Outed as a shameless glitterati wannabe. Outed as a relentless attention seeker. Outed as a star-crossed celebrity worshiper.
It would all be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic. After all, Fauci is not some preteen little girl at a Taylor Swift concert. He's an 85-year-old man, a supposedly renowned medical doctor and self-proclaimed scientist who vaulted himself into the highest reaches of power and notoriety during one of the darkest periods in our nation's history.
During that time, Fauci became enamored with himself -- seeing himself as the bright star, the luminous guiding light, the incandescent, all powerful Oz who would show us the way. But in truth, there was no one behind the curtain -- just a tiny gray haired man with beady eyes who was busy admiring himself in an endless hall of mirrors.
And it was in that hall of mirrors that Fauci lost his way, much as one would in a cheap, gaudy, touring carnival attraction.
At the congressional hearing the other day Fauci pleaded the Fifth. But before he did so, he complained about efforts to embarrass him with the release of his diary entries. But it was Fauci who embarrassed himself. Because it was Fauci who, in his haste to sing his own praises, foolishly tapped out those daily diary entries on a government computer. Imagine!
But no one should be surprised by all this. A friend of mine recently noted that there are countless Faucis everywhere -- forgotten bureaucrats, mid-level paper pushers, anonymous bean counters, faceless clerks, managers, mechanics and functionaries. They want to be Somebody. They want to sit at the Cool Kids Table.
Every so often, for one in a gazillion of 'em, lightening strikes. It happened to Little Tony Fauci, a kid from Brooklyn who worked in his father's pharmacy tending the cash register, stocking shelves, and delivering prescription medicines to neighbors on his blue Schwinn bicycle.
Somewhere within Anthony Fauci lived an insatiable desire to be recognized, to be validated. And soon enough he was recognized, and even honored and then revered. But it didn't ever seem to be enough. It must not have been glamorous enough, shiny enough or ego-fulfilling enough. And let's not forget that even a small dose of fame can be a dangerous thing.
So before long, Fauci was seeking more and more and more, gleefully cataloguing all his Big Time attention-grabbing moments, clutching his press clippings and fan mail like some Hollywood divo who kept everyone on the set waiting while he fussed and preened in his dressing room.
In his autobiography, published in 1868, Horace Greeley got it right: "Fame is a vapor, popularity an accident . . . Only one thing endures and that is character."
