Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

In my day, never was longer.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

I would gladly pay you tuesday for a hamburger today.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Is trump is trying to break black America over his knee? signs point to ‘yes’.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

This fight is for everything.

In after Baud. Damn.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

“Alexa, change the president.”

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / For Entertainment Purposes Only: ‘The Political Life of Dr. Oz’

For Entertainment Purposes Only: ‘The Political Life of Dr. Oz’

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Yes, Nuzzi is problematic (and she seems to have terrible taste in men), but it’s always fun to watch an assassin stalk a member of the enemy party:

… I decided to try reaching the Ozes directly, since my efforts to contact the candidate via what you might call the formal process were not working. There was no answer at a number listed for their home in New Jersey. And no answer at the 212 number listed for Dr. Oz himself. Then I tried Lisa Oz, the self-help author and self-described certified Reiki expert who has been married to the candidate for 36 years. To my surprise, she picked up — for about a second. Just as quickly as it started, the call was over. I had barely said hello. Unsure if we’d been disconnected or she’d hung up on me, I tried her back. The tone of her voice suggested it had definitely been the latter.

“How did you get my number?” she asked sharply. I told her that her number was listed in public records, and this annoyed her too. “Oh,” she said, “I should have gotten rid of that.” I was about to explain that public records don’t work that way, but she cut in. “Have a nice day,” she said, but it sounded like a cross between the way women of the South say “Bless your heart” and men of Brooklyn call some asshole “pal” after being cut off in traffic. Then she hung up.

Or she thought she did.

“It’s Olivia from The New Yorker, the woman who talked to Michelle,” she said…

Another voice answered. It was Dr. Oz.

“Michelle should never have spoken to her,” he said. “That’s who’s down at the office now.”

Dr. and Mrs. Oz did not or could not hear me, and they did not realize that, rather than end the phone call, Lisa Oz had mistakenly connected her device to what sounded like the sound system of a vehicle, meaning that as they engaged in paranoid conversation and argument for more than four minutes, I remained on the line, hearing every word of it…

“That’s what Casey — ” Mrs. Oz began to say, referring to the campaign manager. “When Michelle told me she spoke to her — ” she continued, referring to Michelle Bouchard, a longtime friend of the couple whom I had interviewed a few days earlier. We’d hit it off during a long conversation that I found helpful for understanding Dr. and Mrs. Oz, and she had volunteered to forward my request to the couple and encourage them to speak with me too. Then she clammed up. If she was going to talk with me again, she said, she would have to get approval from the Ozes before doing so. Another friend of the couple, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, said that Lisa Oz was not happy to hear that associates were freely commenting about her husband to a reporter and that she had been calling around, complaining that “some fucking girl” was “doing a hit piece” and that the policy going forward should be “Don’t fucking talk to her.” It was only day two of my assignment, when my questions were devastating suggestions of character assassination like “What is Dr. Oz like?” and “What do you think of his decision to run for office?”…

Doors slammed. Dr. and Mrs. Oz seemed to exit the car and enter a space where they greeted others with whom they engaged for a few seconds in animated conversation about what sounded like a million random things at once, from Mrs. Oz bringing someone something to eat to, out of nowhere, the subject of NFTs. The call ended.

I stared at my phone, upset by what I had heard and not sure what to do. Before I could figure it out, the phone rang. It was Lisa Oz. I picked it up and said hello. She paused, then she hung up on me. This time she was successful…

NB: Nuzzi also did a memorable story about Giuliani accidentally butt-dialing her — and a bunch of others. And she got her big break with the first story about Anthony Weiner’s insalubrious phone habits. Fortune, or at least modern communication technology, favors the young.

… “He’s one of those public figures who really haunt me,” Frank Bruni of the New York Times said. Bruni met Dr. Oz when he wrote about him in 2010 for The New York Times Magazine. Bruni spent weeks observing his subject, work that required him to experience for himself the incongruity of Dr. Oz’s dual existence. One day, he was in an operating room, peering into the open chest cavity of a patient as Dr. Oz stitched around her heart. The next, he was hanging out at a studio as Dr. Oz and his producers discussed a plan to create prop body parts to hand out to the audience at a taping of The Dr. Oz Show.

