The inaugural is being carried live by Hulu (link here). I’ll be at work, so I’ll try to sneak a peak!
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Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon at Emory in Atlanta, and CNN medical correspondant has been named as a candidate for Surgeon General. This is an interesting choice because as far as I know, Dr. Gupta has no background in public health, fighting epidemics, leading armies, or playing golf.
I do know that the Surgeon General is an anachronism from a simpler time, and has had different roles. The signature Surgeon General of our time was Dr. C. Everett Koop, pediatric surgeon of note, who did stand up to the Reagan Administration and spoke truth about condoms. Otherwise, he was a Creationist, and didn’t meddle much in science or medicine. There is no regular current Surgeon General because the last one mouthed off about science.
I think I realize what President-elect Obama wants: a medical translator. Someone to interpret the medicalese, the governmentese, and the politicalese -basically what Dr. Gupta does so well already. In this regard, his choices included all the other talking head docs including Dr. Oz and Dr. Phil. Mehmet Oz, by the way, is one of the most gifted surgeons I have ever watched. When I was on faculty at Columbia, I met with him, and he told me that I needed to find a better barber and handed me Frederic Fekkai’s card (!) -talk about 500 dollar haircuts.
I think that Dr. Sanjay Gupta is an excellent choice. It adds a competent voice to translate the heavily technical and intricate.
I would also propose President-elect Obama create another office -that of Surgeon Admiral. This person would get to wear a navy uniform (just like the Surgeon General -why?) but with a large tricorn admirals hat from the 18th century. He would get plenty of office space, use of a jet (F-18 is fine), and the charge of creating America’s greatest hospital. I would start with an espresso bar in the surgeon’s lounge, and a return to classic white uniforms for the doctors and nurses.
A certain surgeon could be persuaded to sacrifice his time for this noble cause.
The New York Times article states what I have suspected all along – President-elect Obama is a golfist (link). He scrupulously cards all of his strokes, plays by the rules, and adheres to golf ettiquette. There is hope for this country in a 20-handicapper president.
The twenty handicap is an easy mark for labeling as a sandbagger. I bet the president-elect with his natural athleticism has a decent swing, although because he took up the game in his thirties, it may be a bit stiff. I’ll have to dig up a video somewhere. Just because you can reel off a 300 yard drive into a stiff wind and carry a 20 handicap does not make you a sandbagger but rather someone who is brutally honest, and likely a bad putter. When I hit my approaches to 5 feet, I generally can two putt for a par.
I can’t tell you how happy this revelation has made me. Now I can sleep at night knowing someone who golfs like me will be in the White House.
Addendum: I did find video. He swings Lefty which bothers me a bit. Should have picked this up in the picture above which all show southpaw clubs. He does have the swing of someone who picked up golf as an adult.
Seen in many videos on the web and on the television, an Iraqi journalist threw his shoes at GW Bush. It has great meaning in the Arab world, this shoe throwing, but GW didn’t have a clue as he didn’t understand neither Arabic nor the meaning of projectile footwear. He concluded to the audience that it was a size 10 and that dissent was a part of a free democracy -you can hear the screams of the fellow as he was carried out for a beating on various Youtube videos. His grievances were heartfelt and resonated across the Arab countries.
I have no love of GW Bush, but I love this country, and this news saddens me. I have a great deal of respect for the office of the presidency and what it means to the country to which I have pledged allegiance many times, and all I could think was, “So this is how it ends?” Eight very bad years for America bookended by travesty and farce.
Those shoes should be headed straight for the Smithsonian, and we should all call for leniency for that shoe throwing man -he did not explode himself after all. If he were in the US, and it was 1999, and it was Bill Clinton, he’d get a year or two and a book deal. I hear this fellow is facing 7 years in Iraqi jail, which makes Turkish prison seem like a weekend in Aspen.
This is a very funny musical adaptation of Governor Palin’s (my favorite ten handicapper) Couric interview. See in it what you will -it is a brilliant Rorschach test.
