-By Warner Todd Huston
Democrat David Gill is having a few problems in his race for the 13th Congressional District in Illinois. Not only did he think he got his nomination on “a cold March day” (it just happened to have been in the 80s that March) but he’s seemingly invented a fake woman who “died” of “heart attack” because of those rascally Republicans.
David Gill seems to be an epic storyteller, for sure. Like Grimm’s fairytales, or something.
Aside from his aforementioned meteorological fairytale, Gill also tells fantastic tales abut his days as a doctor. Gill launched an ad that he felt would skewer those mean Republicans that want to take away everyone’s healthcare. In his ad he claimed to have found a woman named “Susan” who had a heart attack because she “didn’t have health insurance.”
Now, this “Susan” isn’t just the mere subject of a TV ad. Gill, a doctor in his regular life, claimed to have been this “Susan’s” doctor. He claims right in his ad that he tried to save her life and couldn’t.
“One wet Sunday,” the ad sonorously begins, “Doctor David Gill met a 39-year-old patient that he’ll never forget.”
Gill then comes on the screen saying, “We tried and tried to resuscitate her and we didn’t succeed.”
The ad goes on to inform us that “Susan” died because she didn’t have healthcare. It’s a heart-rending story… if only it were true.
As it happens, no one can verify that this woman ever existed. Many now think that David Gill just made up this “Susan.” He never met her and was never her doctor.
Worse, Gill used the exact same story back in 2006 when he ran for Congress the first time. Only in 2006 it was a male patient that died of the Republican-induced heart attack.
When called to prove that “Susan” even exists and asked how he can have had the exact same story with a different patient nearly a decade ago, Gill has stonewalled. No proof that these patients exist is forthcoming from David Gill.
In fact, Gill’s little healthcare storybook character is undergoing an interesting evolution from real person to catchall character. Here is a timeline of the way Gill has described this “Susan”:
- September 28, 2012 – Tom Alte, deputy campaign manager said, “She was a real person.” (Bloomington Pantagraph)
- September 28, 2012 – Statement from Dr. David Gill regarding Susan vs. male stories “These are two different people years apart.” (Bloomington Pantagraph)
- September 28, 2012 – “Gill campaign spokeswoman Lucy Stein suggested that Susan may be an amalgamation.” (Decatur Herald & Review )
- October 4, 2012 – “Stein told the Post-Dispatch that ‘Susan’ may or may not be the woman’s real name.” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
- October 4, 2012 – Gill campaign cannot provide more information on the patient(s) due to medical privacy laws. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch STLtoday.com)
- October 4, 2012 – The “Susan” in the current television ad happened “over a decade ago” at John Warner Hospital in Clinton, IL. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch)
- October 7, 2012 – “Gill..told me…’Susan’ is not the woman’s real name.” (State Journal Register)
- October 8, 2012 – “Susan” is not the name of the patient in his current television ad. (State Journal-Register)
- October 10, 2012 – Dr. Gill says they’re two different people. “The two things similar with those two patients is that they were both 39, and they both had two children, and they were both victims of the way we finance health care.” (WCIA-TV)
- October 10, 2012 – “There’s not just one Susan. There’s a Susan and a Robert and a Mary and many, many others who we could spend all day talking about,’ [said Gill].” (WCIA-TV)
Even the St. Louis Post-Dispatch calls the ad “unverifiable.”
With all the tall tales David Gill tells, I’d hate to be a patient pf his. Who can tell where Gill’s tales end and the truth begins?
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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