During the process, Bruni said, “two things came into equally vivid relief: This is a man who is or was a serious doctor. Seriously trained. Seriously talented. Gifted. And with a record of performance in which he contributed an enormous amount to humanity. But at the same time, I’m sitting in on these story meetings where they’re talking about ‘Does cotton or Silly Putty or something else better stand in for testicles?’ I mean, how do you go from A to B? Why does he seem more excited about the fake testicles than the open-heart surgery? The answer is because the latter was the route to fame and riches — and that’s the Faustian bargain.” That observation was not just some convenient mythic device, Bruni said, but his honest conclusion about a subject he’d thought hard about for more than a decade. “I’ve met and profiled very few if any people who so embody the wages of ambition.” In this allegory, the Devil gave the doctor wealth and fame in exchange for his reputation…

When Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, announced in October 2020 that he would not seek reelection, he created a new opportunity for political drama and uncertainty in the commonwealth that Trump won in 2016 by less than one percentage point and that Joe Biden won back by fractionally more in 2020. In the macho, self-assured terminology of election punditry, Pennsylvania is a battleground where the rare excitement of a toss-up is the result of a decades of gerrymandering and deliberate negative partisanship urging the population’s small number of voters into polarized and predictable enemy camps. With most races in the 2022 midterms on the edge of meaninglessness, Pennsylvania’s upcoming Senate contest is the closest thing to this cycle’s main event. And so before Dr. Oz can woo into voters the suburban women who have made up his fan base for 20 years in November’s general election, he will have to prove to the cliquish and squeamish grassroots gatekeepers and machine kingmakers of the Pennsylvania Republican Party that he can be trusted not to fuck up their plans to win the majority. Or at least trusted more than his competition.

Getting the nomination of either party for a race this high profile is bound to be a fraught endeavor, and nobody is likely to emerge with both their dignity and their sanity intact…

He’d always thought he would run for office. In recent years, his angling in that direction had become more and more obvious. He’d even done Trump the favor of welcoming him onto The Dr. Oz Show in 2016 to discuss the results of a physical exam that claimed he had clocked in at an improbable-seeming weight placing him just outside the body mass index’s categorization for obesity. “We were watching during the taping, and everyone was like, ‘Wait, is anyone going to challenge him?’ ” the former producer said. “A lot of people were really upset. People were saying, ‘Oh God. Oz likes him.’ ”…

You’re telling me there’s no room in the modern Republican Party for a celebrity with a long public record of expressing opinions at odds with the values of the conservative base? That being friends with famous Democrats is a nonstarter in a Republican primary? Since when are Republican candidates not allowed to change their positions on abortion or just about anything else, for that matter? The answer for Oz-skeptical Trumpists, it seems, is that Dr. Oz just isn’t the guy, so he doesn’t get to play by the non-rules. Sorry, but nobody said politics was fair. “Dr. Oz is nowhere near as national a celebrity as Donald Trump was,” the former Trump adviser continued. “Donald Trump was larger than life. Dr. Oz sells diet pills on daytime TV. Oz and his team are making a major miscalculation if they think they can run him like he’s Donald Trump.”

Still, laughing off the TV doc feels a bit like laughing off the TV dealmaker, and if The Apprentice created a fantasy persona for its star that appealed mostly to young men who wanted to be rich, The Dr. Oz Show and its Oprah-endorsed star are best understood as wellness fantasy for women. As we navigate the future of American politics after Trump, we have to know: Did he change everything? Or did everything change for him?…

Reader Interactions

116Comments

  2. 2.

    hells littlest angel

    Donald Trump worked a lifetime at being a sleazy, depraved simpleton. Does Oz really think he can just waltz in and claim his mantle? As far as I know, Oz hasn’t even been credibly accused of rape once.

  6. 6.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I assume it’s only a matter of time until Dr Phil runs for some high-profile office for which he’s totally unqualified.

  7. 7.

    HumboldtBlue

    Imagine being a world-class heart surgeon and still wondering how much a low-class grasping, grifting, avaricious dipsht.

  9. 9.

    Suzanne

    I also want to note that one thing I have noticed very strongly is that PGH doesn’t seem to have much of a wellness culture. In PHX, there were gyms and salad restaurants everywhere. In PGH, there are pizza and wings places everywhere you go, and I have looked for fitness groups and there just are not as many people into that stuff. So I don’t know why wellness culture would be all that appealing.

