The Guardian’s coverage of Clinton’s health
Kit Knightly
OffGuardian has been quiet on the issue of Clinton’s health, about which there has been a whole lot of speculation in the alt-news in recent weeks, and a whole lot of denial in the MSM. Discussing someone’s health can be tricky, you have to tread a fine line between journalism and voyeurism. You have to have a baseline of respect for privacy that, one would hope, would be applied to oneself by others.
However, this isn’t about a private citizen, this is about the physical and mental fitness of the (notionally) most powerful person on the planet…and the absurdity of the current narrative cries out for a response. Stories about Clinton’s health in the Guardian or on CNN simply say “there is no evidence Clinton is sick!” and complain about Trump’s campaign stoking “conspiracy theories” (I was not aware that “Gosh, that old lady doesn’t look well!” was a conspiracy theory…but that’s the media for you).
The problem with the argument that “there’s no evidence Clinton is ill” is, pretty simply, that there’s quite a lot of evidence Clinton is ill.
- First, there are her coughing fits. Over the past couple of years Hillary has had repeated fits of coughing. See here, here and here.
- Secondly, there are her bizarre facial movements/spasms, what some people describe as “seizures”. The famous one here, and the odd one at the DNC.
- Third, there is her memory loss and cognitive problems, see this video, where she appears to freeze up. When she does eventually speak she simply repeats the phrase that was whispered into her ear by a man who appears to be secret service (there has been a lot of speculation as to his identity and/or role).
- Fourth, blood clots. She has had two major blood clots, one in her brain, and is consequently on blood thinners to prevent a third.
- Fifth, apparent weakness and unsteadiness. There are many photographs of Clinton seeming to need assistance standing, balancing, or climbing stairs. In many of her public appearances she is propped up on a stool rather than standing up.
The web is rich with speculation and theorising trying to tie these threads of evidence to a solid hypothesis, plenty of doctors have given their opinions, and some of their ideas seem to have merit. But that is not the point of this article. The point of this article is more to ask a simple question: How far will the media go to persuade people they cannot trust their own eyes? How self-evident must something be before it can no longer be dismissed as a “conspiracy theory”?
No mainstream media source has discussed the possibility that Clinton might be sick, no newspaper or network has offered a refutation of the evidence, or an explanation of her bizarre behaviour. They simply do not discuss it.
That is not how a healthy media should work.
For weeks The Guardian has put out opinion pieces such as this, and this, which construct straw-man arguments to dismiss the idea that Clinton might be anything other than perfectly fine.
In her latest in a long line of Clinton-touting nonsense, Jill Abramson repeats that Hillary is “fundamentally honest” (whatever the hell that means), before summing up yesterdays collapse as:
…the candidate appeared to stumble after leaving the 9/11 memorial in New York.”
Which is akin to summarising the plot of Jaws as “Some fishermen appear, from some angles, to get rather too close to a shark”.
At the same time Barack Obama’s biographer, Richard Wolffe, describes the “stumble” in even more benign terms. A “hot wobble” he calls it, before launching into a rather long polemic about how Trump is worse than Hillary in practically every regard (including physically). It was just unfortunate, he says, that Hillary’s perfectly normal “hot wobble” happened to be caught on camera. She is actually totally healthy and fine.
All of which is rather undermined by the presence of an editor’s note which reads:
Editor’s note: shortly after publication of this article, the Clinton campaign revealed she was suffering from pneumonia.”
Friday’s beautifully Orwellian “Facebook Fact-check” (which, for the record, checked no facts) repeated the claim:
Unlike her rival Donald Trump, Clinton has released fairly detailed medical records. There is no evidence to suggest the 68-year-old should be worried about her health.
But Clinton has NOT released “detailed” medical records, rather her doctor – Dr Lisa Bardack – wrote an open letter to the New York Times…over a year ago. Incidentally, this is the same doctor who was shadowing the perfectly healthy candidate all yesterday morning…just in case she got heatstroke allergies pneumonia.
Perhaps the most beautifully timed editorial on the subject was David Ferguson’s, it headlined:
I cough at all the wrong times. Thank God I’m not Hillary Clinton”
Before adding in the sub-head:
Those of us with allergies know only too well what that tickle at the back of the throat feels like. Luckily, no one assumes we’re secretly dying.”
And then finishing on this note:
Sometimes, oh ye right-wing vultures, a cough is just a cough and the female candidate whose health you’ve never cared one iota about before now is probably just fine, suffering from – as her personal physician disclosed in detail – a round of seasonal allergies.
Three hours after this was published, Clinton collapsed in a parking lot. Ten minutes after that, the comments section under Mr Ferguson’s article was closed. It was a farce, and could not have been better timed if it had been deliberate.
