Tuesday, January 6, 2009

I Swear to God....


Introduce OBAMA to GUPTA...and GUPTA to OBAMA:

CNN's GUPTA tapped for surgeon general

Ok, my initial reaction resulted in me spitting out my drink on my binder. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, of CNN's "Planet in Peril" fame has reportedly been asked by Obama to serve as Surgeon General.

Seriously...Times like this I wish J.N. was still in the states to lend his insight on the situation.

Now, after taking sometime to think about it..I mean, he is a neurosurgeon right? That should mean something to me, shouldn't it? He also, despite his freelancing on CNN, he did help craft policy as a White House "Fellow" with Hillary Clinton.

Right?? This is just another F U to the establishment, revolutionary, bold, HOPE promoting move by the Obama administration, isn't it?? Is Gupta is Obama's teenage punk rocker wearing a tie sending middle fingers to the Old Cronies in Washington?

Any thoughts on the 'wisdom' of this decision? Or is anyone else as confused as me?

WHY?!?!?!?!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

4 comments:

  1. This seems a bit strange. I remember his work on that crazy camera angles show cnn did a few years back. He didn't strike me as very substantive, but he is a neurosurgeon, so he's at least smart.

    Oh yeah, and he pulled off one of the worst "fact checks" in history on Michael Moore's Sicko, and had to retract most of it later on. And even the part he didn't apologize for was wrong. Ezra:

    His original report used Paul Keckley, a former researcher at Vanderbilt, as a source. On the air, Moore attacked Keckley as tied to Republicans and the drug industry. Gupta replied, "His only affiliation is with Vanderbilt University. We checked it, Michael. We checked his conflict of interest. We do ask those questions." Gupta was simply wrong. In late-2006, Keckley had left Vanderbilt to assume the directorship of the Deloitte Institution, a Republican-affiliated think tank. This was how CNN identified him on-screen. Either Gupta didn't know of Keckley's change or he was lying.

    Then again, he is a known commodity by the American people, and if a TV personality can be used to sell what Obama's proposing, then it might be a smart move.

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  2. I don't know, perhaps it is my distate for recent CNN anchors, but wouldn't this be the same as promoting Miles O'Brien to NASA admin because he's a certified pilot and space reporter?

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  3. well, good thing that the surgeon general has no real job....

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  4. The Surgeon General makes more broad public health related decisions, and this guy is all about getting geared to combat childhood obesity and chronic diseases. Does anyone not working in the healthcare realm know who our current surgeon general is? No, b/c he does nothing. Gupta is a trusted leader of the medical community and people will listen to him, so I say props to obama. Or maybe i'm biased because i want to see a brown man in office.

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