  10. 10.

    feebog

    According to a poll I saw today, Oz is leading a field of four candidates in the Republican primary. Not by a huge margin, and undoubtedly its name recognition and little more, but still. That said, it looks like Fetterman has the inside track on the Democratic nomination, so it could be an interesting contest.

  15. 15.

    Wag

    @HumboldtBlue:   If you spend any significant time in a hospital, you soon learn that if you scratch the surface of any superstar surgeon of any persuasion (orthopedic, cardiac, oncologist), you’ll find a genuine asshole.

  17. 17.

    Anne Laurie

    @Suzanne: I don’t know why wellness culture would be all that appealing.

    Cuz you take your pizza ‘n wings home, sit down in front of the teevee, and watch Dr. Oz assure you ‘wellness’ means buying the right diet plan?  Instead of, y’know, all that sweaty self-denying gym & ‘whole  food’ stuff?

  18. 18.

    Suzanne

    @Gin & Tonic: I am by no means a wellness fanatic, but honestly it grosses me out a bit. Greasy food E V E R Y W H E R E.

    Since moving here, I have become one of those people who shops at Whole Foods a lot, because we are eating out a lot less (gestures vaguely at world) and I want healthier takeout options.

    ETA: And by “healthier”, I will settle for “not fried or on a bun”. More difficult than you would think.

  19. 19.

    NotMax

    @Wag

    Ever see The Royal? British medical series set in Yorkshire during the 1960s.

    Actor who played the surgeon Mr. Rose did a fine job in gently broaching the professional versus personal conundrum.

  21. 21.

    Ohio Mom

    I am not sure I’ve ever seen an Oprah show — I’ve seen snippets here and there, of course I’ve seen parodies (especially of the “You get a car” moment), I’ve leafed through her magazine in waiting rooms, saw her in The Color Purple — it’s impossible NOT to be familiar with her.

    Still, I’d never been especially taken with her, never gave her much thought, but now it seems to me that between Dr Phil and Oz, she has a lot to answer for.

    I am wondering if she started off okay but then to fill the years and years of her TV show, started to recruit these charlatans to keep things going? A version of jumping the shark?

  22. 22.

    coin operated

    @feebog:

    That said, it looks like Fetterman has the inside track on the Democratic nomination, so it could be an interesting contest.

    He’s getting dragged in a few lefty corners of the twitterverse.  Seems he pulled a gun, vigilante style, on a POC some time back and they have not forgotten this.

  23. 23.

    Joe Falco

    @feebog:

    Better keep an eye on Georgia as well to see if a former football player from UGA can cash in on the one kind of celebrity that has real coin in the South to win the Republican primary. I’d hate for Georgia to follow Alabama’s example of electing Republicans to office simply because of the football team they once played/coached before.

    “Because you don’t want the Republican to win right, Joe?”

    That and as a Georgian, I don’t want my state to follow Alabama in anything.

  24. 24.

    A

    Have we already forgotten the former HUD Secretary? Neurosurgeon at Hopkins?  Oz is just a pale(r) imitation.

  25. 25.

    Mai Naem mobile

    After TFG any freaking celebrity thinks they can become president and its not because they even want to become president its the cache of becoming president. I don’t want Mark Cuban, Kanye, The Rock, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Hanks or George Clooney becoming president . Jeezus. Enough already. Bad enough Tommy Tuberville is a freaking Senator.

  27. 27.

    coin operated

    @Wag:

    If you spend any significant time in a hospital, you soon learn that if you scratch the surface of any superstar surgeon of any persuasion (orthopedic, cardiac, oncologist), you’ll find a genuine asshole.

    Concur.  Was a nurse in the Army a few decades ago. The asshole factor gets multiplied after you pin officer rank on their lapels…the higher the rank, the bigger the asshole.

  28. 28.

    James E Powell

    @Wag:

    Working in medical malpractice defense at the start of my career, I met some really good people. The kind you would want as your family’s surgeon. But Dr. Craig from St. Elsewhere was the median.

  29. 29.

    Suzanne

    @Ohio Mom:

    I am wondering if she started off okay but then to fill the years and years of her TV show, started to recruit these charlatans to keep things going? A version of jumping the shark? 

    Oprah is excellent in many ways, and always has been. I think she’s extraordinarily patient, empathetic, and in many respects brave. I genuinely think that she has done as much to “raise consciousness” for black women (and all women) as really anyone else I can think of. But she’s got her insecurities, around her weight, and it makes her vulnerable to health and wellness charlatans.

