The long war in Afghanistan is the source of any number of scary moments, but you want to know what has to happen for the entire media to freak out en masse, with terror? General David Petraeus has to momentarily faint at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee!
Yes, yesterday morning CENTCOM Commander David Petraeus was in attendance at a committee hearing, and your cable news professionals were busy not covering it, as is their wont. But then, the general passed out, or fainted, or slumped his head, and the feeding frenzy was on! Everyone immediately began spastically speculating. Had Petraeus not eaten? Had he not gotten enough sleep? Was it jet lag? SAY IT WASN'T JET LAG, THE SILENT KILLER!
Reports made frequent mention of the fact that Petraeus caught ill while answering a question about the timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal, but very few thought that the answer he was in the process of giving was worthy of mention.
I'll credit Fox News's Bret Baier, whose report during yesterday six o'clock hour was the only one I managed to find that actually attempted to treat the hearing as if something substantive was interrupted by Petraeus's fainting spell.
The most asinine coverage, by a country mile, was by CNN, in their Chamber of Situations. There, CNN medical correspondent indulged in a segment of insane speculation about all of the myriad health problems that Petraeus might have, from the reasonable (heatstroke) to the ridiculous (SILENT HEART DISEASE OMGZ!). That was followed by a "closer look at what happens when public figures pass out." Seriously. They put David Petraeus' fainting spell alongside Marie Osmond's similar episode on "Dancing With The Stars" and probed it for the deep meaning in Our American Lives.
Once again, with the help of the inimitable Ben Craw, we present a mashup video of that terrifying time in our lives when General David Petraeus became the latest human being on the planet to faint.
WATCH:
Video produced by HuffPost's Ben Craw
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