Maude Help Us All

[Content Note: Disablism.]

The media have collectively lost their way. (Or, perhaps more accurately, have painfully given up all pretense of their way being anything but destroying the Democratic candidate.)

Anderson Cooper did an absolutely embarrassing interview with Hillary Clinton last night regarding her health, exemplifying everything that is wrong with the political media right now, virtually all of whom—with some notable exceptions, like Lawrence O'Donnell and Christiane Amanpour—have decided that Clinton's lack of transparency, or "secrecy," about having a temporary illness is the biggest news story in an election in which one of the candidates is an extraordinarily dangerous bigot.


It isn't even hard to succinctly summarize how truly pointless this obsession with Clinton's health is, not just in this moment, but historically. The Republican Party is either called the Party of Lincoln (depression) or the Party of Reagan (Alzheimer's), and that the greatest Democratic president has usually been said to be Roosevelt (polio) or Kennedy (chronic pain).

Meanwhile, the media are losing their minds over pneumonia. Which, you know, was a concern in 1841, but not so much now.

The issues have become irrelevant. The only thing that matters to the media is optics.


Welp.

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