While I think the choice for Gupta as Surgeon General isn't bad, the way Gupta tried to smear Michael Moore on healthcare was indicative of everything I find loathesome about the establishment media. Krugman:
You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong. [...]
It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion.
That was one of the more ridiculous aspects of the dark ride. "Less serious" is an understatement. Until Katrina, you couldn't really rip into the president without being treated like a freak. What made this dynamic truly frustrating was that most of the ripping was factually accurate. Moore was way ahead of the curve on the Bush administration, and if the establishment media had been paying more attention, who knows where we'd be today.