Hillary Clinton fainted at the 9/11 memorial ceremony on Sunday and prompted a wild flurry of opinions from media professionals, supporters and haters alike.
It gave the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, the opportunity to lambast Clinton’s supporters, who supported her despite her “health trouble”.
Clinton’s team of doctors later declared that the Democratic Presidential nominee was suffering from pneumonia. The non-medical background peeps, on hearing the piece of news, catapulted a narrative on her ill health and therefore, unsuitability for high office.
What most of the pundits and commentators didn’t realise, however, was that pneumonia brings with it a host of related problems, including dizziness and nausea.
More “deplorable” than these statements is the US media’s coverage of the entire incident.
CNN describes the incident in sexist vocabulary, literally reducing the Republican Presidential nominee to a ‘damsel in distress’, who is swooning over her security guards.
A weekend of stumbles has Hillary Clinton suddenly looking vulnerable at a pivotal moment of her battle with Donald Trump. Her swoon Sunday at muggy Ground Zero – and damaging video of Clinton lurching into the arms of her security detail – dramatically turned the state of her health into a genuine campaign issue.CNN on Clinton’s stumble
The media has reported on Clinton’s health, derogatorily, on more than one occasion. While addressing a gathering on Labour Day at Cleveland, she began coughing incessantly.
Every time I think of Donald Trump, I get allergic.Hillary Clinton to her detractors
The Fox News vultures played the footage vigorously and called the Former Secretary of State ‘seizure-esque’.
For the New York Post, the Clinton 9/11 incident was of greater importance than the day itself. It believed that there was “no way” that any person could have fallen sick on a day “with gorgeous weather with temperatures as low as 25 degrees Celsius.” Thus seemingly establishing the fact that she wasn’t “fit enough” to run in the race.
Again, the publications are conveniently forgetting the subsidiary problems that pneumonia brings with it – making blanket statements about her general ill-being.
After Clinton was driven out of the memorial by her staff, her forsaken shoe at Ground Zero was given unequivocal media coverage. Something has to take centrestage if the person herself is unavailable, no?
Barely had one recuperated from the shock of Clinton being driven away when a Fox News journalist tweeted this about the candidate’s shoe.
The tweet garnered tremendous engagement (undoubtedly) and drove the discussion away from an ailing nominee to her shoe. The 90 minutes of silence from Team Clinton were weaved into narratives of conspiracy theories, even involving the shoe.
Would the shoe have encouraged the same amount of interest had it been man’s shoe?
With age catching up on both the candidates, singling the woman out for having health problems is problematic on several levels. David L Scheiner, President Barack Obama’s personal physician, wrote a blog in the Washington Post a few days ago citing the need for both the candidates to release medical reports considering both are a little over or under 70.
Needless to say, the Clinton “swooning” incident spread like wildfire on Twitter. Here’s a recap:
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