  30. 30.

    Leto

    I’ve already seen his commercial a number of times and it’s awful. Just inane talking points of, “They’re trying to take your liberty, and we won’t let them!” style bullshit. I’m sure he’ll garner a high percentage of the vote.

  31. 31.

    West of the Rockies

    Sounds like Nuzzi wrote the standard article about not getting the interview.  Lots of J.D. Salinger stories like that over the years…

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    @Wag

    It’s a bloody addictive little unpretentious series (8 seasons).. And the period music incorporated within episodes is a pleasant bonus.

    Currently streaming on the Roku channel, on Tubi and on Prime via IMDb TV. Also comes along with the Britbox channel service.

  36. 36.

    Suzanne

    Oprah made racism real for me in the earliest memory I can think of centering around race. I grew up living with my mom and my grandparents after SuzBioDad divorced my mom and severed his parental rights to avoid paying child support. We lived in the NYC suburbs before we moved to AZ, and my grandmother watched me after school. She was very casually racist in that way typical of her generation. But our neighborhood and my classmates were increasingly diverse (part of why Arizona became appealing) and this was the 80s and there was a lot of crime, including my mother’s car being stripped for parts in our driveway. Anyway, she watched Oprah every day when I came home from school for years, and I remember, during some of the episodes, she would say, “Oprah’s blackness is coming out”. But then I saw her challenge my grandfather when he said something offensive during the LA riots and she repeated something she had heard on Oprah, and I realized that maybe a little bit of awareness had crept in.

  38. 38.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Suzanne: I’m deeply ambivalent about Oprah Winfrey, but if she comes back to Georgia and opens her checkbook for Stacey Abrams, I’ll overlook a lot.

  39. 39.

    West of the Rockies

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    Not sure why, but I loathe the name Tommy Tuberville. You’re not 11 anymore, Tommy.

    Yes, it worked for Freddie Mercury and Billy Connolly, but not a college football coach pretending to be some alpha male.

  40. 40.

    Suzanne

    @Ohio Mom: Yeah, it is really problematic. Oprah’s elevation of these douchebags is a big failure. But, Iike, in some ways, it is so relatable.

    Marianne Williamson is another person who would not be anywhere without Oprah.

  43. 43.

    Chetan Murthy

    @NotMax: If I had the $$ like she does, I would do the same.  Of course, I’d also be donating to candidates to raise my fucking taxes, *too*.

  44. 44.

    danielx

    @Wag:

    Truth. You have to have a healthy ego to do that kind of work, but the more talented they are the farther they edge down the scale towards outright sociopathy.

  45. 45.

    frosty

    @Suzanne: I am equally deeply depressed that Oz will be all over PA for almost a whole year. And I am depressed that there will be at least one other more-Trumpy wacko in the primary against him.

  46. 46.

    Suzanne

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I get it. I think she’s an amazing person, and because she was such a part of my daily life while I was at an impressionable age, I look back now and realize that she was an incredibly positive example. I had Oprah and Clair Huxtable (and there was a local TV anchor that I loved but now I can’t remember her name) and for a seven-year-old, that is pretty great. But her judgment around health and diet culture is pretty questionable.

  48. 48.

    frosty

    @Suzanne: Our go-to “not fried or on a bun” on road trips is a salad at Panera. You can only do that so often before food boredom sets in though.

  49. 49.

    NotMax

    @West of the Rockies

    BTW, his middle name happens to be … Hawley.

    Not joshing ’bout that.

    Let’s see. Some other diminutive cases which work.

    Jimmy Carter
    Jackie Gleason
    Mel Brooks
    Frankie Laine
    Willy Nelson
    Sammy Davis
    Desi Arnaz
    Teddy Roosevelt
    Harry Reid
    Marty Feldman
    Andy Devine
    Abe Lincoln
    Joey Bishop
    ;)

  51. 51.

    Suzanne

    @frosty: I feel you on that.

    OTOH, it is weird (good-weird) being in a state where there are multiple plausible strong Dem candidates for a Senate seat. Part of why Kyrsten Sinema wins in AZ is because pickings are fucking slim. I’m like, whaaaaat, I have a choice?!

