Posted by
Gabrielle Cusumano on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 1:26:11 PM
Media diagnose Hillary "Sybil" Clinton with "mood swings," depression, and "multiple personality disorder"
Summary: In recent days, members of the media asserted that Sen. Hillary Clinton displayed "mood swings," "could be depressed," "[r]esembl[ed] someone with multiple personality disorder," and "has turned into Sybil."
Between February 25 and February 27, members of the media asserted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton displayed "mood swings," "could be depressed," "[r]esembl[ed] someone with multiple personality disorder," and "has turned into Sybil," an apparent reference to a book and movie about a woman who developed multiple personality disorder after being severely abused as a child. Asserting in a February 25 National Review Online blog post that Clinton has displayed "erratic, roller-coaster, mood swings these past few weeks," CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow wrote: "Now I'm no psychiatrist, far from it, but I think a simple answer is that Senator Clinton could be depressed." Kudlow added, "Maybe Hillary's taking meds, but they're just not working for her? Could that be why she's always attacking Big Pharma?" In a February 27 New York Times column, Maureen Dowd claimed that Clinton "has turned into Sybil." Dowd added: "We've had Experienced Hillary, Soft Hillary, Hard Hillary, Misty Hillary, Sarcastic Hillary, Joined-at-the-Hip-to-Bill Hillary, Her-Own-Person-Who-Just-Happens-to-Be-Married-to-a-Former-President Hillary, It's-My-Turn Hillary, Cuddly Hillary, Let's-Get-Down-in-the-Dirt-and-Fight-Like-Dogs Hillary. Just as in the White House, when her cascading images and hairstyles became dizzying and unsettling, suggesting that the first lady woke up every day struggling to create a persona, now she seems to think there is a political solution to her problem." On the February 26 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, commentator Jack Cafferty claimed Clinton "[r]esembl[ed] someone with multiple personality disorder." And on the February 25 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews declared: "I mean, most people have mood swings and attitude swings, which, I have to say in my case, change radically time to time, but to go from basically applauding him [Sen. Barack Obama] as a human being to saying he ought to be ashamed of himself is a wicked turn of tone, I think. But you say what you think." Chicago Tribune reporter Jill Zuckman responded: "It comes across as a little schizophrenic."
As Media Matters for America has documented, in her 2007 book The Extreme Makeover of Hillary (Rodham) Clinton (Regnery Publishing), Republican strategist Bay Buchanan suggested that Clinton may have a disorder "involving narcissistic personality style" and was quoted in an article on the book as saying, "[W]e are talking about a clinical condition that could make her [Clinton] dangerously ill-suited to become President and Commander-in-Chief."
Additionally, as Media Matters documented in 2004, following a speech in which former Vice President Al Gore called for the resignation of six top Bush administration officials, pundits claimed that Gore "has gone off his lithium again," that "half the country thinks he's a mental patient," that he "is insane" and "needs medication," and "that if he is already on medication, his doctors need to adjust it or change it entirely."
Kudlow's February 25 blog post, headlined "Hillary's Mental Roller Coaster":
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed Hillary's erratic, roller-coaster, mood swings these past few weeks?
She's all over the map. Irritable and angry. Manic. Pessimistic and sad. One minute she's shedding tears, the next minute she's shouting and attacking, then she's sarcastically ripping on Obama, and on and on it goes.
So, is Hillary depressed? To Read more go to lengthy article at: