Like Drs. Drew and Oz before him, Phil McGraw was on TV, it seems, largely because he’s an articulate, charismatic and well-known TV personality. But none of that amounts to expertise on this particular topic. In fact, in recent TV appearances to discuss the pandemic, fellow celebrity doctors Drew Pinsky and Mehmet Oz have offered commentary based on a loose or seemingly wobbly understanding of the crisis — arguably doing more to undermine public understanding than enhance it.
This has been going on for years, of course, and it’s infuriating, but in life-and-death situations it throws into sharp relief the chasm between actual experts and whoever’s at the top of the call sheet.
Just because somebody always picks up the phone doesn’t mean he knows what he’s talking about, but you need somebody to pick up the phone. Instead of working on Dr. Oz or Dr. Phil we need to work on the people making the decisions to put them out there. They’re the ones who need to change their ways. The idiots we have always had with us; we just once upon a time didn’t used to put them on TV.
A.
If you really want to raise your blood pressure, watch the clip of John Oliver about Dr. Oz (on youtube). The Morning Joe crew on the “liberal” network follow up a report on his congressional testimony about hawking bogus weight loss magic beans with Mika cooing about how much she likes him. Another confesses to actually buying them and that they didn’t work. And Squinty Joe, himself, declaring that he would like to buy those magic weight loss beans
The real tragedy is not that Trump is an idiot, it is that our press isn’t much brighter.