Six Degrees of Ebola
by Tom Sullivan
Is America playing Six Degrees of Ebola yet? Connect yourself to someone on Amber Vinson's Frontier Airlines flight in six steps or fewer, then run around freaking out? (Something to play on a cruise, maybe?)
Best wishes for a swift recovery, of course, to the two caregivers infected in Texas. Yet Ebola fever (the psychological kind) has so gripped the country that articles are popping up with titles like, Ebola hysteria is going viral. Don't fall for these 5 myths. Fox News' Shepard Smith went off script the other day and urged viewers, "Do not listen to the hysterical voices on the radio and television or read the fear provoking words online." Michael Hiltzik felt it necessary to write 6 ways to avoid being stupid about Ebola in this week's L.A. Times. His number five is pithy:
5. Listening to Rush Limbaugh may be hazardous to your health. As a one-stop shop of Ebola misinformation, you can't beat the guy. Limbaugh's only purpose is to stir up fear, alarm and mistrust of government among his listeners. Inform them, not so much.
But informing listeners was never the point. Fear, mistrust, alarm, and misinformation is right-wing talk's business model. It's what listeners tune in for. It's just not church in some circles -- you haven't been touched by the spirit -- unless the preacher works up the congregation with a mind-numbing, shouted cant into a hair-standing-on-end, ecstatic state followed by emotional catharsis.
Right-wing talk works the same way. A kind of addictive drug, maybe it has begun to lose its zing (along with Limbaugh's ratings). Perhaps over the years, the ginned-up, faux outrage peddled every day by Rush and his kin has lost its punch. Perhaps the fear-addicted (and fear peddlers) hungering for stronger stuff to give them that old rush again just found it in an ISIS and Ebola cocktail?
That and, as Digby pointed out yesterday, it's crazy season.