Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo
Mehmet Oz, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, speaks at a primary night election gathering in Newtown, Pennsylvania, May 17, 2022.
With the formal certification of TV celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz as Republican nominee, we now have a weird matchup of bad doctor versus bad patient. Oz is infamous for endorsing quack treatments. He isn’t even from Pennsylvania, and a lot of MAGA voters see through him despite Trump’s belated endorsement.
Seemingly, his opponent John Fetterman is the ideal Democrat. He is 6' 9'', shaves his head, and has spent two decades fighting to revive Pennsylvania’s collapsing blue-collar communities.
Except, on the eve of the Democratic primary Fetterman had to have emergency surgery to get a pacemaker. And he later disclosed that he has long suffered from A-Fib, but failed to follow doctors’ orders.
In statements released by the campaign, Fetterman’s doctor pronounced him healthy, but added: “I had prescribed medications along with improved diet and exercise and asked him to follow up again in the following months. Instead … John did not go to any doctor for 5 years and did not continue taking his medications.”
Fetterman added, “As my doctor said, I should have taken my health more seriously … Like so many others, and so many men in particular, I avoided going to the doctor, even though I knew I didn’t feel well. As a result, I almost died. I want to encourage others to not make the same mistake.”
You can just imagine Dr. Oz’s TV spots:
I’m a cardiac surgeon. John Fetterman’s condition is far more serious than he is divulging. If we can’t trust Fetterman to do right for his own body, how can we trust him to do what’s right for Pennsylvania?
Compared to the multiple flaws of Dr. Oz, I’m guessing that this pitch would not move many voters. But Fetterman’s was an unforced error, to say the least.
Fetterman did turn his medical misadventure into a teachable moment. The failure of men to pursue good health is particularly true of working-class men, who often don’t have access to decent care in the first place—another hidden injury of class.
Though Fetterman has relentlessly fought for the working class, he is far from working-class himself, having grown up the son of an affluent insurance executive. Oz might say that’s another kind of fakery. But Fetterman is in good company, with Ted Kennedy, Sherrod Brown, and the sainted FDR. All of these, despite their origins, earned working-class affections.
Granted, none of these sported shaved heads, tattoos, or hoodies. But Fetterman has walked the talk for two decades and he’s entitled to his tattoos. Oz is by far the bigger faker.
As FDR said in accepting his party’s renomination in 1936, “The immortal Dante tells us that divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales.”
