Op-ed: The media has somehow confused “transparency” with medicine, and is treating Hillary Clinton like she is on her deathbed.
All because she kept her promise to attend the 9/11 memorial during a humid heatwave. "What happened yesterday [Sunday] was that I just was incredibly committed to being at the memorial -- as a senator on 9/11, this is incredibly personal to me." "I could feel how hot and humid it was. I felt overheated. I decided that I did need to leave. And as soon as I got into the air-conditioned van, I cooled off, I got some water, and very quickly, I felt better," she said. Hillary Clinton said Monday night she's "met a high standard of transparency" about her health and didn't think the pneumonia was "going to be that big a deal.” Clinton said she felt dizzy and lost her balance Sunday, but did not lose consciousness and is feeling much better, CNN said. She concedes she should not have gone. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Her doctor had told her on Friday that she had pneumonia, and even before the memorial she went to several campaign events. "I was supposed to rest five days -- that's what they told me on Friday -- and I didn't follow that very wise advice," Clinton told CNN's Anderson Cooper in a phone interview. "So I just want to get this over and done with and get back on the trail as soon as possible," she said. As for transparency she wants to know about Donald Trump’s health, and more than a few paragraphs from a hippy-looking doctor who did not examine him the day he wrote his medical report. Rachel Maddow and others reported exensively on the illnesses and collapses of former presidents, including George H. W. Bush. It couldn’t be hidden because he threw up while eating with the Japanese Prime Minister. Should the U.S. electorate have known that as World War 2 ended President Franklin Roosevelt had been told before he was elected for his last term that he would not live through it? His responses included driving 51 miles in an open car in a rainstorm in New York City. Winston Church suffered numerous injuries, including before and during wars. “He suffered a tooth abscess in 1941, a heart attack while staying at the White House just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at the end of that year, and pneumonia in England in 1943, followed by “full-blown” pneumonia in Carthage. He had a severe stroke when prime minister in peacetime, in June 1953, and was off work until October,” reports “The Supreme Survivor” by A.W. Beasley. He was once even thrown from a camel. He was hit by a car in New York, and badly enough injured on his forehead and thighs to put him in hospital for a week in 1931. Pleurisy followed. He suffered serious illnesses while serving as prime minister after the war. President John F. Kennedy had back problems after his World War 2 service, and suffered from Addison’s Disease. Of the injections he was forced to take he said, “I don’t care if it’s horse piss. It works.” It took an assassin’s bullet to stop him. Would that qualify as “transparency,” there were reporters there. There are so many types of pneumonia it is absurd for anyone but Clinton’s doctor to make predictions. Millions of Americans are likely suffering mild pneumonia now, called “walking pneumonia.” “Sen. Charles E. Schumer was diagnosed with pneumonia a couple weeks ago, the New York Democrat’s office acknowledged Monday, a day after Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s staff said she had the common but dangerous lung infection – and five days after Schumer told reporters he had ‘a little bit of a cold.’ “Sen. Schumer had been diagnosed with pneumonia and, per doctors’ orders, he took antibiotics and kept a lighter schedule to recuperate,” Schumer’s spokesman, Jason Kaplan, said in a statement. “His doctor has given him a clean bill of health and he’s feeling better so he’s back to his usual schedule.” Lastly, as a 40-year journalist I am getting tired of the overuse of the word transparency. Time after time in my career if I had reported everything I learned, thinking my sources were being transparent, I would have been mistaken. Give news some time. Americans and Britons were well-served by keeping some things confidential. Imagine transparency in the Cold War? CNN New York Magazine Buffalo News
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