Fauci outcast for crime of speaking truth
You may recall that in early 2018, Donald Trump, in a meeting with congressional leaders, referred to Haiti and certain African countries with a very unpleasant term, the second syllable of which was “hole.”
You know what he meant. He meant those hot pestilential republics with a second-rate mentally unstable tyrant who shakily holds power over a population starved for government services.
I don’t know if this counts as karma, but these days, we kind of are one.
The latest country to complain is Ireland. The New York Times reports that Americans are arriving in Ireland and immediately making reservations for guided tours and fancy restaurants without quarantining their potentially diseased carcasses for the required 14 days.
I find this surprising, because Americans are ordinarily so cooperative about public health restrictions.
It’s a touchy thing. The United States is averaging 60,000 new cases daily whereas Ireland’s rate is about 20. That’s right. 20. Erin go bragh!
It is a tribute to the imperishable spirit of the Irish people that they allow us through customs at all. A case could be made for penning us up among the belted Galloway cattle foaming with hoof and mouth disease.
Here in Connecticut, we’ve a similar situation. We now require a two-week quarantine if people travel here from any of 22 heavily infected states. The latest additions are Ohio, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Minnesota. They have cheeseheads in the car! Seize them!
It puts a new spin on Connecticut’s latest tourism slogan which is, I kid you not, “Travel Less. Experience More.”
Meanwhile, back at the White House, President Donald Trump on Tuesday gave a one-hour news conference that made it seem like Humphrey Bogart’s part in “The Caine Mutiny” was a little underwritten.
At one point, Trump appeared to say that energyefficient buildings damage your vision. “That means no windows, no nothing, it’s very hard to do. I tell people when they go into some of these buildings, how are your eyes, because they won’t be good in five years.”
At another point he said, “What a disaster. He was right. I was wrong. And the burping. I’m having difficulty with the questions. What the hell did I do?”
Wait. I’m mixing up my New York real estate heirs. That was perpetual murder suspect Robert Durst talking to himself in a bathroom mirror.
But Trump did say, “Because you talk about a certain power of the telephone and the calls where they would call and say, no, we don’t want to do that.”
This was connected in some way to China and trade.
Do you get the feeling that we keep moving the sanity goalposts for this man? What’s it going to take? A tinfoil hat? A big rabbit only he can see?
Watch the whole performance. If Aaron Sorkin had kept “The West
Wing” running until Season 10, when Brendan Fraser gets sworn in and goes nuts in office, it would look pretty much like that.
I feel like Sorkin would have jotted “president goes crazy during a pandemic” on a pad and then crossed out “during a pandemic.” Too preposterous, right?
Meanwhile, fingers crossed that Trump’s runaway train of thought makes him forget his apparent plan to destroy Anthony Fauci.
I had (max) one good idea all week, and as usual, somebody else would have to execute it. Some graphic design genius — I’m looking at you, Peter Good, creator of the Whalers logo — should make a piece of proFauci heraldry. A white “F” on a purple field. (I’m using the colors of his alma mater, Holy Cross.) There might or might not be a little face mask wrapped around the letter.
And we all get them as car magnets and lawn signs.
It’s a little thing, but it would make us all feel better to see them as we drive around: a collective tribute to this fundamentally decent man, currently targeted by the White House for the crime of speaking a few simple truths about the danger we’re in.
Many sad things happened this week. One of them occurred right after former television game show host Chuck Woolery tweeted, on Sunday night, a conspiracy theory: “The most outrageous lies are the ones about Covid 19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust.”
Trump retweeted it.
A day later, Woolery tweeted, “To further clarify and add perspective, Covid-19 is real and it is here. My son tested positive for the virus, and I feel for of those suffering and especially for those who have lost loved ones.”
Then he deleted his Twitter account.
I take no pleasure in the reversal. One would need a heart of ice not to sympathize with Woolery, a man shaken to his core.
But it also can’t be this way. It can’t be the case that knowledge and judgment and truth mean nothing until everything is boiled away except the jagged edge that touches you or me.
We have to see our choices sooner than that.