Like a heard of spongy parrots...

I don't know, is a 68 year-old coming down with pneumonia after campaigning for the last two or three decades really that big a deal? Because I'm kind of getting the impression that a lot of the news sites think it's a big deal. Here, check out NBC's headline:

Holy shit! Is it the zika? It's zika, isn't it?

"This election would be in the bag
if I were running...and non-ficiotnal."

-Jed Bartlett

'Why hide the pneumonia diagnosis?' 'Has Clinton been otherwise ill in recent days?' and probably the most paranoid 'Does Clinton accept the obligation to inform the public about her health?' Look, by this point Clinton's campaign should know that news outlets will seize on anything, goddamn anything they think might look like a conspiracy, particularly one that  kind of happened on the West Wing, but seriously. She's came down with pneumonia, it's been a long, arduous campaign and it's not over yet. This sort of thing happens.

Why did it take five people to write
that article? Are they Voltron?

The last of the 9 Unanswered Questions that we totally weren't asking in the first place is 'How will voters respond?' which the article helpfully answers for us. Thanks article!

"Clinton's core vulnerability is that most Americans don't find her honest or trustworthy. Will voters now feel like they've been misled about her health?"

-Alex Seitz-Wald, Monica Alba,
Andrea Mitchell, Kristen Welker
and Kasie Hunt, NBC News

So she's not an open book but honestly,
is she any more full of shit than this guy?

Ok, so I'm not saying that we, as a culture are mindless herd animals who simply sponge up whatever the media says and parrot it back but...uh...sorry, I'm getting a little lost in my own metaphor, but the point is that if  most Americans think she's dishonest it's at least in part because the media keeps framing everything she says and does as suspicious. The story isn't hey, she's got pneumonia, it's hey, she might have lied about pneumonia.

And yeah, I get that it's the news' job to investigate cover-ups and lies and that's super, but this feels a little more editorial-y than journalism-y. I don't know, maybe after that Matt Lauer thing, I'm guess just a little paranoid that public opinion might be swayed at the worst possible time by something incredibly stupid like this.

"I was going to vote for Hillary Clinton until I heard that she got pneumonia 
and didn't tell us. So I'm voting for Trump. He may be a misogynist, racist
 idiot game-show host but at least he never briefly covered-up a minor illness."

-Disappointed Voter