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    @frosty: I eat at Panera at least weekly as there is one right next to my yoga studio and that may be the whitest thing I have ever said.

  53. 53.

    jonas

    Asshole celebrities entering politics with a oil-tanker sized sense of entitlement whose gaffes fall from the sky like so much detritus from a downed plane? Sounds like Nuzzi’s beat. It’s hard to report on the crafty — yet ever-more-dangerous — motherfuckers like DeSantis or Josh Hartley. Oz is low-hanging fruit.

  54. 54.

    frosty

    @mrmoshpotato: True. But after your doc tells you to cut the carbs there’s not much at a place called Panera Bread that you’re supposed to eat. I get one now and then though.

  61. 61.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @frosty: yeah, it drives me crazy how little there is between a cheeseburger and a bowl of iceberg lettuce when you’re traveling outside of an urban area

    I remember getting a spinach salad at Wendy’s or McDonald’s once. About a dozen individual pieces of spinach very carefully arranged on top of a large pile of …. mostly white iceberg lettuce.

  65. 65.

    Patricia Kayden

    So let me see if I have this straight: You refuse to get vaccinated, you won't wear a mask, you go to public places doing neither of those things and then you blame Biden for a surge in Covid cases? How does that work?— Jeff Cohen (@JeffCohenwriter) December 28, 2021

  71. 71.

    HumboldtBlue

    @NotMax:

    I just wanna know what they serve for breakfast in castles in Scotland because me and Ms. Brooke Shields have just begun the Xmas journey of a Castle For Christmas on Netflix.

    There ain’t no knights… yet!

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … Defense.gov:

    Bump in COVID-19 Cases in D.C. Area Spurs Additional Mitigation Efforts at Pentagon

    DEC. 28, 2021 , DOD NEWS

    An increase in new COVID-19 cases in the National Capital Region — the area including and surrounding Washington, D.C., where most of the Pentagon workforce lives — has spurred Defense Department leadership to implement some additional safety measures to prevent its own workforce from becoming ill or contributing to new cases.

    In a memorandum dated December 27, Michael Donley, director for administration and management at the Pentagon, discussed Defense Department concerns and detailed additional safety measures.

    “We have seen an increase in coronavirus disease 2019 and positive test results in the National Capital Region in recent weeks,” Donley wrote. “Additional mitigation measures will be implemented on the Pentagon Reservation to protect the workforce and our support to the no-fail mission of the Department of Defense.”

    According to the memorandum, beginning January 3, food concessions at the Pentagon will no longer have seating available for diners. Those who purchase food at those locations will need to eat elsewhere.

    Because the Pentagon is in health protection condition “Bravo +,” organizations in the building are maintaining occupancy rates at less than 40%. That will continue, and Donley asked supervisors and managers to “strongly encourage” the personnel they lead to telework at least through the end of January 2022. Virtual meetings or seating with physical distancing should be maximized.

    […]

    I suspect that they won’t be the last large organization implementing such measures.

    Be careful out there.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  76. 76.

    HumboldtBlue

    Oh No!

    Hamish the dog just raced around the corner of the stately castle as Brooke the romance author, searching for peace and quiet from her demanding fans, gets out of the tartan patterned cab at her place of respite and calm!

    Suddenly, Brooke the romance author is thrown into the arms of the local handyman — replete with tool belt and work bench, neither of which have been used before the day of filming took place — who I suspect will become a romantic interest as this classic moves along.

    They look longingly and deeply into each other’s eyes.

    The dog farted, I think.

  77. 77.

    Anyway

    @Ohio Mom:

    Oprah has provided a platform to a number of anti-vax personalities over the years (Jenny McCarthy) and is very susceptible to people pushing woo.I have never been able to make her seriously because of this.

  78. 78.

    HumboldtBlue

    Aww hell nah, now Brooke, romance author has traveled to Scotland, been baffled and confuzzled by the cabbies accent and is now bantering with the cool black friend who appears to be a Nigerian princess who speaks with a Scottish accent.

    Also, she walked into this place to rent a room where everyone is knitting and they all recognize her and start to ask her about killing off the popular character.

    There is no escape.

  79. 79.

    Kent

    @Anyway:

    @Ohio Mom:

    Oprah has provided a platform to a number of anti-vax personalities over the years (Jenny McCarthy) and is very susceptible to people pushing woo.I have never been able to make her seriously because of this.

