Who is this new great and powerful Oz?
None other than Dr. Mehmet Oz, whose influence already reaches far and wide. And whose influence will be wider still when Oprah hits the road, Jack, in September and Dr. Oz takes her 4 p.m. time slot in New York (he will remain on Fox), as well as 150 other cities around the country.
Already Oz, a heart surgeon at Columbia University Medical Center, has captured everyone’s daytime heart whether those hearts are already healthy or not. Improbably, he’s figured out how to make things like genital warts entertaining — becoming a genuine media medical folk hero in the process.
The other day I sat through a taping of his show (the segment was “How To Please Your Man, and Rev Up Your Sex Life” or something equally appropriate for a women’s magazine cover) and had a good time despite myself. Who guessed that a guy who removes hearts for a living would need a warm-up comedian to get the audience’s blood pumping?
Afterward, the doc-rock star sat down for a good heart-to-heart chat (why can’t I stop making heart jokes?) about his not-favorite topic — himself. Not wanting to just talk about himself is pretty shocking for a surgeon, let alone a talk show host.
Over a giant bag of organic walnuts he keeps in his NBC office, I asked: “So what did you want to be when you grew up? I mean, did you want to be Johnny Carson?”
Of course not, Oz said. He knew he wanted to be a doctor since he was little. I swear that’ s what he said.
When he was seven, he and his father-the-doctor were in an ice cream store and the guy behind the counter asked another kid what he wanted to be when he grew up and the kid made the fatal mistake of saying he didn’t know.
“My father said, ‘I never want to hear that answer from you.’ [Wow, strict.] So I picked doctor and never changed my mind after that.
“Heart surgery suits my personality and TV is like an operating room in some ways,” Oz says. “It’s immediate and people see your failure.”
Hope not.
“But I’m much more comfortable at the hospital — it’s more grounding.”
Then why bother with the blow-dried hair, purple shirts, warm-up guy and screaming, adoring audience?
“Folks are desperate to have a relationship with their healer,” he says. “Marcus Welby is dead today, and they want a regular doctor who they can have a dialogue with and get truthful answers from. I reach a whole lot of people this way.”
And honestly, after each taping, the doctor does spend 40 minutes answering medical questions from the audience in the studio.
It was Oprah who opened his eyes to a lot of this — including the ways in which traditional medicine can work with other forms of healing, he says
“A lot of it just goes back to hope — offering hope,” he says.
So what’s behind the surgical mask and under TV makeup?
The great and powerful Oz is just a regular guy, he says, and I believe it.
He’s 50, has four kids, lives in Cliffside Park, NJ, is wildy in love with his wife, Lisa, to whom he’s been married for over 25 years. And they keep their weekends strictly on the low pro.
“I am a hermit,” he said. “I don’t shave, I play basketball with my friends, do yoga with Lisa and meditate a lot.”
So then what’s his secret to inner happiness and outward success?
“Find out what people like about you and be that person.” What?
Which person is that in his case?
“If I asked people who really care about me, they’d probably say I’m honorable, fair, and not always polite. Like most guys, I had to learn to listen.”
For sure, he’s the person Oprah wanted him to be — or always knew her was. She let slip on TV the other day that it took her eight years — the equivalent of college and med school — to prepare him for his own show.
Did I ask Oz for a free medical opinion while I had him trapped?
No . . . well, almost no.
He pronounced me fit and not fat.
The guy really is a genius! Here, have a walnut.