Fox News host Greta Van Susteren came to the defense of GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina after a Los Angeles Times columnist accused her of using her past breast cancer to political advantage.
"LA Times liberal columnist Michael Hiltzik needs to take his head out of the sand," Van Susteren wrote
on her blog on Wednesday.
In a column published Tuesday, Hiltzik wrote, "Fiorina, who was making much out of her own battle with breast cancer ('After chemotherapy, Barbara Boxer just isn't really that scary anymore,' she quipped), displayed the usual contempt that privileged insurance owners have for the uninsureds."
Fiorina, he wrote, received her health coverage through her husband’s AT&T retirement plan, "but for everyone else she advocated allowing insurance companies to sell policies across state lines, which would be a boon to the insurers and a disaster for buyers."
A reader who agreed with Hiltzik's premise still called him out on Twitter for criticizing Fiorina for talking about her cancer battle.
He responded:
Van Susteren said facetiously that she must have missed Hiltzik's column expressing outrage that Hillary Clinton sent out campaign videos about the extreme hardship her mother Dorothy endured as a young child.
"Or maybe that did not outrage him as it did not fit this columnist’s agenda?" Van Susteren asked.
Women and men in both parties use their past hardships in politics because they provide examples of how those hardships shaped their lives, she said.
"Senator Lindsey Graham had to raise his sister after his parents’ deaths.... Senator Marco Rubio's parents are immigrants from Cuba," Van Susteren wrote.
She also questioned whether Hiltzik was upset because the topic was breast cancer.
"He may not know this but women want the spotlight put on this potentially killer disease. Women want the stigma taken off breast cancer," she said. "Maybe Hiltzik is humorless and somehow unable to appreciate a soft touch of humor about a personal crisis can sometimes help others going through similar hell?"
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