say. One can pick up the message we are to take from the documentary in Mark Kennedy’s AP story.
This is the authorized version of the gospel according to Dr. Fauci. It turns out that he let a camera crew follow him over a period of 23 months beginning in January 2021. The documentary takes us inside his northwest DC home. It takes us inside his NIAID office at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda. In these personal spaces, Fauci is surrounded by icons and mementos of himself.
To say that Fauci is an egomaniac is something of an understatement. Dr. Fauci personifies the phrase “a legend in his own mind.” No one thinks more highly of him than he does himself. He has no detachment, ironic or otherwise, from his celebrity and renown. He basks in it.
In January 2021 Fauci watches the inauguration of President Biden at home on television. He is overcome with emotion. He suffered during the Trump administration. He has suffered for our sins. Biden represents the dawn of a new era. At long last science and transparency and truth will reign. Fauci is to receive his due.
Fauci is almost as emotional when he joins a World Health Organization meeting remotely to declare that the United States is back on board. We are rejoining “the world,” or something likd that. The merits of the WHO are to be taken as self-evident — they did such a good job investigating the origin of the virus, mitigating its effects, and preventing its spread.
We have previously been instructed by him that Dr. Fauci is the science. The documentary further instructs us that he is the truth. He seeks to turn us away from false gods.
Fauci is depicted giving contradictory advice to mitigate the Covid epidemic. Nevertheless, he was always right. He was right for what was known at a given time. He is right now. He is unerring in that sense.
Research that fails to vindicate the efficacy of mask regimes remains unmentioned or on the cutting room floor. The mask regime never looked more ridiculous than it does in the documentary, but looks are deceiving. Masks too are the way. (Jeffrey Anderson’s City Journal column “The mask of ignorance” is the most recent on the subject.)
Fauci recognizes an outer darkness inhabited by unbelievers. The unbelievers are Republicans in red states. Their ignorance is invincible. Their divergence from the gospel according to Dr. Fauci is malicious. The documentary dwells on the case of Senator Rand Paul.
The documentary more or less presumes the answer to every controversial question it raises. Masks and vaccines are efficacious. Dr. Fauci appears to admit and justify what is commonly understood as gain-of-function research on a virus, but he had no hand in such research on the SARS CoV-2 virus, or something like that. Out of the public eye, he uses the phrase “molecularly impossible.” The documentary leaves it at that. Why is this man smiling?
NEW — Fauci Laughs Off Lab Leak Questions in New PBS Documentary
“It would be molecularly impossible” pic.twitter.com/KMDSMC6ku2
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) March 22, 2023
In another scene Fauci joins DC Mayor Muriel Bowser on a mission to convert nonbelievers to vaccination. Hilarity ensues. No one ever said the messianic gig is easy.
This is amazing. Dr. Fauci went knocking on doors trying to get people to get the covid shot. A man in one of the houses confronts him and explains why he won’t be getting the shot. We needed far more heroes like this over the past three years. pic.twitter.com/mqnyfk73XP
— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) March 20, 2023
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