Digby: "Health Hysteria and Hypocrisy: Here’s a news alert — Republicans have taken ill, too"

SALON
MONDAY, SEP 12, 2016 04:59 AM PDT
Health Hysteria and Hypocrisy: Here’s a news alert — Republicans have taken ill, too

Time to stop the smears: Hillary isn't the only high-profile politician who has gotten sick or had health episodes
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON


<<... Despite it being a right-wing smear, “the health issue” worked its way into the mainstream press leading to coverage of a couple of coughing fits as if they were obvious signs that she’s on death’s door and today’s events as if they show something is seriously wrong. (How pneumonia relates to the brain damage has yet to be explained.) But the truth is that coughs and throat problems are probably the most common problem a politician has. And when one personally hugs, shakes hands and gets breathed on by thousands of people in a week, getting pneumonia isn’t really all that surprising either. It’s obvious that if the Drudge smear wasn’t in full bloom, this story would have been covered differently. Instead, unable to resist the lure of the sexy tabloid lede, Politico just let it all hang out: "Clinton scare shakes up the race Physical weakness caught on camera turns health conspiracy into a legitimate campaign concern."

The fact is that politicians get sick. Indeed, presidents get sick. George W. Bush fainted in the white house just sitting on a couch eating pretzels. His father famously caught the flu while he was travelling, grew faint and vomited on the Prime Minister of Japan‘s lap. Ronald Reagan was shot and had cancerous polyps removed from his colon while in office. Lyndon Johnson had gall bladder surgery and proudly showed his scar to the press corps. President Eisenhower had a heart attack and emergency surgery for a bowel obstruction. There’s no need to reiterate all of Franklin Roosevelt’s health problems, but it’s pretty clear that the right wing and the press today would find him unfit for office.

And the list of macho men who’ve fainted in public is a lot longer than you might think. This is just a sample:

General Petraeus faints at congressional hearing.

Major General James Martin fainting at a press conference back in February

Attorney General Michael Mukasy fainting in the middle of a speech in 2008.

GE CEO Jim Campbell at a Joe Biden speech in 2010.

Silvio Berlosconi, Italy’s prime minister at the time, collapsing in 2006.

Bill Daley passing out at his Commerce Secretary appointment ceremony in 1996

A 23-year-old soccer player collapsing during a live interview

A soldier fainting waiting for dignitaries to arrive

To put it simply, if you discard the inane right-wing conspiracy theories about Clinton’s alleged brain damage and Parkinson’s disease, you’ll realize that mundane ailments like coughing, fainting, pneumonia, flu etc are common among politicians and other leaders because they’re common among humans...>>