Skip to main content

Is there a doctor in the room?

By



Last week, Sean Hannity put on his best Dr. House impersonation by calling together a team of doctors to do a differential diagnosis on Hillary Clinton.  He was feeding off the numerous images and reports on conservative blogs that were questioning Hillary's health, largely over a photograph from February when she slipped on some icy steps while campaigning in New Hampshire.

As the Washington Post reported, it was a pile of nonsense even if Dr. Hannity tried hard to make it sound like a serious medical investigation, "But watch the video," said Hannity, playing back the bobble-head clip, "it almost seems seizure-esque to me."  Media Matters offers a slightly different telling, along with a montage of clips that Hannity used to try to make his case that we need to see Hillary's medical records.  To her credit, Fiona Gupta, a neurologist, didn't play along, saying that Hillary's strange movements were probably mostly the result of stress.  But, Marc Siegel, a urologist, reinforced Hannity's opinion, playing Wilson in this case.

After years of drubbing Hillary on Benghazi and her missing e-mails, conservative pundits are now going after her health record.  I suppose this is a way to deflect attention away from Donald Trump not releasing his tax record.  After all, he did release a medical report last December, calling his health "extraordinary."  I'm not so sure that Trump's physician isn't Dr. Spaceman.

This type of medical speculation is certainly nothing new.  Any presidential candidate pushing 70 is cause for concern.  Just ask Dr. Ben.  But, the absurd level to which Dr. Hannity has made an issue of Hillary's health has led some to question Sean's mental health.

We all know he is nothing more than a shill for Trump. If Hannity wasn't making so much money, you would even think Donald was paying for all this.  But, Sean has a strange history of embracing fringe figures.  He gave Cliven Bundy an unprecedented amount of air time back in 2014, so little wonder he has devoted so much time to Donald this election cycle.  There is an obsessive-compulsive pattern to his behavior that maybe he should ask Dr. Gupta about.

It is doubtful Dr. Hannity will let Hillary's health go, especially now that the conservative blogosphere has kicked into overdrive on the story.  This is all part of the circle jerk the conservative news media has become.  Sean has been given free rein at Fox to promote such stories, dragging in so-called experts to lend them credibility.  Unfortunately, it doesn't make these stories true.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more