Camille Paglia, a lesbian feminist who writes for the liberal journal Salon, lowered the boom on Hillary Clinton in her article “Enough With the Hillary Cult: Her Admirers Ignore Reality, Dream of Worshipping a Queen” last week. In the process she raised an issue that the mainstream media has successfully ignored for months: Clinton’s health.
She began:
I have trouble understanding the fuzzy rosy filter through which Hillary fans see their champion. So much must be overlooked or discounted — from Hillary’s compulsive money-lust and her brazen indifference to normal rules to her conspiratorial use of shadowy surrogates and her sociopathic shape-shifting in policy positions for momentary expedience.
One of the issues overlooked or discounted is Hillary’s health issues:
The protective major media phalanx around Hillary certainly extends to her health issues, which only the Drudge Report has had the courage to flag. In assessing possible future occupants of the White House, the public has an inalienable right to know.
One of Clinton’s health issues is her persistent cough, which has interrupted hearings and speeches for months on end. Paglia thinks it might be goiter, a swelling of the neck as a result of an enlargement of her thyroid gland resulting from it not functioning properly. That would explain the high collars worn by Clinton during her New Hampshire primary concession speech. Wrote Paglia, “Am I the only one who noticed Hillary’s high-wrap collar, pallid, puffy face, and bulging eyes during her choleric New Hampshire primary concession speech in February?” She added:
My tentative theory is that Hillary may have sporadic flare-ups of goiter, worsened under stress. Coughing is a symptom. High collars mask a swollen throat. In serious cases an operation may be necessary.
Is this chronic thyroid condition disqualifying in a presidential candidate? Certainly not in my view, but I don’t like being lied to — by candidates, campaign staffs, or their media sycophants.
In 2009, Clinton fell and fractured her right elbow, which required surgery and forced her to curtail her schedule during recovery. She fell again in 2011 while boarding a plan, but didn’t sustain any injury. In 2012, Clinton fainted and sustained a concussion, which the State Department explained away as dehydration, caused because of a stomach virus.
Later that year, during a follow-up medical exam, Clinton was diagnosed with a blood clot, which the New York Times reported as forming “in a large vein along the side of her head, behind her right ear, between the brain and the skull.” This interrupted her schedule as secretary of state for a month and required that she wear special prism glasses to correct double vision that followed the clot’s formation. She now takes a blood thinner, Coumadin, as well as Amour Thyroid, a thyroid hormone replacement, along with antihistamines and vitamin B12.
What Paglia has done is restart the conversation about an issue that could have major national implications as the general election draws daily nearer. It’s a conversation that, according to Paglia, is one that Clinton and her devoted followers would prefer not to have.
A graduate of an Ivy League school and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at [email protected].