Of course, the media’s refusal to deal with the subject of Clinton’s health goes beyond ATL denial, there is also the (now standard) BTL censorship.
In the interest of promoting educated discussion on this subject, I endeavoured to point out the relationship between pneumonia and some neurological diseases, like Parkinson’s, in the CiF comment section:
![removedkitcommentclintonshealth](https://off-guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/removedkitcommentclintonshealth.jpg)
…Only to find that the Guardian is currently censoring any comment that uses the word “Parkinson’s”, I suggest you try it for yourself.
![kitpnuemoniacommentremoved](https://off-guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/kitpnuemoniacommentremoved.jpg)
Interestingly, “Dr Drew” (real name Dr. David Andrew Pinsky), a famous TV doctor in the US, was subject to rather more high-profile censorship when he was fired just a week after airing his totally non-partisan thoughts on Clinton’s health, and the ability of her doctors.
I hope they realise that simply concealing a fact doesn’t change reality. I don’t know whether or not Hillary is ill, but IF Hillary is, in fact, very sick…no amount of censorship or denial is going to keep her alive.
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It gets even worse now the US msm is spewing more fabricated lies and guess what. Putin did it. They r suggesting Hillary Hitler in Drag have a full toxicology test done cause Putin has form and has done this in the past. NO EVIDENCE NO FACTS JUST PURE FABRICATED LIES AND MORE LIES.
P.S then they wonder why they can’t even give their rags/papers away and why no one is even watching the msm dribble and resorting to alternate sources for news and information.
Great article Kit keep the heat on these cabalist . Morally and intellectually bankrupt
YESTERDAYS NEWS GETS WRAPPED IN TODAYS FISH
I greatly appreciate the skepticism shown by this site. It’s an important voice to have, especially since the Guardian has become so soft. However the dive into 911 conspiracy theories has greatly shaken my confidence in your gravity. But OK, I can live with that, and I appreciated the “why we cover 911” post, I get it, it was a seminal event. I think you’re wasting your time because the balance of probability doesn’t support anything other than Bin laden and his planes, but long live skepticism. But reading this stuff on Hilary Clinton is just nonsense. The video of her freeze with the secret service man looked to me like someone who had just spotted a threat in front of her in the crowd, and who was hesitating because she didn’t know what was going to happen next (ie. maybe violence). The SS man reassured her to keep speaking,… Read more »
Go back to the guardian jack.
Everything we have posted about 9/11 has been fact-based. That’s our remit.
Jack, I’ve yet to see any evidence that those were ‘Bin Laden’s planes’. Cheney himself admitted they had no evidence linking him to the attack.
Hi Sav, yes it was a bit loose of me to call them Bin Laden’s planes. They probably were but it hasn’t been proven conclusively. The FBI says so, Bin laden said so eventually (but he would, wouldn’t he?) and various bits of circumstantial evidence point to it, but it’s not certain. I should have said Middle East Islamic Terrorist planes. I’d take alot of convincing the planes came from anywhere else. I have no interest in engaging in the 911 discussion, 5 minutes on the internet is sufficient to disprove pretty much every alternative theory that has been presented. I’m not surprised there has been discussion and debate, because it was an unprecedented, large scale and high impact event. Not surprising it took some time to figure out how it all played out. That there is still some uncertainty in the details is pretty normal. At the encouragement of… Read more »
I understand your point. I don’t subscribe to the theory of explosives being placed etc. The main reason being is that it’s far simpler to aid extremists to carry it out than going to all that bother. Your hands are kept cleaner.
Yes, there are people who take it to some ridiculous lengths. I sometimes wonder if some of that is deliberate, to as you say, stop people looking at things that matter.
“Why hasn’t anyone suggested Trump has a mental health problem …”
Surely you jest! Claiming that Trump is insane is a favorite pass-time of the Hellbots. They–the very ones who get indignant at the mere suggestion that there might be something wrong with Clinton’s health–are usually the first to violate the Goldwater Rule when the subject turns to Donald Trump.
Do you really believe what you typed or want others to believe your rambling?
Nice to see Clinton honoring the anniversary of 9/11 in style…
…by collapsing out of nowhere and offering an explanation which makes no sense.
She collapsed? Hmmm she must’ve been hit by an airplane then.
Was it a “free fall” collapse? Because if it was . . .
only for the first 3 seconds, which doesn’t count
. . . if only it had been 3 seconds of actual “free fall” . . . I mean for Hillary . . . and I can picture slick Bill explaining it to the life insurance company in his smooth as silk American drawl: I never did anything to that women . . . I did push her out of the window . . . yes . . . but the first 3 seconds don’t count . . .
Not to mention that a small shiny metal cylindrical object apparently dropped out from her pants leg which has now become the subject of numerous conspiracy theories about her health.
