politics @lemmy.world 🃏Joker @sh.itjust.works 1w ago

Trump picks Dr. Oz, the celebrity TV doctor, to run Medicare and Medicaid

19thnews.org Attention Required! | Cloudflare

Oz, who has a history of making degrading remarks about women, has no government experience. As a candidate for Senate in 2022, he expressed opposition to abortion at any point in pregnancy.

You're viewing a single thread.

83 comments

I see a pattern, it's the people he watches for years on TV and likes who he puts into leading positions.

To be honest this seems in character for the USA, this is what the american people are often doing too, putting celebrities from movies and TV in charge of their country, case in point Reagan, Schwarzeneger and Trump.
- This is not exclusive to the US.
  
  I had a look at the list you linked and was surprised to see the list pointing out Germans and Polish people so I looked a bit dealer.
  
  The German guy was in the left party which is so small that they always have trouble to get over the 5℅ necessary to be in the Bundestag, so he has never been in any leading position. And even the nomination to become president failed. And even if he became a president, in Germany that is not a leading position, a president just represents a country like a King.
  
  In Poland, for Lech Kaczyński (who was the president of Poland) the wikipedia article down not even mention his work as an actor. On IMDB 4 entries are there. He was voice acting for a animated movie as a 13 years old and this is the biggest of the movies he was involved. The next next is a documentary, so he is not acting. The next one is a special episode of a game show to which politicians have been invited as participants. So no acting here either.
  
  The next from Poland Jarosław Kaczyński, the twin brother also only had the voice acting as a 13 years old and documentaries where he didn't act listed on his IMDB page.
  
  The third and last polish guy in the lis fits the description of a celebrity and politician in power, he was elected into parlament.
  
  For Sweden nobody is listed. Same for South Korea. So from the countries I lived in my feeling that this doesn't happen is supported by the list you linked.
  
  But other Asian countries, god damn! The lists for India, the Philippines and so on are soooo long! I didn't expect it. So it's really different in different countries.
  
  But then the list misses people like Boris Johnson, who was on telly a bit and became mayor of London and eventually PM of the UK mostly because of that.
  
  He was awful at both roles, but people voted for him anyway because they'd heard of him.
  
  I think people in general are politically unaware. It's stuffy and boring, but affects everything. They should care, but it's very hard to make them.
  
  Yes the list is only about Actors, even Donald Trump is not in that list. Still an interesting list.
  
  I guess if your whole life is an act, people forget.
  
  "it's ok because other people do it" is not a good argument.
  
  Also, the scale of any activity subject to that excuse is relevant. Many electorates occasionally act weird, some electorates are notorious for the same acts.
  
  The tone of the post I was replying to was 'Look at these silly Americans, doing silly American things'; I was just pointing out that it's not exclusively an American thing. Not saying it's good.
  
  Zelenskyy was the first one that came to my mind and I was actually just looking for how to properly spell his name (is it 1 y or 2? Various sources use one or the other and there's no consistency), and found that page linked from his Wikipedia page (which lists it as 2 ys, for the record), so I linked to it instead of just naming Zelenskyy as my example.
  
  I was thinking of Zelenskyy too. No other country's election news makes it to my eyes, so there's an inherent bias in what I have 'in mind'.
  
  Yeah that is true, but I also did not claim that. Anyway I have a hard time finding any celebrity in office in the countries I lived in (Poland, Germany, Sweden, South Korea), doesn't mean it doesn't happen though, just that it looks to happen much less often.
- Judge Judy is his next SC pick isn't she?
  
  She would actually be a good one.
  
  Judy is tough, but fair. I love her.
  
  Cool but does she have a scholarly understanding of constitutional law?
  
  Better than most of Trump's lawyers.
  
  She was a real judge before she was a TV judge, so yeah.
  
  So is Aileen Cannon.
  
  Yeah but Judy’s not a traitor.
  
  That actually doesn’t mean much. Constitutional law is a specific subset of law and a specialization. Maybe she dealt with constitutional law as a judge, but most judges don’t. Things like family law, criminal law, IP law, and other basic everyday things are far more common. I would expect her specialization to have been something like mediation
  
  Every law student studies con law and all lawyers are trained to do legal research on topics they don't know offhand.
- You can kick and scream but Trump really is the embodiment of America.
  
  I can and I will continue to make a fuss about it, but goddamn it, you're not wrong. He really is.
  
  He’s the embodiment of America but dammit some of us really thought our country might be willing to attempt being better.
  
  The kicking and screaming is more proof.
- Didn't Arnie do a decent job, though? I didn't live in California during his time in office, but it sounded mostly positive.
  
  As I understand it, Arnie is actually fairly intelligent, and also surrounded himself with competent people who knew how to do the jobs he asked of them.
  
  Arnie is actually fairly intelligent, and also surrounded himself with competent people
  
  This is really the key factor. His acting chops probably just helped him convince people to vote for him; it wasn't all there was to him.
  
  Yeah. He got a bunch of parks built, and a bunch of other things to improve basic qol.
  
  I did not want to put in any judgment on how well celecreties do in office, it was just an observation that this doesn't really seem to happen in other countries to this extend. But there instead mostly professional politicians or scientists like Angela Merkel run the show.
  
  We've always nominated celebrities into higher office. In the early years of the country, celebrities were just generals. Still well known, voted because they were likely well known, just not what we would consider "celebrities" today. The effectiveness of these candidates could easily be disputed. But people vote because the name is familiar and not because of their policies. I have a feeling with all the muckraking and "alternative facts" today, the louder name will continue to have more chances than they should otherwise.
  
  While I do think positively of him, I'll raise the counter example of Ronald Reagan.
- To be honest I was very worried that he would assign competent and evil people to his cabinet positions. Somewhat relieved that he has only appointed clowns so far.
  
  You forget clowns are much more dangerous when there are no adults in the room.
  
  Yeah, but a cabinet of malintentioned competent adults can do so so much worse than a circus of malintentioned clowns
  
  Yeah. That’s true. I worry more about kushner and his round two plans after wiping out his debt in round one.
- I mean, the governator wasn't actually that bad in fact I remember a lot of positive stories, but I could be wrong
- Gil Scott Heron called it years ago. B Movie. From Shogun to Raygun....
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlVgtckqSaY
  
  But, oh yeah, I remember In this year that we have now declared The year from Shogun to Ray-Gun I remember what I said about Ray-Gun...meant it Acted like an actor...Hollyweird Acted like a liberal Acted like General Franco when he acted like Governor of California Then he acted like a Republican Then he acted like somebody was going to vote for him for President And now we act like 26% of the registered voters is actually a mandate We're all actors in this, I suppose

83 comments