GAVEL NOISE!
“Settle down, settle down. Hey! Jordan! Knock it off with the wedgies.”
“Cry about it, pussy.”
“You’re not even a member of this committee!”
“And yet I still banged your mom.”
GAVEL NOISE!
“Just shut up. I’m calling this hearing to order. For the reporters in attendance, I am the Chair, Frank Pallone from New Jersey. I don’t blame you for not knowing who I am. Anyhoo: this morning, the House Energy & Commerce Committee will hear updates on the United States’ pandemic response from Dr. Anthony Fauci. Thank you for coming, Dr. Fauci.”
“It’s nice to be anywhere that Jared Kushner can’t reach me. That young man is full of notions. They’re not quite ideas. Notions. And, uh, he likes to call and pitch them to me.”
“Can you share any of these notions with the committee?”
“Not specifically, but the theme of most of them was ‘Let’s negotiate with the virus.'”
“Can one negotiate with a virus?”
“One cannot.”
“Dr. Fauci, can you give us a snapshot of how the country’s doing today?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that. A snapshot taken of the nation currently would almost certainly be one of those haunted photographs from a Stephen King story where the monster gets closer every time you look at it. Or it would suck you into a perpendicular dimension or something.”
“No one wants that.”
“You’d think.”
“What about a summation?”
“I can do that: We’re super-fucked. Two more weeks of this? Super-duper-fucked. And that’s my professional opinion. I would write that on a chart.”
…
“Really?”
“Yup.”
“Jesus.”
…
“I will yield to my distinguished colleagues for questions, then. Chair recognizes Mr. McKinley from West Virginia.”
“Thank you, northern scum. Good morning, Doctor…Fah-OOSY? Fakey?”
“FOW-chi.”
“What an exotic name! We ain’t got names like that back in the holler. You must be Eye-talian.”
“I am of Italian descent, Congressman.”
“Lotta folks think Eye-talians are white. A lotta people think that.”
…
“All right, then. I got just one question for you, Doc.”
“I look forward to answering it.”
“It’s multi-part, and is more of an ‘easily-avoidable conversational trap’ than a ‘question,’ but I’m gonna just plow ahead. Doc, it has ben reported that you are a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees.”
“That is true.”
“Dr. Fucky–”
“Fauci.”
“–in 2009, you believed that the Yankees had won the World Series the previous year.”
“I did.”
“And yet by 2010, you no longer believed that the Yankees had won the World Series the previous year.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Which is it, sir? How can anyone trust you when your opinion changed so rapidly?”
“My beliefs adjusted to match the facts of reality.”
“Or maybe you’re just a liar who hates the economy?”
GAVEL NOISE
“Enough! The Chair demands that the Congressman stop berating the witness.”
“I’ll fuck that boy up.”
GAVEL NOISE!
“Stop that! You’re silenced. Dr. Fauci, I apologize for my colleague’s accusations.”
“No worries. Once again: This is so much better than my day-to-day work. You know that every single time the Corona Task Force meets, Bill Barr bursts into the room like the Kool-Aid Man and starts whaling us with tennis balls? Guy’s got a cannon on him. Why do you think Birx always wears a scarf? It’s because Barr aims for the neck.”
“That’s the single most unprofessional thing I’ve ever heard of.”
“It doesn’t further our work. I’ll leave it at that. Let’s leave it at that.”
BRILLO-HEADED “LIBERTARIAN” DOOFUS FALLING FROM THE DROP CEILING NOISE
“Oh, for God’s sake, Senator Paul.”
“I’m in!”
“You could’ve used the door.”
“Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? To take away my right to infiltrate a House hearing via the ducting system, Die Hard-style?”
“That’s not a right. That is absolutely not a right.”
“YOU’RE A STATIST, PALOOKA!”
“Pallone.”
“PEPPERONI!”
“I’m gonna need everyone to knock it off with the anti-Italian racism right now, thank you. Why are you here, Senator Paul?”
“Me and Fauci are going nose-to-nose, man. It’s Go Time.”
“It is not Go Time, Rand.”
“I DEMAND THAT GO TIME BE RECOGNIZED!”
“If I give you five minutes, will you leave afterwards?”
“Yes, but only if I’m allowed to take the ducts.”
“Fine.”
“And I’m gonna need a boost back up to the ceiling.”
“Fine, you can have a boost. Five minutes.”
“Thank you. Dr. Fauci, I don’t have a bone to pick with you, I got the entire skeleton.”
PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER THAT DOES NOT COME NOISE
“Lotta bones in a skeleton.”
“Yes, Senator.”
“Dr. Fauci, all I hear from you is bad news. The American people, who are all just aces in my book, are getting tired of your attitude. You’re a bring-down, man. You’re, like, a mope.”
“Senator, I try to convey the facts as we know them in a clear and concise manner. The news right now is not good. Y’know how people say ‘I got good news and I got bad news?’ Well, the only way our pandemic response could be the good news is if the other news was the Holocaust. Or the Siege of Stalingrad. Something like that.”
“There you go. That’s the attitude I was talking about. Last week, President Trump was asked whether he was concerned about Covid spreading at his rallies? And he said ‘I wouldn’t worry about it.’ See how optimistic that sounds?”
“I would not classify that remark as ‘optimistic’.”
“Where’s my baseball, Fauci? Why’d you kill baseball, you sonofabitch?”
“I did not ‘kill’ baseball, Senator. All decisions about this year’s season have been made by the league, and I only consulted–”
“I WANT MY BASEBALL BACK! Only thing I look forward to anymore, man. I don’t have to talk to my wife for months. I fucking love baseball. Gimme back my baseball.”
“Senator–”
“I’ll suck your dick.”
“Senator–”
“I’ll work your buttonhole while I throat you. I know what I’m doing, man. Just gimme my baseball back.”
…
“Chair, is that five minutes?”
“Even it isn’t, let’s say it was. Who’s up for a recess?”
GAVEL NOISE!
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