1. Emails expose Fauci's disinformation campaign
You can still buy Anthony Fauci prayer candles, but the former Covid Saint’s reputation continues to burn.
At the height of the pandemic, Fauci repeatedly rejected and belittled the possibility that the virus might have come from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, an institution well-known for its high-risk virology research.
The government and other health officials repeated his statements, and it eventually became the accepted narrative. The lab leak theory was taboo, and anyone who believed in it was ridiculed.
Now, private communications between scientists and Fauci reveal that those who authored the paper he touted had strong reservations about the natural origin of the virus. At least, until greed and pressure changed their minds.
Why did Fauci push a false narrative? After all, documents released by the House Committee suggest that Fauci was the one who prompted the scientists to look into the virus's origin and write the paper in the first place.
The short answer is: Putting lipstick on a pig. For years, Fauci's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases sent U.S. tax dollars to the Wuhan lab for gain-of-function research, making viruses more contagious or lethal in humans to potentially prep us for future threats.
The guys in the white lab coats – both American and Chinese – had a strong hand in creating and allowing this virus to escape, killing millions. That wasn’t their intention, but it’s increasingly difficult to deny.
This write-up from The Free Press is the best I've read on the topic.
2. LA Times: Going to work = racist
Is your favorite comedy show on hold because of the strike? No fear, there’s always unintentional humor to be found at the L.A. Times.
Yesterday’s episode featured LeRon Barton, who took a pay cut instead of returning to his job as a network engineer. His position required him to make occasional site visits at a San Francisco hospital – a notorious racial hotbed – where patients “sometimes gave him funny looks” and “staff members questioned his competence.”
Evidently, working from home saved him from the “onslaught of microaggressions and other racist behavior he’d had to endure”. The Times tells us that such workers need to make the difficult choice to prioritize their mental health or carry on.
I hate calling anyone a liar, but if tech workers in San Francisco can’t handle the lurking racism in the Bay Area in 2023, then skin color isn’t their problem.
One can only hope that young readers don’t see this tripe in a real newspaper. This false victimhood narrative is exactly the wrong message to tell any person of any race striking out in the world.
3. Fox’s Gutfeld is beating the late-night “comedians” even harder
Speaking of comedy shows, the self-proclaimed kings of the genre, such as Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, and Stephen Colbert, have seen their audience recently cut by at least a third. Meanwhile, "Gutfeld!" is producing new episodes and drawing in 2 million viewers a night.
So, what’s going on?
The most recent reason is that Fallon, Kimmel, and Colbert are seeing their numbers drop because they’re on a forced hiatus as their writers strike. Gutfeld writes most of his own, so hasn’t been affected by what’s going on in Hollywood.
But late night comedy’s viewership has been dropping long before they were forced to air reruns. As those shows morphed from comedy to thinly-disguised political shows, for some reason people have switched channels.
4. Billionaire backers for Tucker media?
Following his departure from Fox News in April, Tucker Carlson is reported to be seeking financial heavy hitters to back his yet-to-be-named venture.
CNBC reports that GOP megadonors, Rebekah Mercer and Peter Thiel have expressed interest in helping Tucker. Mercer’s family helped bankroll Breitbart News and the now-closed Parler, while Thiel is the co-founder of PayPal. Details are thin but it's apparent that Carlson is aiming to amass significant funding for his project, possibly in the ballpark of hundreds of millions.
Sources tell me that the Fox News / Tucker divorce has yet to occur, with him still being tethered to his Fox contract. That won’t last.
— Ken
How did I not hear about Fauci prayer candles before? That visual just made my day... bahahahaha
Is anybody else bothered by these comic book-like heroes-vs.-villains narratives being applied to politics? Public servants, elected and non-, are fallible people like the rest of us, capable of making good and bad choices. But there seems to be a tendency nowadays to paint them as caricatures, like they're personifications of good or evil.
Fauci's public image is a good example of that phenomenon. There has to be some middle ground between demigod and criminal mastermind. Frankly the guy's usually impressed me, although he seems to have a healthy ego -- maybe deservedly so? I'll be interested to see how his reputation fares over the long term. Passions are running so hot right now that it's still too soon to place the pandemic in historical context.