M. Nam

I can’t hate him because there is always someone better. You got a hot wife? Someone has a hotter wife. You make alot of money? Someone makes slot more. The game will never end and you will lose, so why play it?

I like you, you make SENSE =]

Broad-minded indain-americans put Malika Sherewat on a pedistal.

it only makes the narrow-minded indian-americans happier.

narrow-minded indian-americans are people too. we are also entitled to the pursuit of happiness. sanjay gupta should be rightly hailed as a role-model for the younger generation. if only he had married a nice indian bania girl, he’d be like an avatara of lord vishnu on earth.

It’s our challenge though to see through that, celebrate all of our wonderful accomplishments, and not to put Dr Gupta and others on TOO tall a pedestal, it only makes the narrow-minded indian-americans happier.

goddammit, alright, ok…i revert back to Engelbert Humperdinck.

What are you looking for here, exactly? 10 years of mediocrity working for the Federal Gov’t? Give me a break!

I hate to say it but maybe Mandvi was actually right in his Daily Show report and the different minorities are trying to one up each other in a race. One of the most powerful African American congressmen is essentially throwing a hissy-fit because the brother of the NAACP President didn’t get the nod ahead of Gupta.

There’s the serious part of Abhi’s funny post. To respond to that with a serious answer is not “someone took that post way too seriously.” And “someone took that post way too seriously” is a common statement used to completely derail a well-thought-out argument.

It remains a fact that many in the public health field (including the head of the public health commissioned officers quoted above) think that Gupta may be good looking and a neurosurgeon and great at PR, but not adequately qualified to oversee 6,000 public health professionals and advise the health policy team of the administration (parts of his job). Yes, he was a white house fellow for a year and advised Hillary Clinton back in the day, sure. And yes, he does health reporting, and PR is an important part of the job of surgeon general, and I see where Obama’s going with picking a media-saavy guy as SG, but those who have issues with Gupta do not have issues because of pitting black vs brown.

And it remains a fact that Gupta has MANY conflicts of interest including his pandering to pharmaceutical companies. If you do a google search regarding the conflicts of interest you’ll find instances where Gupta completely ignored evidence-based medicine in his reports (for example, he was still denying Vioxx was a harmful drug AFTER experts concluded that it was). The Michael Moore vs Gupta issue comes up again because Gupta’s “reality check” was so fraught with lies that anyone with the time and staff he had to research the issue could have seen through that (raises questions about whether Gupta was influenced by the health insurance advertisers on CNN). (I wrote about it at Cure This. Representative Conyers is more upset about Gupta having conflicts of interest and unprofessionally smearing Moore about his film “Sicko” than about Gupta not being the guy he recommended. And Conyers has good reason to be upset, he’s the sponsor of H.R. 676, a bill in the house that aims for government paid insurance (for privately delivered healthcare for all Americans) and Gupta used his “reality check” segment to smear the worth of such an aim.

And the Paul Krugman piece linked above is of great importance. I felt like i had to read it a few times for it to really sink in, but it’s SO true.

But back to the south asian thing you mention — I agree this doesn’t help us all from feeling like we can’t ever achieve what the “good” south asians achieve in life. It’s our challenge though to see through that, celebrate all of our wonderful accomplishments, and not to put Dr Gupta and others on TOO tall a pedestal, it only makes the narrow-minded indian-americans happier. I don’t mean any offense by that, I think Dr Gupta would agree with that.