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Obama’s Surgeon General pick Dr. Sanjay Gupta has been a veritable fountain of bad advice during his tenure at CNN. But the only time I ever blogged about him was to question his recommendation that financially-strapped viewers cut their prescription pills in half.

At which point an astute reader pointed me to this article outlining Gupta’s financial ties to Merck. Apparently during the time Gupta was on CNN promoting Merck’s HPV vaccine Gardasil and dismissing the dangers of Merck’s Vioxx pills, he was co-hosting an integrated marketing program sponsored by Merck called AccentHealth.

This strikes me as very bad form for a journalist, but of course Gupta is not a journalist, he’s a television personality, and of course he doesn’t know any better. This is the problem with modern broadcast news, which eschews journalists for the so-called “experts” who supposedly know more than any real reporter could.

CNN is the real culprit here for allowing this situation to exist in the first place. This opens the door wide to corporate hegemony, or what the article describes as

the growing tentacles of a corporate agenda that seeks to control every message pertaining to its corporate brands in every venue visited or medium viewed by a consumer.

We are left with questions surrounding Gupta’s judgment and whether his ties to corporations like Merck influenced his news coverage of that company and its products. We’ll never know if Gupta dismissed the risks of heart attack associated with Vioxx out of ignorance or avarice, but we do know Vioxx got yanked off the shelves and Merck settled an avalanche of lawsuits related to the product.

This does not mean to say I am out-and-out against the appointment of Gupta to U.S. Surgeon General. Seems to me that job is mostly about PR and communication, and Gupta has proved himself adept at that. But I do think most of the media snickering over Obama’s pick misses the point. “Judge Judy for the Supreme Court?” Ha ha very funny, Jay Newton-Small. The point is not that Gupta is a television personality who may be appointed to public office--have you nitwits forgotten that Ronald Reagan was a television personality, for crying out loud?

The point is to look at what it means to be a television personality in this day and age. Oftentimes it means being a shill for corporate advertisers. Someone should be looking into this, because I’m not sure we want the U.S. Surgeon General to be on Merck’s payroll.

Just a thought.

Troop Withdrawals & Other Amazing Fairy Tales

Oh, Mr. President. You tease.

Last night’s promise to withdraw as many as 20 combat brigades from Iraq next spring might sound good to those not really paying attention. But what President Bush is really telling us is that the surge is ... temporary! Gee, I thought that was the point all along.

The truth is, promising a troop withdrawal is perhaps second only to phony terror alerts as a favorite election ploy. It never happens, much as Adminstration folks talk about it.

Let’s jump into the memory hole for a look at what I’m talking about. Here’s something from June 2006:

WASHINGTON, June 24 — The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say.

According to a classified briefing at the Pentagon this week by the commander, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the number of American combat brigades in Iraq is projected to decrease to 5 or 6 from the current level of 14 by December 2007.

The media enablers were all over this story, reporting it as if it actually meant something. It's not going to happen, though, is it? Instead we got “the surge.”

We heard a similar fairy tale in Nov. 2005:

Defense official: Rumsfeld given Iraq withdrawal plan

Plan calls for troops to begin pulling out after December elections

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The top U.S. commander in Iraq has submitted a plan to the Pentagon for withdrawing troops in Iraq, according to a senior defense official.

Gen. George Casey submitted the plan to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. It includes numerous options and recommends that brigades -- usually made up of about 2,000 soldiers each -- begin pulling out of Iraq early next year.

We heard similar stories in this May, 18 2005 Washington Post story:

Nonetheless, by the middle of next month -- after one more assessment is run -- Casey and his staff intend to send a recommendation to the Pentagon on whether to reduce U.S. troop levels and by how much. One proposal gaining favor, according to another general in Iraq involved in the planning, envisions shrinking from 17 U.S. combat brigades to as few as 13 brigades next year, meaning a cut in troops from 138,000 to about 105,000, although the general stressed that this option is far from final.

Of course, General Casey was fired and replaced with the "sycophant” currently in charge. Pre- and post-surge, our troop levels will stay at around 130,000. That’s not progress, that’s staying in the same place.

(I also think it’s really clever to start referring to troop levels in terms of “combat brigades” not troop numbers. Because, 15 combat brigades sounds so much better than 30,000 troops).

The truth is, we’re never leaving Iraq, not when you remember the gigantic “embassy” (*cough*cough*MilitaryBase*cough*cough*) we’re building there. From April 2006:

Three years after a U.S.-led invasion toppled Saddam Hussein, only one major U.S. building project in Iraq is on schedule and within budget: the massive new American embassy compound.

The $592 million facility is being built inside the heavily fortified Green Zone by 900 non-Iraqi foreign workers who are housed nearby and under the supervision of a Kuwaiti contractor, according to a Senate Foreign Relations Committee report. Construction materials have been stockpiled to avoid the dangers and delays on Iraq's roads.

"We are confident the embassy will be completed according to schedule (by June 2007) and on budget," said Justin Higgins, a State Department spokesman.

ThinkProgress has more on this “embassy” (*cough*cough*MilitaryBase*cough*cough*), which is supposed to open this month and include a 9,500-square-foot “cottage” for the deputy chief of mission in Iraq, and a 16,000-square-foot residence for the U.S. Ambassador. Sweet.

We’re not leaving Iraq. Ever. Thousands of troops are going to be needed to maintain security for years to come--security, not for Iraqi civillians, and not for Americans at home, but to make sure people like Ray Lee Hunt can stay in business.

America has sold its soul.

Muzzled

The tubes are buzzing with this story about Dr. Richard Carmona, the U.S. Surgeon General from 2002-2006 who testified yesterday that the Bush Administration silenced him on issues like stem cell research and abstinence-only sex education.

Here’s a video of Carmona’s testimony, I urge you to watch it.

Carmona said when scientific facts were at odds with Bush Administration ideology, ideology won:

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party," Carmona added.

Carmona said Bush administration political appointees censored his speeches and kept him from talking out publicly about certain issues, including the science on embryonic stem cell research, contraceptives and his misgivings about the administration's embrace of "abstinence-only" sex education.

This of course is nothing new. We’ve heard of Bush ideology trumping fact on the Iraq War, Hurricane Katrina, Scooter Libby and global climate change. This is just another instance of BushCo at work, going about its business the way it always does.

Republicans in Congress like to fein surprise when they hear these stories; I can see Arlen Specter now, in his firm, stentorian way, demanding answers and vowing to get to the bottom of this. In three days he’ll cave, just like he always does.

In truth, Republicans always defend this tactic, I guess because they think ideology is more important than facts, too.

The real proof on where they stand will come this week when the Senate begins confirmation hearings for Bush’s new Surgeon General pick, an ideologue named Dr. Richard James Holsinger. Dr. Holsinger is not going to get muzzled because he’s on board with the Bush ideology about gays and abstinence-only education. Republican Senators who decry Bush’s “ideology over fact” treatment of Dr. Carmona will, I’m sure, pretend that Dr. Holsinger is not the crazy homophobe that he clearly is. Why, lookie here, if it isn’t Sen. Mitch McConnell and the rest of the Kentucky GOP delegation coming to his defense. Told ya so.

I’m sure I could exhort everyone to call Sen. Lamar Alexander and Sen. Bob Corker about Holsinger, but what good will that do? They’ll just stick together like they always do, rubber stamb Bush’s ideology while thinking they can turn around later and deny they ever followed Bush, lemming-like, over the cliff.

I really don’t get their thinking.