I just had a premonition. Sometime in the very near future, perhaps in the next few hours, a text will appear on my phone from “Mom.” She will have seen the following TikTok video making its way around the internet and she will send it to me with “LOL” or “Watch this!” and then she will follow up and ask me if I watched it approximately 20 minutes after that.
Here it is:
I’m letting you all know in case the intersection of the musical Hamilton and Dr. Anthony Fauci is very salient for your mothers also. As I have reported, Dr. Fauci fandom is a rampant phenomenon among a certain age demographic, as is the rap history Broadway show Hamilton, which my mother purchased Disney+ to watch. (My dad informs me that the number of times she watches it per week has made the cost of the subscription significantly value effective.) Also popular among this demographic is calling Donald Trump things like “toddler,” all of which the TikTok video combines, in a rap parody by the professional a cappella singer Scott Hoying, which substitutes “Alexander Hamilton” for “Doctor Anthony Fauci” in the eponymous song from the musical.
“That doesn’t really work,” you might be thinking. And you would be right. The way “Doc-tor An-tho-ny Fau-CHEE” grates against the mind is unfortunate. But given that you, too, will likely see this video from your own elders now that Newsweek has called it “the best thing to come out of quarantine,” I thought you should be prepared.
Meanwhile …