A geographical-religious note about the entry of Dr. Mehmet Oz into the Pennsylvania Senate race. Oz has little personal connection to Pennsylvania, though he took his medical degree and an MBA from Penn. (Harvard undergrad; he’s a quack, but not a slacker.) When Oz decided to run for the Pennsylvania Senate seat, he moved (notionally) to the town of Bryn Athyn in Montgomery County, a nice little town that is, among other things, the world center of the Swedenborgian religion — or Swedenborgian cult, as many Christians would characterize it. Doctor Oz is a Muslim, but one who has at least one foot in the Swedenborgian cult, as he makes clear in this 2007 interview.
Dr. Oz’s weakness for quackery and hoo-haw is not limited to faddish medical pseudoscience, as it turns out. A cult-adjacent celebrity crackpot with no practical experience: Dr. Oz may be the perfect Republican candidate for our time. Sean Hannity’s excitement already is palpable.