I’d be curious to hear your feedback on this. The latest news on Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD) seems to be positive and hold some real grounds for optimism. He’s obviously had a major, potentially life-threatening event. But, hopefully, he’s going to get through 
it. As most of you probably know, Johnson was in the midst of a reporters’ conference call when he began to show the first signs of impairment which soon sent him to the hospital with what then appeared to be a stroke. In the nature of things, that conference call was being recorded.
Does it strike you as a little tasteless and gratuitous that a host of news outlets are broadcasting the recording? So you can hear how Johnson began to stumble through his words and lose his ability to concentrate as the bleeding in his brain reached a critical point?
A reader mentioned this to me this evening and told me he thought it was ghoulish. And I take it it’s being played on various chat shows and on the radio. Where I noticed it though was on the front page of the Washington Post either last night or early today. On the front page package, there’s a link that reads “AUDIO: Johnson Interview on Wednesday.” And if you click through, you’re taken to an audio file where you can hear the stuttering interview.
(I hadn’t listened to it or wanted to listen to it. But before writing this post, I clicked through and listened to the first few seconds just to make sure it was what I thought it was.)
I don’t want to be a mortality prude. These things hold a certain fascination.
But Johnson’s not dead. He’s in the hospital fighting for his life. This isn’t like video of an assassination where the events recorded are an essential part of what happened. It’s just live audio of a guy having a stroke, or what appeared to be one. I would have expected it to show up bootlegged on some no-holds-barred website. But there it is in the Post.
