My mind goes to some odd places sometimes. And today, the sight of a hipster with ironic facial hair on the subway (and of course he got off in Williamsburg) led to some thoughts about public health. The sight of ironic facial hair led to thoughts about such facial hair worn non-ironically, which led to thoughts about men who wore such non-ironic facial hair, which led to thoughts of C. Everett Koop and his Gorton’s Fisherman beard and naval-looking uniform, which led to thoughts of the whole debacle of Obama nominating Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General, which led to the realization that it’s been over two months since Gupta withdrew his name, we’re in the middle of a public-health crisis, and . . . we have no Surgeon General.
And Obama hasn’t even floated any names to replace Gupta, as far as I can tell. This isn’t like not having anyone helming HHS at the start of the swine flu; the problem there was that Kathleen Sebelius’s nomination wasn’t being acted upon because the shit-for-brains forced-birth contingent decided to demagogue. At least there was a nominee.
But as important as it is to have a Secretary of HHS in place, it’s the Surgeon General who leads the Public Health Service, and pandemics and epidemics are under the aegis of the Public Health Service. We’re in the middle of the beginning of a possible pandemic, and Obama doesn’t even have a backup after his completely ill-suited first nominee withdrew?
I completely forgot that we don’t have a surgeon general yet. What the hell?
See, now that’s a lot like my brain works, and my spouse thinks that makes me strange.
Also, my facial hair exists in an irony-free zone that transcends style, and has remained largely unchanged from the first time it was in, when only Latino guys wore it, through the wilderness years when it was wildly uncool, to its recent resurgence among white dudes fifteen years my junior.
Your facial hair actually flashed across my mind during this whole process.