Dr. Oz: A New Jersey TV Celebrity Carpetbagger in Pennsylvania
I’m not an electrician or a plumber. I’m not someone who works on an assembly line or inputs numbers into a computer. I don’t cut hair and I work only on my own cars. And like most people, I’m not a coal miner.
But I am the son of a coal miner’s daughter from Pennsylvania. So I’m fascinated by a man who has spent the vast majority of his adult life as a New Jersey resident but is running for a Senate seat in neighboring Pennsylvania.
Mehmet Oz’s vs. My Background
According to Wikipedia, Oz is a Muslim who was born in Cleveland, Ohio by parents who had emigrated from Turkey. He went to an expensive, private prep school in Wilmington, Delaware where he was raised, and went to Harvard University for his undergraduate degree, then the University of Pennsylvania for his MD.
Oz then moved to New Jersey to work in New York City, where he became a well-respected cardiac surgeon. He has lived in New Jersey virtually his entire adult life. He apparently became a part-time resident of Pennsylvania in 2020.
My parents are first generation Americans; both my grandparents came from the Old Country: Poland and surrounding areas. Both of my grandfathers were coal miners, settling in West Hazleton, Pennsylvania. For most of their adult lives, they lived and breathed deadly coal dust so they could provide for their families in this new country.
It was a hard life. But Pennsylvanians know what it means to sacrifice for one’s family. I don’t ever remember hearing them complain about the difficulty of the work — they were just grateful for the opportunity.
The old, yellowed lumber yard receipts tell the story of my one grandfather who built his house from the ground-up, with the help of his older sons. They built it timber by timber, buying only what he could afford that month from the lumber yard. It took them well over a year to finish the house, a house I visited throughout my childhood standing proud on a corner of two city streets, a house that still stands to this day.
My parents moved from coal-mining country to Delaware in 1959 for a better life. I was born and raised in Delaware, but we visited my grandparents three or four times every year. I could never have afforded Tower Hill School, the prep school that Mehmet Oz attended. I didn’t even know anyone who went there — those were affluent kids from very swanky families who lived in multi-million dollar, brick and stone-faced homes.
Cardiac Surgeon Turned TV Doctor
Oz’s career began to take a celebrity turn in 2004 after Oprah Winfrey started featuring him as an expert on her show. In 2009, she offered him his own show, one that ran until early 2022.
The big challenge of hosting a daily talk show that focuses on health and medical topics is coming up with enough new content to fill the never-ending schedule. It’s easy to cross the line into pseudo-science and start making claims for which there is either limited or no scientific evidence. It appears Oz fell into this trap.
A 2014 British Medical Journey study of 40 random episodes aired in 2013 found that 39 percent of the recommendations he made on the show had no scientific support whatsoever. Another 15 percent of the advice he offered was actually contradicted by the scientific evidence. That means a majority of the advice he was giving during this time period either had no scientific support, or was directly contradicted by the science.
Some might claim that Dr. Oz was the original “fake news” TV doctor.
In a 2014 Senate subcommittee hearing on consumer protection, Dr. Oz was called out for his promotion of wacky health diets and miracle cures. He said things like, ‘You may think magic is make-believe, but this little bean has scientists saying they’ve found the magic weight-loss cure for every body type — it’s green coffee extract.’ That’s an actual sentence spoken by a medical doctor who says he believes in science.
Even his colleagues have doubt about his professionalism. The Courier Times notes:
And promoting false hope with an underlying profit motive is reprehensible and a discredit to our profession.
This was noted by 10 of his colleagues at Columbia who wrote a letter to the dean in 2015 requesting that his faculty appointment be removed. In that letter, they stated, “he has manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.” They also pointed out that “members of the public are being misled and endangered.” A physician’s first rule is to do no harm. Oz has failed at this.
Flip flops on Abortion
The Courier Times also notes his recent flip-flop on the issue of abortion rights:
In 2019 on a radio show interview Oz was asked about stringent abortion laws in Alabama. He said, “I am really worried about it” and “It’s a big time concern” He later added, “At a personal level, I wouldn’t want anyone in my family to have an abortion but I don’t want to interfere with everyone else’s stuff, cause it’s hard enough getting through life as it is.”
