One of Oprah’s greatest crimes was promoting that horrible opportunist, Dr Oz, and turning him into a celebrity quack. Here’s a good expose of how awful Oz is.
Dr. Oz became an Oprah regular, and when The Dr. Oz Show premiered, it took off. He fit in easily among the celebrities in his new social stratum and now counts among his friends everyone from hedge-fund billionaire Ray Dalio (who did not wish to discuss their relationship with me) to Brooke Shields (who did not respond to a text seeking comment) and Martha Stewart (who said she couldn’t talk owing to her “busy year-end schedule”). And then Dr. Oz seemed to change.
“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.
“Somewhere, I’m not sure how, he started to sell out — it happens to a lot of people when they get money and success; they want more money and more success. He went from doctor to entertainer to scam artist,” a veteran daytime producer said. “Dr. Oz is dangerous because he believes he’s got some divine power.”
The author’s conclusion is a little worrisome. Oz has a chance of winning, but he’s facing opposition from the far-right MAGA crowd. He may not be nuts enough to win! Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?
Maybe he wants to decorate the back of his pickup truck.
Oz is no wizard, just another con artist with a huge ego.
Someone should stuff him into the basket of a balloon and launch him into the sky, never to be seen again.
The upside: he’s smart and smooth.
The downside: he’s a psychopath.
Marcus Tanum @ 3
Oz vs the MAGA crowd. He is a psychopath, but will he be psychopathic enough to come out on top?
My favorite part of the story was this.
“In Trumpworld, McCormick is widely seen as a man with an inconvenient background who might pan out anyway. “I hate to say this, but if you’re not willing to go full retard in a Republican primary right now, it’s hard. The expectations are what they are,” said a MAGA operative involved in the Pennsylvania race. “He’s got an uphill battle as a hedge-fund CEO, but he’s done a good job so far.”
My favorite part of the article is this.
“In Trumpworld, McCormick is widely seen as a man with an inconvenient background who might pan out anyway. “I hate to say this, but if you’re not willing to go full retard in a Republican primary right now, it’s hard. The expectations are what they are,” said a MAGA operative involved in the Pennsylvania race. “He’s got an uphill battle as a hedge-fund CEO, but he’s done a good job so far.”
You didn’t mention the best part of the article: how Oz’s wife thought she hung up on the reporter, but actually left her on speaker phone for four minutes during which he called her a “f*ing girl reporter.”
The laugh is, the MAGA crowd is already nipping at his heels with, “He was born in Turkey!” nonsense (he was born in Ohio, which the last time I was there, was distinctly not Turkey).
Meanwhile, the left demands that Oprah apologize for pushing his start button.
So, weak tea all around, with few bothering to notice his sham residency (family member’s home in PA), while he lives full time in NJ. I doubt that the legislature would address that, they’re too busy worshiping their god-king in Florida.
Perhaps I should call that one what he now is, the Florid Floridian. ;)
OT,but can anyone recomend a good VPN download,I want to comment on The Guardian but they have blocked my IP,whatever that is.
I don’t want to pay anything and I only want to use it just for that,I am in the UK.
I have been thinking of using ProtonVPN,anyone have any dealing with them?
OT Harry Reid has died at 82.
@ 7
I think it means they know where you live…
ProtonVPN is pretty good.
@10 Thanks,do I just download it,and follow whatever instructions there are?
You mean the state that elected Rick Santorum to the House of Representatives from 1991-1995 and the Senate from 1995 to 2007? If so, then I can see no reason to doubt that PA might elect Oz.
davidc1@#11:
Yup. I think you also get an email account with it, which comes in handy.
VPNs set up a virtual network interface that encapsulates and encrypts your traffic and pushes it to their server where it is decrypted and deencapsulated then injected to the internet with a translated address. Depending on what you are using you may or may not see the virtual interface appear. When you shut the VPN off it tears down the interface and traffic goes out as usual. So any IP address based logins you may have may need to be relogged-in.
I would not trust a VPN to do crimes or anti-govt but for basic avoiding marketing and international lockouts it should be fine.
@13 Thanks,as i said them bastards at the guardian keep stopping me from commenting,then they have the gall to ask me to
give them some money.
davidc1,
I’m partial to ExpressVPN. It’s very fast. If you’re just trying to make comments I’m sure any VPN would do. I’d just use a free one or the cheapest available.
Oprah is also to blame for that fraud “Dr.” Phil. That said, she’s not entirely to blame that her minions are horrible people.
Re: davidc1 @ #7…
For sites that let you read a limited number of articles and then pop up their paywall… Get a Raspberry Pi (chose the Pi4B; 4GB model is good). Set the browser to clear all cookies on close. If a site says you’ve used up all your free articles, close and re-open the browser. They use cookies on your machine to enforce their limits.
This is–unfortunately–a bit difficult at the moment as the world wide chip shortage has caught with Pi manufacturing and they’re kind of hard come by for now.
At least Oprah’s PR people have issued a statement that effectively says “No, I’m not endorsing Oz. You vote for him, don’t blame me.”
He may win, but I’m not confident enough to bet on it. He gets lobbed a softball on Fox News and completely whiffs on a chance for some anti-abortion pandering.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1471277455872651268
All he had to say was “It begins at conception.” That was it.
I grew up in Pennsylvania and went to college there, but the state (or should I say commonwealth) is dead to me now.
The last time I thought just maybe things were getting better was when Harris Wofford was elected to the Senate in 1991. I was in Maryland then and couldn’t vote for him. He may not be remembered well now, but as Wikipedia states: “Wofford’s campaign pivoted on a promise of universal healthcare, and according to political scientist Jacob Hacker, helped propel healthcare reform into national discussion.”
He lost the regular Senate election in 1994. I won’t bother saying who won that election. You can probably guess.
Well, “dead to me” may be an overstatement. I would love to see John Fetterman elected to the Senate. I am just not optimistic.
I have set up a new account with that bastard guardian using a VPN,and I have started commenting again.
Thanks for all your help.