The U.K. publication The Guardian celebrated Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, as “the sexiest man alive” on Monday.
The Guardian posted a photo of Fauci on its Instagram page and, recalling a campaign for People Magazine to name the 80-year-old bureaucrat “the sexiest man alive,” dubbed him as such.
“The sexiest man alive,” the outlet captioned a picture of Fauci. “Anthony Fauci, an 80-year-old scientist, doctor and public servant, has become an unlikely cult hero for millions of people during the Covid pandemic.”
“The US diseases expert has been spoofed by Brad Pitt and lauded as the ‘sexiest man alive,’” the caption continued. “Now the pop culture phenomenon is the focus of a documentary, appropriately titled: Fauci.”
The Instagram post also included comments from one of the documentary’s co-directors.
“At the core of Tony’s popularity is that people intuit that this is a man who is speaking the truth and will not let anything stand in the way,” John Hoffman said, according to the post. “Tony is the signal amid the noise. People are able to sense that there’s a lot of noise and their ears are trying to find the signal and Tony is the signal.”
In 2020, an internet campaign was launched to get People Magazine to recognize Fauci as “the sexiest man alive.” The title was ultimately awarded to Actor Michael B. Jordan, but Fauci was named to People’s “2020 People of the Year” list.
The Guardian’s post and the upcoming documentary is the latest in a series of fawning profiles Fauci has received since he rose to national prominence last year with the outbreak of COVID-19. Critics have accused Fauci of using his high-profile position in the federal response to COVID-19 to chase the limelight.
Last year, Fauci went on a media spree appearing for interviews on numerous cable shows, podcasts, networks, as well as in many publications. As The New York Times reported in August:
On March 15, as the novel coronavirus was beginning to surge in the United States, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci accomplished a rare Washington feat: He appeared on all five major Sunday talk shows.
But the White House worried that Dr. Fauci might upstage (and sometimes contradict) President Trump, and soon his media handlers were no longer approving his high-profile interview requests.
So Dr. Fauci found another way to get his message out: He said yes to pretty much every small offer that came his way: academic webinars, Instagram feeds and niche science podcasts, as well as a few celebrity interviews.
Fauci also landed a photoshoot in InStyle magazine in July.
As The Daily Wire reported at the time:
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading voice on the White House Coronavirus Task Force and the nation’s top infectious disease expert, earned a spread in InStyle, the magazine teased Wednesday.
First lady Melania Trump, a former fashion model, has yet to be featured for InStyle since becoming first lady, in stark contrast to her predecessor former first lady Michelle Obama, and, apparently, even Dr. Fauci.
Wearing shades and sitting poolside, the famed “Good Doctor” drops the modesty and boasts about how “effective” he is during the lengthy interview, which he shared with his wife Dr. Christine Grady.