Hillary Clinton’s recent pneumonia diagnosis has given the media exactly what they’ve been pining for: a freshly committed absolutely unforgivable sin, further proving just how careless and unfit Hillary Clinton is for the ultimate leadership position – I mean really, how dare she get sick? How dare she continue campaigning resolutely, pushing herself to her body’s physical limit because she knows that the future of the U.S. depends on her defeating her opponent? And finally, how DARE she attempt to maintain a microscopic bit of privacy surrounding her health and not immediately share her medical issues with the entire world? Of course, Hillary went into this campaign knowing that her every move, every thought, and every cough would be scrutinized. That’s par for the course when you put in a bid for the Presidency. But, as one human being thinking about the decisions made by another human being, I can understand the choice she made especially now that I see what was waiting for her on the other side. You can’t blame her for trying to avoid adding any more fuel to the fire her opponents are building for the final step of their witch hunt. She knew that going public with her diagnosis would spur an inevitable onslaught of every news outlet respectfully reporting the facts making baseless presumptions about “what this all means for America” (or some other dramatic derivative of that phrase repeated ad nauseum). The right wants to discredit her completely and this pneumonia diagnosis has lent them just the lighting they need to best showcase their newest piece of “evidence” proving that Hillary is not a viable contender in this race. The media’s ultimate goal is to make money and that means they must, and they will, do everything in their power to attract the public’s attention.
MORE READERS!
MORE LISTENERS!
MORE VIEWERS!
The best way to achieve this noble goal of MORE MORE MORE? In this particular case they chose to turn something relatively benign into fodder for thousands of unfounded and over dramatic articles, soundbites, and video clips, forever looping on the news channels and through our brains. The majority of what is reported in a case such as this can be categorized as hyperbolic click-bait, but we cannot be so naive as to underestimate the effect it has on shaping public opinion – our topic for this week’s class. The ever-present media and their increasingly sneaky ways of getting their stories on the express train to our eyeballs makes reading the news akin to sifting through a pile of garbage looking for a few flakes of gold scattered throughout. The ability to filter out the nonsense and be able to recognize the worthy items is a necessary skill – one that I look forward to sharpening over the semester. While ingesting all the bits of “information” that we are constantly being fed by the legions of news outlets out there, it is vital to remember that there are ulterior motives at play here. In many cases integrity is shamelessly compromised in the name of profit. Every action the media takes is calculated and deliberate and it would serve us all well to keep that fact in mind while going about our daily lives – especially during this crucial time leading up to the election.
To end on a lighter note, the Huffington Post published a compilation of tweets all related to the issue of Hillary Clinton’s health. It’s titled “12 Perfect Responses To Hillary Clinton Being A Human and Getting Sick” and it is simultaneously hilarious, depressing, and infuriating. If you want to laugh even harder, this painfully sarcastic article shown to me by Jonathan will not leave you disappointed.
I am unpersuaded that this is the fault of “the media.” Health matters for a president–and for someone aspiring to be a president. This is yet another self-inflicted wound by the Mrs. Clinton and her campaign. She could easily have avoided it, if her staff had announced on Friday that she had pneumonia, she is on her way to recovery and may not make the Sunday event. If she had then showed up at the 9/11 memorial and almost fainted, I suspect a good deal of the commentary would have been about how tough she is.
And..if she had disclosed it would have given her yet another chance to zing Trump for his outrageous failures to release his taxes and his ridiculous health record.
Bottom line, if you want to maintain privacy–except about your under-age kids–don’t run for president.