The tragedy of Ben Carson: How a brilliant doctor turned into a right-wing provocateur

[DonViejo]

The GOP's newest presidential candidate is intent on making a fool of himself before as many people as possible

JIM NEWELL

The Ben Carson phenomenon is a case lesson in how some really smart, impressive figures in certain fields should never talk about politics.

Carson is now an official presidential candidate, representing a subset of grassroots conservatives who enjoy being played. This is not an insignificant number of people. He is, to the horror of the people who run the Republican party, polling viably. No would-be candidate has a more dedicated corps of volunteers supporting him. Whether it’s CPAC or the First in the Nation Summit in New Hampshire, the Carson people are everywhere, handing out stickers and buttons and t-shirts and assorted other tchochkes from dusk till dawn.

But why? What is it that they like about someone who’s quite obviously trying to separate conservative movementarians from their money?

Carson’s rise to prominence among Tea Party conservatives, or whatever we’re calling that element of the GOP now, should be bizarre to everyone. It’s especially baffling, though, to people like your trusty Salon writer, who grew up in the mid-Atlantic in the 1990s. Most elementary and middle school students from Maryland were at some point assigned to read Ben Carson’s autobiography, Gifted Hands — typically ahead of a visit from the man himself. Carson was raised in Detroit, rising from abject poverty to Yale, eventually becoming the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, one of the best medical centers in the world. To children and adults alike, he was the reigning regional saint. (Along with Cal Ripken Jr., who didn’t pull off masterful feats of neurosurgery but did play in thousands of consecutive baseball games.)

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http://www.salon.com/2015/05/04/the_tragedy_of_ben_carson_how_a_brilliant_doctor_turned_into_a_right_wing_provocatuer/