Three years later he says he’s “strongly pro-life” and states, “I do believe life starts at conception, and I’ve said that multiple times…If life starts at conception, why do you care what age the heart starts beating at? It’s, you know, it’s still murder, if you were to terminate a child whether their heart’s beating or not.”
Abortion is a very emotionally charged issue and people have very strong opinions. I question how and why someone’s position would change so dramatically in such a short time. Might it have anything to do with running for office?
Shouldn’t a physician be against the government interfering in the doctor/patient relationship? It’s so weird that he wants the government in the exam room with him and his patient, talking about these difficult, emotionally-wrenching decisions.
And if you feel every life is sacred and should be protected, maybe you should read about Dr. Oz and the medical experiments he ran that killed puppies.
Sorry, but I don’t know what he stands for. He seems to change his opinion with the changing political winds. I’m certain that if he were running as a Democrat, his position would be reversed.
Dr. Oz’s Campaign Denigrates His Opponent’s Health
You’d think a physician and his campaign would be sensitive to the fact that Dr. Oz’s opponent, John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Lieutenant Governor, had a stroke over the summer. You’d be wrong.
Rachel Tripp, a “senior communications advisor” for Oz’s campaign — who still works for Oz — said in mid-August that if Fetterman “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.”
Ouch. This is one of the most inhumane and un-empathetic thing I’ve ever heard a campaign say about their opponent. Of course Dr. Oz is responsible for his staff’s comments. The fact that Tripp remains employed by Oz’s campaign tells you all that you need to know that Tripp’s comments were condoned by Oz.
Political Ambitions in… Pennsylvania?
I sort of understand why Mehmet Oz is running for Senate in Pennsylvania. The seat is available, it’s a state neighboring one where he actually lives, and despite all odds, he actually has a good chance of winning it. But does he, personally, have much to do with the good citizens of Pennsylvania?
Merriam-Webster defines a carpetbagger as “a nonresident or new resident who seeks private gain from an area often by meddling in its business or politics.” It was a term popularized after the U.S. Civil War to describe Northerners who came to the South to seek private gain from reconstruction contracts. The Northerners saw only money-making opportunity and had little or no ties to the communities they were looking to benefit from.
Oz may be many things — a TV celebrity, a cardiac surgeon, heck, he may even be a great individual to socialize with — but one thing is clear: he is not a Pennsylvanian. He’s a carpetbagger. He has few roots in the state, hasn’t spent any significant time in the state since his 20s, and he doesn’t understand the diversity and daily challenges faced by its citizens. Living for a year or two in a state doesn’t really make you a well-worn, respected citizen of that state.
He’s an Embarrassment
In coal mining country, where my grandparents made a new life for themselves in America by working in dirty, cancer-infested coal mines day-in and day-out, they wouldn’t think twice about a fancy TV doctor who made his name in New York City and lived in New Jersey most of his adult life. He’d be laughed out of most bars, social halls, and churches if he said he was running for the Senate, as people in those parts have little patience for tomfoolery.
Oz shows you what kind of man he is constantly. He’s the kind of guy who rarely goes grocery shopping for himself. And when he does (without any kind of basket or cart), he’s buying “crudité.” Most Pennsylvanians aren’t buying vegetables for a veggie platter and calling it crudité.
It’s not that Dr. Oz is an elitist (but c’mon, he clearly comes from a background few of us can relate to). No, it’s primarily that he simply has little idea about the values and background that most citizens of Pennsylvania relate to. How anybody can claim to represent a state they’ve barely spent any of their adult life in is just strange.
He’s running because, as a celebrity, he believes he can just waltz right into a neighboring state, shake a few hands, tell people he “feels their pain, I blame Joe Biden!” and be golden. Oz is used to people bending over backward for him and giving him what he wants.
I hope Pennsylvanians will see through the shallow attempt by Oz to curry favor with the citizens of Pennsylvania. After all, it’s easy to be star-struck by a celebrity. But I hope they remember that Oz doesn’t represent the needs and values of most of the people in the state, and in my opinion, his background suggests he’s doing this more for his own ego than to help ordinary Pennsylvanians.
