The New 5 o’clock Follies

How long has this damned Coronavirus pandemic been happening? It seems like forever.

The “highlight” of my day, and this is a facetious statement, is the daily Coronavirus Task Force briefing. These are White House briefings in which infectious disease specialists give usually intelligent information while the president lies his ass off and makes ignorant and irrational outcries about the media that he hates. I call these the “Five O’Clock Follies.”

The original Five O’Clock Follies was a name given to the military briefings to the press which were given at that particular time in the Saigon Rex Hotel during the Vietnam War. Associated Press Saigon bureau chief Richard Pyle described these briefings while Saigon bureau chief during the war, described the briefings as, “the longest-playing tragicomedy in Southeast Asia’s theater of the absurd.”

While the real-life highlight of the White House briefing is given not by Trump but by Anthony Fauci, M.D., the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The 79-year-old physician is they key medical expert on the Coronavirus Task Force. That task force is chaired by Vice President Mike Pence who fills out the main players of the group. Pence’s job is apparently to stand behind Trump, bobbing his head like a Mike Pence bobblehead.

The media have equated these briefings with Trump’s political rallies which are normally part lies, part exaggeration, part innuendo and part stupidity. And these are just Trump’s roles.

Some media outlets, including CNN, have cut portions of the briefing. Many journalists have said this is more an unpaid political announcement than giving what could be helpful information to a generally fearful public. Some major news outlets, such as The New York Times, have completely avoided showing up at the White House. The Times have said that if need be they can always run a live news feed to their readers.

Here we are at 5:37 p.m. Central Daylight Time in Beaumont, Texas. Our worthless president is on TV for today’s follies. Trump is saying his same old shit. Meanwhile, the current Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is currently 41,379.