    I never actually watched the show. But she was good in the Color Purple.

  81. 81.

    HumboldtBlue

    Awww shit, Broo… Sophie Brown, romance author, just rode her bike from the warm absurdly eclectic and diverse rural Scottish Inn located near the castle of her dreams, to the actual castle over the hill where she rides right up to — you guessed it! Suspected romantic interest-guy with the bad hat and unused tool belt.

  86. 86.

    Anyway

    @Kent:w

    I was once afraid that she would try to run for the Dem nomination but that moment seems to have passed. Haven’t watched her show but know she’s not someone I care for.

  89. 89.

    Ruckus

    @coin operated:

    The asshole factor gets multiplied after you pin officer rank on their lapels…the higher the rank, the bigger the asshole.

    That often happens without any medical degree whatsoever. It also works in the enlisted ranks with or without any degree whatsoever.

    Some people are just assholes. Giving them power just makes them bigger assholes.

  90. 90.

    JWR

    @Suzanne:

    … I don’t know why wellness culture would be all that appealing.

    It does seem to appeal to people with lots of money to burn, at least as far as KPFK, (Pacific’s L.A. station), goes. Especially early afternoon, when they have some Goop-y girl offering personal, 30 minute interactions with a certified guru, (all for only $1200!), or wee hours of the night, which often feature the execrable anti-vaxxer, Gary Null. Lots of moolah in those groups.

  91. 91.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    When I arrived at work this morning(at 5am), there were cards in my locker(as well as everybody else’s) that the company would be requiring proof of vaccination or you’d have to test for COVID every 7 days, beginning January 4th.  My supervisor asked if I’d be interested in working full time(I’m currently part time), I agreed and said I’d work closing(3pm-12am, M-F).  The biggest advantage to working full time, is that I get set hours, no more trying to figure out when I’m working that week and having it change(last time it changed, I didn’t get notification and was 4 hours late).

  92. 92.

    Ruckus

    @NotMax:

    @James E Powell:

    Sometimes there are other reasons, like having the same name as your father. So you are always jr, or little jonnie, and live in a small town so many people actually know that. Having a first name that doesn’t reference anyone else is sometimes actually nice. Even if it does sound like a character on Little Rascals.

  93. 93.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @NotMax: ​

    Billie Ellish

    Billie Holiday

    Billie Jean King

    Billie don’t be a fool with your life

    Billy Crystal

    Billy Martin

    Billy D. Kidd

    Billy Joel

    Billy Idol

    Billy Dee Williams

    Billy Bob Thornton

    Billy Ray Cyrus

    Billy Wilder

    Billy Graham

    Billy White Shoes Johnson

    Billy Eliot

  95. 95.

    coin operated

    @Ruckus:

    That often happens without any medical degree whatsoever. It also works in the enlisted ranks with or without any degree whatsoever.

    My experience is just a wee bit different.  In my day, the *only* job in the military that required state licensure for the base you served in was nursing.  We tended to stick together, no matter what the rank.

    Army Doctors, on the other hand, did not.  What do you call the guy who finished last in his class in medical school?  In the Army, they were still called “Doctor” whether or not they managed to pass the state boards.

    Pin some rank on that, and you get to see what asshole + privilege really looks like. Your mileage may vary, of course…

  98. 98.

    Ruckus

    @coin operated:

    I knew some decent people of all ranks I dealt with. Including ships captain. OTOH I met a lot of assholes, whose shit didn’t stink, just ask them. Oh wait you didn’t have to, they made sure you knew. The last one I ever had to deal with was the XO of the ship I was discharged off of. His boss was an asshole deluxe. And that’s the best that I can say about him. However the XO told me, after he’d handed me my signed checkout paper, that my kind always comes back. I told him that I had a friend whose family owned several dairies and that I would go to work shoveling cow shit 7 days a week for the rest of my life before I’d come back to work for people like him.

  100. 100.

    prostratedragon

    Did they mail him?

    According to the judge in the case, Boughner was being moved from a jail in Michigan to a jail in Washington, D.C. That means that he’s on the road and can’t exactly appear in court. They think he’s “possibly en route to DC,” said MacFarlane. But the federal government confessed that it doesn’t exactly know where Bougher is. They’re thinking Oklahoma.

  101. 101.

