Hillary Clinton's Hilarious Bon Jovi Email

Emailgate is far from over, but the exhausted public is at least getting a few good laughs for its trouble. On Monday, the State Department released the latest batch of emails from the private server Hillary Clinton used during her tenure as secretary of state. While there were a number of eye-catching memos, it was Clinton's hilarious email about the Bon Jovi family that quickly became nearly everyone's preferred topic of conversation. Marked with Clinton's usual terseness, the email gave simple instructions for daughter Chelsea Clinton — going by the pseudonym Diane Reynolds, and to whom the original email was addressed — to respond to "the Bon Jovis" in kind.

"Dear Chelsea," reads the email, which was marked January 3, 2013 and sent from singer-songwriter Jon Bon Jovi's wife Dorothea Hurley. "Jon and I have been thinking about your family since we heard about your mom's health issues. We hope that she is doing well and that she is recovering fully." Hurley added that the two were "sending ... a big hug."

In response to the email, which was forwarded to the secretary's inbox that same afternoon, and marked with the comment, "So nice of the Bon Jovis," Clinton succinctly (and rather hysterically) replied, "Pls respond to Bon Jovis."

For a little perspective: In December 2012, Clinton was admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian hospital over a troubling blood clot in one of the veins in her head, which was found during a routine followup for a concussion she had sustained in a fall just weeks earlier. According to medical professionals at the time, the clot had been a significant one, blocking the vein that drained blood from the surrounding brain tissue. Left unchecked, such a clot could have caused more serious problems, including the risk of a hemorrhage or stroke. On January 2, Clinton was finally discharged from the hospital, much to the relief of the Obama administration and her family and friends — including, apparently, Jon and Dorothea Bon Jovi.

"Grateful my Mom discharged from the hospital & is heading home," wrote Chelsea Clinton in a post on Twitter that week. "Even more grateful her medical team confident she’ll make a full recovery."

At the time, at least a few of Clinton's rivals accused her of contriving the entire incident to avoid testifying in front of a House hearing on the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya — a charge which the secretary's staff flatly denied. "[This is] wild speculation based on no information," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters in a statement in early January, dismissing various accusations by Clinton's rivals that the secretary had conveniently come down with the "Benghazi Flu."

Whatever the case, it seems that while Clinton had more than her fair share of detractors throughout the ordeal, she more than made up for it with a mountain of positive support (and from rock royalty, no less).

Perhaps the best response to Monday's Bon Jovi email revelation came from Pew States researcher John Buhl, who sarcastically tweeted, "Is 'Bon Jovis' the correct pluralization?" That's not exactly a bad question. Although I'm not quite sure which is better — the strange-looking pluralization or the fact that the email itself was titled "Your mom."