Dr(??) Donald Trump, you ask? Last thing we read, was about him (after the attack on the U.S. Capitol) being stripped of his honorary degrees by Lehigh and Wagner Universities? Disclosure: The ‘Dr’ title has been bestowed on former Great America President Donald Trump by the Cranky Philosopher. It’s a story that requires the modern form of two-factor authentication, to avoid it being regarded as just another piece of fake news told and written by and about former President Donald Trump.
The first factor is – of course, how else could it be? – Donald Trump himself. Whilst his expert medical adviser on the pandemic, Dr Fauci, vacillated in his medical expertise between initially advising not to wear a mask (they won’t protect us anyway) to lately advising us to wear two masks (two are even better than one), Donald Trump immediately grasped the medical implications of the latest medical research. Just to mention two brilliant examples:
Researchers had found that high-strength alcohol kills the coronavirus, and that we should thus use it in sanitisers for cleaning our hands.
Trump immediately grasped the opportunity of not only sanitising our hands with that stuff, but to indeed use it for gargling. We could then inhale the alcohol fumes released in our throats, so that they would kill the coronaviruses in our lungs.
Researchers also found that ultraviolet light kills the coronavirus.
Trump promptly called for developing ultraviolet lamps that could be shoved down our throats into our lungs, to irradiate the coronaviruses there. Of course, COVID-19 is not a joke; but the Cranky Philosopher could not restrain his imagination about the ghostly scene of hospital rooms being lit up at night by ultraviolet light radiating from patients’ chests.
The second factor is a Great American Fox News presenter, Tucker Carlson. The name implies tucking in something, and also a Great American home brewery. Maybe he likes beer as much as I do, and needs to tuck in a beer belly. Not to worry, though. I still remember the days, when news cameras exclusively focussed on news presenters’ heads, giving rise to the now somewhat faded jocular “talking heads”. Since then, they have zoomed out to showing presenters’ whole chests. Incidentally, it’ a development that somehow seems oddly correlated with the rise of female news presenters. Nevertheless, news cameras have so far generally steered clear of presenters’ bellies.
When it became evident that Joe Biden would be elected the 46th President of Great America, Tucker Carlson went into a spin about Joe’s wife, Dr Jill Biden, using the ‘Dr’ title. He insisted that only medical doctors are entitled to use the ‘Dr’ title, and not someone with a mere academic doctorate in education, like Jill Biden. Now, Tucker Carlson is a fawning supporter of Donald Trump, so the Cranky Philosopher could almost ‘feel’ the pain that Tucker Carlson must have been experiencing. Here, on the one hand, we have an exemplary President handing out free sterling medical advice to Great America’s people, yet not being honoured with the ‘Dr’ title. On the other hand, we have someone using the ‘Dr’ title, yet not qualified as a medical doctor. Ai, foei tog! The Cranky Philosopher just simply felt compelled to remedy this unfairness.
Acknowledgements: Forbes, 2 Feb. 2021, Photo: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images