Oh, yeah, pretty soon it’ll be, “she swooned, sure, even collapsed completely, with the onset being rapid, as all the eyewitness testimony attests, but there was no shiny cylindrical object anywhere near being inside her pant leg when she began to convulse. It was already there, on the ground, maybe even being remotely operated . . .
You can look into many things that people do and wonder about their health. The very fact the MSM even comment on it is a red flag to me. If anything it provides more sympathy for Clinton and excuses for her dodgy actions. For all we know it’s Clinton’s own campaign putting it out there,
Maybe someone tossed a bucket of water on Hillary?
LOL!
Right now there is an intriguing possibility that if H. Clinton has to stand down as Democrat Presidential candidate that the person who came second replaces her.
That could mean Bernie Sanders being called upon to take her place.
Does anyone know what the Democrat Party Rule Book says on this?
Kaine cannot replace her as candidate – I am guessing – as he has no democrat mandate personally.
Whereas Sanders does.
Intriguing – or what?
Does concealing facts change reality? I hope so, otherwise we are living in a fictional world.
There have been some allegations that Hillary’s pneumonia may have been chemically induced by Trump operatives.
See here and here.
The only significance of the presidential candidate’s health for me is, well, nothing. AS Chomsky said of 9/11, “who cares?” Of course, 9/11 isn’t nearly as benign as Chomsky makes it out to be, but Hillary taking ill, isn’t that, well, kind of a positive? I mean given the kind of human being she is? Sometimes, even to the end, a person deserves and elicits only contempt. And not that it makes any difference who becomes the kind of kings, either. American domestic and foreign policy is simply not dictated by the president but only rubber stamped as dictated from behind the scenes to the president by coteries of rich psychopaths. So Clinton is coughing and twitching and stumbling and forgetting what she is saying in mid-sentence. Who à la Chomsky cares? And could anyone, even Bill, care in other kind of way? And no, Willem, I can’t even bring… Read more »
When did Chomsky ever ask “9/11 who cares. If he ever did say so it was either taken out of context or you are unable to grasp Chomsky brilliant dry humor. Seriously… As for Clinton. It’s obvious she is not well. Whoever leading her lifeslyle with corruption at their core and megalomania beyond the absurd could ever expect to be her age and not be near death?
Even if [9/11 conspiracy theories] were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn’t have any significance. It’s a little bit like the huge energy that’s put out on trying to figure out who killed John F. Kennedy. Who knows? And who cares?
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky#2004
Thank you, Greg.
Just a thought. If she’s ill and wins, then gets sick whilst in office, doesn’t that mean that Bill Clinton, for obvious reasons, will effectively become the president again?
Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?
If anything happened to H. Clinton, her vice president – currently Virginia Senator Tim Kaine – would take over.
Of course, she has to win in November before any of that can happen.
Kaine could turn out to be much better in the White House than her.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Kaine for more details.
It could be this general election will be decided more by VP candidates than POTUS candidates.
Who knows?
I’m not so sure about Tim Kaine.
Huh. If Clinton gets jettisoned in favor of Kaine this could explain it. Guardian already has had an article about succession.
Kane won’t make it. Trump is going to win.
I read the article about some of the horrific human rights abuses perpetrated in Honduras with US support. It was horrendous but Kaine just happened to be there as a young volunteer. There was no evidence in the article of his ever being involved in any of the dirty tricks campaigns being waged by US agencies.
That’s right. But he would have had to have been deaf, dumb and blind not have seen the overwhelming US military and political presence in that country and its devastating social consequences. He was a graduate at the time and should have been politically aware. But he was a dumb Catholic (that’s ok, I’m a Catholic too) and he runs to type — excessively deferential to authority, uncritical acceptance of the political status quo, narrow life experience. Fortunately, I had the pleasure of strong experiences outside that Catholic culture and so I can see the good points and the defects. Kaine shows no signs of any significant alternative life experience. He lacks the Machiavellian instinct of the neocons, of people like James Woolsey (now working for Trump), or Michael Ledeen (also supporting Trump) or the Israeli lobby group. The finance markets would make a meal of him. In short, he… Read more »
No. I don’t think your right. Formally you are, but in reality Bill Clinton would take charge if he had been given some role in government. Clinton’s personality and status far outweighs this guy Kaine. Bill Clinton would roll over him like a steamroller. This has happened before and I’m thinking of Elanour Rooseveldt who even as first lady took over when her husband was too ill.
I should think that the culture of politics has changed significantly since Franklin Roosevelt and even Bill Clinton’s times as POTUS so it may not necessarily be the case that Clinton will have any influence on White House policy if Kaine were to become President. More likely it will be the people HRC installs as State Secretary and Defense Secretary who will have influence on Kaine and those people are likely to be … gulp, Victoria Nuland and Michelle Flournoy respectively.
