The Washington Post is reporting that Barack Obama has offered the job of surgeon general to Sanjay Gupta. HeÂ’s expected to accept the job, the Post says, citing two unnamed sources. Gupta declined the PostÂ’s request for comment.
Besides his CNN gig, Gupta also appears on CBS and writes for Time Magazine. He was a White House Fellow and a special adviser to Hillary Clinton when she was First Lady. Oh, and heÂ’s a neurosurgeon at Emory and associate chief of the neurosurgery service at AtlantaÂ’s Grady Memorial Hospital.
ThereÂ’s a certain logic to picking a TV talking head to be surgeon general, because the surgeon general is largely a talking head. The top doc does oversee the 6,000-member Commissioned Corps of the U.S. Public Health Service, but the real work of the job is traveling around the country, using the title as a bully pulpit to advance a public health agenda.
In this media-saturated era, who could do that better than a doc whoÂ’s famous for explaining health issues on cable TV?
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