    Elizabelle

    @Suzanne:

    But [Oprah’s] got her insecurities, around her weight, and it makes her vulnerable to health and wellness charlatans.

    That’s a gentle, and likely accurate, on why Oprah falls for these hacks.

    Agree with Ohio Mom: Oprah has a LOT to answer for. Normalizing Jenny McCarthy (at the time, a story of a mom who couldn’t do enough for her autistic son) paved the way for anti-vaxxers and other non-scientific woo.

    I think Dr. Phil should personally be supporting every one of Octomom’s unlucky brood. Sounds like the state of California was prepared to intervene, for the good of those children, but no — Dr. Phil got involved and made it into a road show. I sometimes wonder how those kids are doing, but not enough to google it …

    But also: Oprah and her book club; may have been some clunkers, but also many authors whose works, and ideas, deserved more readership.

    And: may Dr. Oz never be elected US Senator from Pennsylvania. Enough.

  102. 102.

    Elizabelle

    @HumboldtBlue:   I saw that movie too.  Regrettably.  Visiting with a friend who was watching it to decompress.

    They missed an opportunity to have the romance writer interrupting a long-established relationship between the love interest and his longtime male housemate.  I was waiting for that one.

    AND:  the hero is played by Cary Elwes!  It’s the Princess Bride dude, making some extra bucks on the side.

    Still handsome.  I don’t think he took that movie any more seriously than you or I did.  Ka-ching!

  104. 104.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Elizabelle:

    Agree with Ohio Mom: Oprah has a LOT to answer for. Normalizing Jenny McCarthy (at the time, a story of a mom who couldn’t do enough for her autistic son) paved the way for anti-vaxxers and other non-scientific woo.

    I know nothing about Jenny McCarthy besides what’s been mentioned in this thread, but my former family doctor went down that road too, which is why she’s our former family doctor.

    She had been a sane and very good family doc, but had an autistic son, and got not just more and more into the anti-vax business and skepticism towards a lot of standard medicines, but bits and pieces of conspiracy theory stuff were starting to work their way into her chatter.  I imagine she’s way down the rabbit hole by now.

  108. 108.

    evodevo

    @HumboldtBlue: I’ve known a few thoracic and vascular surgeons, and if there’s one trait they share, it’s an outsized ego and a tendency to overconfidence in their abilities outside their area of expertise – well, to be fair, you’d have to have such an ego to go messing around in someone’s chest, suturing together veins and arteries that closely resemble pieces of overdone spaghetti, that a person’s life depends on.  However, when they get outside their lanes, the results can be catastrophic –  their egos won’t let them admit that they can’t do whatever it is, and they crash the plane, like my vascular surgeon did…

  109. 109.

    Booger

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: MY wife and I have stopped looking for little, funky, off-the-beaten-track places to eat while on the road…because you have to plow through so much dross to find the rare ‘diamond-in-the-rough.’

    We now head straight for the local chain grocery store (Giant/Martins/Food Lion/Try-N-Save) and get the prepacked Chef’s salad or equivalent. The standard deviation is low and the nutritional value is better, as long as the ‘best-by’ date is still in the future.

    Yes, we eat it in the parking lot with a bag of salt-free potato chips, then hop back on the superslab. Why do you ask?

  110. 110.

    Elizabelle

    @lowtechcyclist:  You are right about the pathway.  Same thing with a friend of mine too.  Autistic son.  Probably a huge amount of guilt over having given him vaccines, although …

    This woman, an educator, would tell me over and over that she could tell me all about the problems with vaccines.  All the information she had gathered.  But somehow, she never could put it into her own words.  Never. I found that interesting.

  112. 112.

    Geminid

    Dr. Oz has several competitors for the nomination. The toughest could be David McCormick, a Connecticut hedge fund executive who recently bought a house in the Pittsburgh area. He had lived in that part of Pennsylvania until he took a job with the Bush administration in 2005.

    McCormick is trying hard for the trump endorsement, which is up for grabs since Sean Parnell dropped out of the race. He’s hired Hope Hicks, and a Politico article from a week ago lists several other Trump alumni as advisors including the odious Steven Miller.

  113. 113.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Suzanne: You think this is a “Murrcan original”?? In 1980 I got a sandwich that turned out to be half fried potatoes from a takeaway window on the Rue St-Severin in Paris.

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