...So apparently Obama plans to appoint CNN’s Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General. I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.
What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way...
Gupta is a qualified neurosurgeon. Gupta is a smart hardworking Detroit suburb kid who made very good, and who obviously enjoys the spotlight. Gupta is classic Oborg, "beyond politics", i.e. really very connected with both the Democrat and Republican parties, who plays fast and loose with the facts to advance his own talking points, and whose only real affiliation is with his own bank account.
Hundreds of thousands of physicians in this country, many who are also premier basic scientists, students of the process of disease and healing, and devoted participants in public health administration. So the Uniborg pick a cablevision doctor.
I have to close this by quoting Avedon again:
...This is the thing that always worries me about Obama - he seems very much a part of that subgroup of people in his age group who fell hook, line, and sinker for the "libertarian" excuses to oppose liberalism, because he doesn't know any better. And unlike a lot of other people in that group, he hasn't learned anything from the last eight years. I have a friend who seems convinced that Obama is the Real Deal because he spoke to him back during his Senate race and learned that Obama really doesn't like Bush - but, really, despising Bush is a pretty low threshold. Not many people ever really liked Bush, anyway. What's important is understanding why the policies are bad, and listening to Obama talk about Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, I get the feeling he doesn't really know what was wrong with Iraq, either. Same with healthcare.
But if he'd really known he'd never been allowed to be the Figurehead-In-Chief, would he?
If he really understood what the Village and the Company were all about he'd never choose Leon Panetta to head the CIA. The Company is about to do things to Obama that would make what they did to Carter seem mild. Illinois politics is tough, but it's a cakewalk compared to spook central at Langley.
Ball of confusion, baby.
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