Fatheads pick on surgeon general
“No Chubbies” That’s what Michael Karolchyk’s shirt said. And for some reason, he was still allowed on national television to discuss President Obama’s pick for surgeon general. See, Karolchyk and his “No Chubbies” shirt were given a platform on Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on Tuesday to pick apart the physical image of Dr. Regina Benjamin, Obama’s pick for top doc and a highly regarded physician.
This is what we’ve come to, a guy who runs a gym where he throws cupcakes at exercisers gets invited to go on national television and call a woman fat – a woman who’s spent her entire life caring for the poor in a tiny clinic in rural Louisiana and is poised to become the nation’s top doctor.
Cavuto, apparently, considered it newsworthy that a guy who runs a self-proclaimed “health and vanity lifestyle boutique” thinks Benjamin is too fat to be surgeon general.
This is why we need 24/7 news? (Edward R. Murrow is spinning.)
And while I want to give Cavuto credit for the few times during the interview he put up fight on behalf of Benjamin, it’s his name on the show that gave this musclebound moron a microphone. And then there’s the damning way Cavuto introduced the segment:
“Well, brilliant, dedicated, experienced, and, oh, yes, fat. The president’s pick for surgeon general is fat, not a lot fat, but enough for my next guest to say, fat chance Dr. Regina Benjamin should even be considered surgeon general,” Cavuto said, according to the show’s official transcript.
Let me repeat that (because it bears repeating), the host of a news program starts a segment by describing a highly respected doctor as “brilliant, dedicated, experienced, and, oh, yes, fat.”
This is what passes as television journalism? So while Cavuto did say he thought Benjamin would do well as the nation’s chief health educator, why is he spending time on his show discussing how the woman looks?
And it’s not just Cavuto. ABC News tackled the “question” of Benjamin’s weight in a infinitely more sober and responsible manner (they beat out Fox News by simply not mentioning the word “chubbies”). Online newsmagazine Salon (ahem) weighed in, too. The Washington Post asked its readers if the surgeon general need be slender.
With obesity education one of the challenges facing the surgeon general, these critics say no one will listen to a chubby top doc telling them to eat better. Is this the best the critics can come up with?
Apparently so. There seems to be no qualms over Benjamin’s qualifications. (It was the last guy who put people in top jobs despite their blatant lack of any talent other than loyalty.) After all, Benjamin was given a MacArthur “genius grant” last year as a “model of compassionate and effective medical care,” was awarded the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights, was the youngest appointee ever to the board of the American Medical Association and has also been chair of the Federation of State Medical Boards.
Oh, and then there’s the made-for-Lifetime-TV part of her life story where she thrice rebuilt her rural health clinic after it was destroyed by two hurricanes (you may have heard of one of them: Hurricane Katrina) and a fire. And how she has accepted oysters and shrimp from the the poor coastal community when they couldn’t pay cash (the Los Angeles Times described the town as “a muggy utilitarian outpost of docks, weedy yards and heaps of oyster shells”). Or how she moonlighted to pay the clinic’s bills and at times goes without pay but gives away medicine when the sick can’t afford it. Or how she makes house calls when patients can’t make it to the clinic. And how she’s apparently the kind of doctor that patients want to hug – a lot.
But apparently more important than all that is the fact that she’s got round cheeks and a full figure (a figure that, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t really all that full). It apparently is inconsequential that she is by all accounts incredibly experienced, intelligent and compassionate.
Ridiculous.
Makes me want to go visit every one of these critics while wearing a shirt of my own: “No Idiots.”
Brandon Szuminsky can be reached by e-mail at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.