GUPTA MAKES ME ILL

I'm a little behind on this story, but I wanted to make a quick comment about Obama's pick of CNN star Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General. Generally speaking, I don't have anything major against the man. But -- immediately upon hearing his name -- I was reminded of the the following exchange between Dr. Gupta and Michael Moore (discussing his film, Sicko) ...



As I blogged about at the time, the big problem I have with Mr. Gupta is that he (and many others) seemed to care much more about attacking Michael Moore than getting fired up about our crappy health care system. Here's what I said at the time ...

The best example of this phenomenon is the recent debate between Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Michael Moore on CNN. Dr. Gupta, who generally agreed with the message of the film, could have spent his energy talking about the corruption in hospital administrations and insurance companies. But he chose, rather, to discuss some nonsense about how some of Moore's numbers were from the BBC and how other reports had slightly different numbers. Nobody fudges numbers better than the Bush administration, but I never see CNN challenging them so aggressively?

It seems that there are a number of people in the Senate unhappy about this pick; I for one won't be overly upset if they don't confirm him.