Still Cranky

Recently, I wrote about  Dr. Nancy Snyderman's new morning show on MSNBC, Dr. Nancy.  At that time, I found the mere name of show nauseating. 

Well, I've gotten over that relatively minor problem.  If Dr. Snyderman wants to call herself  "Dr. Nancy", so be it.  I can live with that.

What's harder to swallow is the way this show purports to be about medical issues, when in fact, Dr. Nancy talks about pretty much anything under the sun — including the most sensational, tabloid stories — all under the guise of  "health". 
The doctor may be in — but she's definitely off topic.

Now that I've caught on to this, it's been fun watching how Dr. Nancy manages to twist virtually anything into a "health" story. 

This week, for example, Dr. Nancy looked into the camera with her most serious expression.  "And next",  she teased, "we have a very important story that simply must be discussed."  I braced myself for the latest, scary  statistics on swine flu.     Or maybe TB rates were on the rise?   But no.  Instead, the good doctor launched into a very important story about… how Rhianna and Chris Brown were back together again. Oh, but you see, it wasn't really about them.  After all, this is
Dr. Nancy, not Entertainment Tonite.  So the Rhianna/Chris Brown story  was framed as a very important piece about…the long-term psychological effects suffered by abused women.  Seriously.  It's enough to make you heave.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Nancy devotes a large portion of every show to the most important medical story in America:  Michael Jackson.  It's one thing when she discusses the prescription drug controversy surrounding Jackson's death — she gets away with it because it comes under the "medical" heading.  But then she seamlessly (and shamelessly) segues into every other Jacko-related tidbit; from who will get custody of the kids to Jackson's financial troubles.

At first, I thought the celebrity stories were simply acting as teasers for the health-related stories (after all, a spoonful of trashiness makes even the driest medical topic go down).  But now, I think it's the other way around;  the celebrity gossip is the story.  Dr. Nancy tries to give the trashy segments an air of respectability by creating earnest-sounding, if somewhat tenuous, links to serious medical topics.  The show is hosted by a physician — but that's almost irrelevant.  You might as well put a lab coat on Ryan Seacrest and give him this gig.

It's too bad.  I actually enjoy hearing Dr. Snyderman's perspective on  health care reform and her advice about legitimate medical concerns.  But I guess the producers — and the network — want to make sure we get our daily dose of sleazy, tabloid trash (as if we could possibly avoid it).  So they keep force-feeding us this pablum, through a steady, round-the-clock drip.   And instead of getting an hour of useful medical information, we get something closer to Access Hollywood meets Marcus Welby, M.D. 

In the end, Dr. Nancy is just the latest "entertainment" show parading as a "news" show.  The line between the two is beyond blurry — it's practically non-existent. 
The same as virtually everything else in our hopelessly vapid, tabloid-obsessed, utterly ridiculous culture.

And as long as these shows continue to get ratings, there's no cure in sight.