When Christopher Buckley, son of the William F. Buckley (formidable eminence grise of the Republican Party), was fired by the National Review, the magazine his father founded, for backing Barack Obama, I saw that it was a symptom of a sickness in the Republican Party. Buckley is no liberal. He does not identify with government control of free trade, and he does not believe in the creation of a nanny state. I watched his interviews on the evening talk show circuit with interest.
He is a Yalie like his father, and speaks in the elevated parlance of prep school essayists. When I left my solidly Republican voting record in 2000, it was because George W. Bush couldn’t speak the English language in a way that I felt comfortable with. Part of me thought, this has to be an act -a scion of a patrician New England family gabbing on like the owner of a Chevy dealership from Plano. But I decided it was not, and this along with the Bush campaign’s behavior to McCain lead me to check off Gore. Florida 2000 and the events of the last eight years have left me completely out of the Republican Party. It has left me no party to identify with. Looking back this past election season, I was wrong about grammar and intelligence. Mea culpa.
To the extant that you speak a certain way reflects your upbringing, but I believe it is a also a conscious choice. Intelligence has nothing to do with the way your mouth flaps. When I was growing up in Florida, I easily picked up the patois of Northern Florida, which is really an extension of Southern Georgia. By choosing to speak in a way that interfaces easily with the surroundings, language is eliminated as a barrier. Actions and character are far more important than diagrammable sentences.
I’ll leave you with another one of my youtube favorites:
Hilary, the Borg Queen
In general, you should chose presidents with as much care as you choose your golf partner. Or wife. You have to watch the video to its conclusion to see the guy processing turkeys as Gov. Palin rabbits on about the campaign, reducing the size of government, etc. The blogosphere has erupted over the turkey slaughter going on in the background. For myself, I find turkeys delicious, and I have never not-enjoyed admiring the symmetry of Governor Palin’s face -if she’d only not speak. I think the anti-carnivores have no point to make. It is with great relief that I watched this.
As an aside, watching Hilary claw her way back into the White House this week reminds me nothing more than seeing the Borg Queen take over the Enterprise. She shall assimilate you. Resistance is futile.
Back to Sarah, it’s her stream of consciousness verbal diarrhea. She’d be one of those two or three-date girls that you recall with a shudder of relief. The relationship-that-never-was always concludes with a spate of phone calls from the girl. The decreasing levels of happy-girliness on those messages should fill you with some regret. On your end, you keep up a gentle but firm telephone silence. I suppose in this day and age, you would un-friend her from Facebook and delete her from your phone and email lists. Skipping town for a few weeks is always a good idea. You put up a completely passive, militantly vague stance of non-commitment until she decides you are not a good person to pursue.
Never, ever say, “Let’s just be friends.” Which is what we told Sarah a couple of weeks ago. She’s going to be back at your doorstep with an apple pie. She’s going to leave 26 phone messages, each with a letter of the alphabet on why you should call her, “A -because I adore you, B- because, just because, C -‘cuz I care…” She’s going to call your parents for advice on what you’d like for your birthday and charm the pants off them. She’s going to show up at your place of work looking wonderful and acting completely, utterly, SANE to all your coworkers. She’ll hand out boxes of chocolates.
It means we will never see a chance at anything close to a center-right stance in this country without marrying Sarah. The Borg have transported into the ship. Let us hope that Messrs. Obama and Emmanuel can keep them at bay.
addendum:
couldn’t help but add this video, thanking Sarah Palin.
So it begins. We are facing a very serious trimester. A season of bifurcation. Crunch time for USA. 18th hole of the Open, down a shot, facing a monster par 5 that has become reachable because of swirling winds that move predominantly forward -the gusts threaten to knock you down on your face as you size up your drive. Water on the right, waste on the left, bunkers guarding the periphery and any approaches -bunkers to make grown men cry. The whole fairway drains into the water on the right, and green is elevated, a lofty goal. Black hole rough and ashen waste protect you from out of bounds on the left. A single tree sits in front of the tee box requiring the player to go right or left, but the shot has to be cut or drawn back to the center. Whatever happens, like any golf shot, we’ll get the lie that we deserve.
Golfism -life is a metaphor for golf 