Opinion: The email scandal of the decade is over-publicized
To say we all have heard about Hillary Clinton’s email scandal would be an understatement. The former U.S. Secretary of State and Democratic front-runner for president has suggested that the continuous attacks by the media and other presidential nominees related to her use of personal email servers and non-disclosure of personal emails is a ploy to distract voters from national issues that actually matter. Her detractors argue she was hiding something. But Hillary Clinton is not the only politician to use private emails while in office. On March 2, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush released his personal email account information through Twitter. The website has emails dating back to 1999. This voluntary sharing of his emails paints Bush in a different light than Clinton. However, despite his website claiming “they’re all here,” several news reports prove they are not.“He has posted online more than 275,000 emails from his two terms in office,” the Associated Press reported. “In 2007, he said he received and sent about 550,000 emails via his personal address, meaning a significant number remain private.”Likewise, candidates and the administrations of state governors Chris Christie, Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal have all used private email accounts for official government-related correspondence while in office. They have shared nothing. In contrast, Hillary Clinton’s emails were thoroughly investigated by the U.S. Department of State and were released to the public. “She completely complied with the law; different secretaries of state have made different choices, but she is turning over more documents than anyone, 55,000, she’s come forward more than anyone else has,” Sen. Chuck Schumer says during an interview with CBS. “The law is that you preserve the emails and no one has alleged that any of them were deleted, the fact that she turned them over before all this became public, again says any of that.” This Wednesday, Clinton spoke at a Town Hall meeting in Manchester, New Hampshire, with the Today Show where at one point she addressed the accusations surrounding the emails.“I am sorry that I made a choice that has resulted in this kind of a situation. Obviously I made a mistake, it was allowed, everyone has confirmed that,” Clinton said. “But it is also, as we now know, the way the Republicans are trying to bring my poll numbers down. I am very committed to answering questions, being as transparent as possible; I am scheduled to testify before their committee which we now know is nothing but a partisan exercise.”And as to the content of these emails, she told Jimmy Fallon she is a bit embarrassed.“Nothing I sent or received was secret, this is all retroactive,” Clinton explained about some of her emails being marked classified. “The stuff that is in it is pretty boring, which kind of hurts my feelings,” Clinton laughed on an episode of “The Late Show with Jimmy Fallon”. The media and Republican presidential candidates don’t seem to find the situation as funny. I disagree; who can’t chuckle when one Clinton email refers to Harriet Tubman as her “home girl?" Not only does Hillary Clinton know how to use email, this first-time grandma appears to have a hipster streak on social media — not boring at all.
