Ed. note: The NYT today has an Opinion piece on Dr. Oz’s entry into the US Senate race in Pennsylvania. For a bit of history of his involvement with the dietary supplement industry, please view this serious/hilarious somewhat off-color monologue by John Oliver–followed by the NYT’s commentary.
John Oliver outlines what, exactly is problematic about Dr. Oz and the nutrition supplement industry. Then he invites George R.R. Martin, Steve Buscemi, the Black and Gold Marching Elite, and some fake real housewives on the show to illustrate how to pander to an audience without hurting anyone.
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Take a Good Look at What Dr. Oz Is Selling Us Now
By Annaliese Griffin – Ms. Griffin is a journalist who writes about culture, lifestyle and health.
It’s perhaps an understatement to say that Americans have a difficult and contradictory relationship with our bodies.
Every decade or so there is a new optimal way to feed ourselves, along with increasingly outlandish weight-loss regimens and whole categories of foods to champion or fear. We revel in the sophistication of medical science while widely distrusting it, and our politicians refuse to support a health care system in which everyone has access to basic, compassionate care. We are overly sedentary, but when we exercise we value strenuous over relaxing movement, strain over ease, striving over acceptance.
No one embodies these obsessions better than Mehmet Oz, known as Dr. Oz to American daytime television viewers. Dr. Oz, who has styled himself as a kind of high priest in the church of American wellness, recently announced his candidacy in the Republican primary for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania — a race that could decide control of the chamber.
As Dr. Oz pursues this pivotal position, he should be seen as more than a celebrity turned politician. He’s rightly understood as a kind of quasi-religious leader, one who has set up his revival tent between a yoga studio and an urgent-care clinic, with the television cameras rolling. And many Americans are primed and ready to commit to his doctrine, which promises boundless possibility so long as we invest in individual responsibility — for our health and for everything else.
This is worrying. As we collectively face yet another surge of coronavirus infections, leaders who extol individualism aren’t simply ineffective — they’re dangerous. If there’s anything we should be taking away from the past two years, it’s that autonomy and self-reliance are inadequate for 21st-century problems such as climate change, structural racism and the pandemic.
The son of Turkish immigrants, born in Cleveland, and by all accounts a gifted surgeon, Dr. Oz gained notice as a frequent guest on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” appearances that earned him the tag “America’s doctor” and led to the introduction of “The Dr. Oz Show” in 2009. Over 13 seasons, the frequent topics of the show, which at its height regularly drew over a million viewers per week, could also be a list of Americans’ biggest bodily anxieties: weight loss, cancer, weight loss, aging, weight loss, sleep problems, poop problems and, oh, weight loss.