Stephen Colbert is really is beneath contempt. His late night show proudly promoted the guest appearance of Anthony Fauci last week, which is roughly the equivalent of cheering for the Sackler family. This is one of the subtle ways—not so subtle, really—that the media pimps for Democrats and the party’s agenda (“The Government knows best, proles!”) Colbert only has guests that align with the Axis; Nancy Pelosi was another recent guest, and the producers obviously have no interest in presenting anyone who isn’t fully part of the “team.” They also don’t have any interest in entertaining audience members who, having paid attention and having not been brainwashed, know the likes of Pelosi and Fauci for what they are.

Fauci, however, is a far more nauseating and unforgivable object of fawning idolatry than even Pelosi. He’s a certifiable, no-contest ethics villain: incompetent, irresponsible, dishonest, hypocritical, an abuser of power, position and influence, and the perfect poster boy for the fake “Trust the science!” mantra that the Left has weaponized for political gain.

His latest unmasking was in an interview yesterday when he finally reversed himself and conceded that shutting down schools for more than a year as part of the pandemic freakout was a “mistake.” “Keeping it for a year was not a good idea,” the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases told “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil while peddling his new memoir “On Call: A Doctor’s Journey in Public Service.” (I recommend that you purchase my latest book, “Sock Drawer! Adventures Among the Argyles” first.)

“So, that was a mistake in retrospect?” Dokoupil asked. “We will not repeat it?” “Absolutely, yeah,” Fauci responded.

Fauci had previously insisted that the CDC’s recommendations that closed down classrooms, forced kids into inferior remote learning modes, made parents stay home from work and helped cripple the economy was the correct one in sworn congressional testimony and comments to the press. But if there is one thing Fauci is a master of, it’s flip-flopping—that, and pretending that shot-in-the-dark guesses are “science.”

During the summer of 2020, Fauci argued with former President Donald Trump on the issue, citing CDC guidelines—Science!— that forced the closures. Naturally, the measures were eagerly embraced by the teachers unions, and the predictable “Think of the Children!” mania did the rest. “I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!” Trump posted on Twitter July 8, 2020.

Yeah, what does the President know? He won’t even wear a mask and he told people to try injecting themselves with bleach…

The guidelines Fauci pushed in 2020 told schools that they had to install expensive air filtration systems and rearrange desks and chairs to enforce “social distancing” requirements if they were even going to consider re-opening. Neither had any basis in research or clinical studies at all regarding the Wuhan virus. The school closings handicapped the social and educational development of a generation, increased childhood obesity and depression, and according to some studies, caused more deaths than they prevented. In Reason Magazine, Pamela Hobart wrote, “Closing schools to protect kids made them sick. Children forced to Zoom into school ended up with suboptimal immune systems—the opposite of herd immunity” and as a result, children later suffered more from things like hand, foot, and mouth disease, and respiratory syncytial virus. She explains, “Isolation does not put your immune system on pause; sometimes immunity follows a ‘use it or lose it’ rule. While they were Zooming in to school, children with existing partial immunity to endemic contagious diseases missed many opportunities to be exposed again, which would have refreshed their immune systems. We ended up with the opposite of herd immunity: a bunch of kids with suboptimal immune systems.” School closings, she reveals, were followed by an “unprecedented, counterseasonal surge in communicable illnesses.”

Yeah, I’d say it was a mistake! How noble of Fauci to finally admit it, four years too late. I’ll be fair: Fauci was in a difficult position, but his certitude and dishonest claims that he and the CDC were basing their edicts on science rather than guesswork was deliberately deceptive and should not be excused because he was doing what he thought was right and had the best intentions. His conclusions were flawed, he was not transparent to the public or the news media, his mistakes caused incalculable harm to the nation, and yet he has basked in undeserved celebrity for being bad at his job and failing the nation. Okay, it was a tough job, but we typically don’t lionize failures, and decent, ethical failures don’t accept praise when they don’t deserve any.

Somehow, the nagging thought keeps occurring to me that the reason Democratic Party operatives like Colbert celebrate Fauci is because his fake science wrecked the economy and helped stop Trump’s reelection. Fauci’s sickening grin—he’s so cute!—is redolent of Harry Reid’s reptilian smirk when he justified his lies about Mitt Romeny during the 2012 campaign by saying, “Romney lost, didn’t he?”

I’m sure that’s unfair of me. Well, it might be unfair. Maybe there’s a chance it’s unfair.