HRC, Nuland, Flournoy: you couldn’t find a more frightening trio of hags this side of Shakespeare’s Scottish play or Greek mythology.
The Guardian functions as kind of praetorian media guard for Clinton. It’s both rather sad and somewhat comical at the same time. The bending over backwards and tying oneself in incredible knots, while balancing on a knife-edge and juggling a row of plates at the same time, is, extraordinary to behold. Here’s Freedland on our ‘Hillary’, why to they all call her ‘Hillary’? Have they all sat on her lap growing up? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/12/hillary-clinton-pneumonia Freedland is desparate. He plays the gender card from the beginning. Then the sexist card. Poor Hillary is being treated differently from a man… boo hoo! Freedland is so deeply concerned, why are these people at the Guardian so concerned about absolutely everything? Anyway, even younger people have to rest after ‘pneumonia.’ Could Trump win if Clinton doesn’t bound back with a spring in her heels and a glint in her one good eye? I haven’t been… Read more »
Thanks to courageous folks such as yourself, I can find out second hand what’s happening over at the Guardian. Thank you. That you actually read the Hillary Clinton article speaks volumes of your ability to tolerate pain :o)
Prince didn’t die of a massive overdose. He took painkillers for his bad hip he refused surgery being s Jehovah’s Witness . He died of being unhealthy. He didn’t eat and he worked 16 hour days. I know because I was working quite close to the whole thing. The drug story was press bullshit. The doc gave him two options hip replacement surgery or a life on pain killers and eventual wheelchair, he took the latter, TBH I think he would have killed himself had he been confined to a wheel chair anyway. He died at the top of his game after playing several amazing shows, so you know. He went the way he wanted.
Parkinson’s would be a very serious diagnosis for Clinton, and one could only feel sorry for her if she has this disease. This time I think that Trump said it right, i.e. that there is no pleasure in the health concerns of Hillary Clinton. But I agree that Parkinson’s disease makes sense if you look at Clinton’s physical behaviour. I am not saying this as a doctor, but as a person who likes to watch movies, like the movie Awakenings. If you look at yesterday’s video from Clinton, it looks like a scene from awakenings. Just look how Hillary Clinton is standing like a statute, and than has to be pushed into the car, as it appears that she cannot move (she is ‘glued’ to the ground). This is called ‘rigidity’ and it is a serious symptom that you see with Parkinson’s disease. Rigidity can be treated quite effectively with… Read more »
Apparently blue lenses can reduce the chance of seizures.
The US owes the Democrats one. OK, FDR was never in the best of health but he somehow managed to last out three administrations and to be re-elected to a fourth term – something not possible or conceivable today. When Ronald Reagan was elected President the first time, it was very much an open question as to whether or not all his marbles were functional. By the time of his re-election for a second term, it was blindingly obvious that he was affected by senile dementia. Nevertheless, the mass media conspired to cover it up and he was re-elected back to the White House where within months it was impossible to cover up his problems. At least, he had George H. W. Bush as his Vice-President, a smart cookie, having largely run the CIA for years. Reagan provided occasional appearances as the “front” man while others made the real decisions.… Read more »
The issue of her health apart from exposing a paid for media overrides her basic inability to hold office. She has committed perjury and theft over many years, because a compromised judicial system has been unwilling to press charges doesn’t alter her crimes. When faced with so many lies, so much corruption what can we think?, apart from wishing Mrs Clinton a speedy recovery as unlike Mrs Clinton some of us believe life to be precious.
I’ve long teetered on the margin of the lunatic fringe but its edges are being eroded under my feet. I’d heard about the right wing obsession with her health but figured it was standard misogynist creepiness: oh look, a lady, the weak creature must be diseased. It doesn’t help that Trump’s book is called Crippled America which is not even a dog whistle about culling the unfit. It’s an explicit guiding ethos. But that video — something is really the matter, and it isn’t pneumonia. I felt afraid for Clinton, for whom I have previously felt very little sympathy. On the one hand I think of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko being sort of dragged around by “everything is fine here” officiants. On the other I think — it could not have happened on a more public occasion. Is she being set up to fail? This whole election — with… Read more »
The explanations are just so clearly cartoonish (“it’s only a flesh wound”). It’s like sort of hammering home: no, really, you have NO one to vote for. Unless the world is secretly run by a cabal of Jill Stein enthusiasts, it feels like “oh people were not getting the message that this election is a trashfire, which is the message we really want to promulgate”.
Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.
God is stopping WW3 or the Devil wants his own back – either way its good for peace in this World !
Bye bye Hillary or Good Riddance – take your pick !!
Jail was a better option but hospitalisation & out of the race will do just dandy – think of all the innocent lives that will be saved by her removal ?