The problem with the Ebola story, for conservative media, is that it does not fit comfortably in their "wheelhouse." This has resulted in repeatedly bludgeoning the story until it
can be wedged in there, and the results are
every bit as awkward as you would expect.
Fox News has spent the past several days irresponsibly stoking the fears of its already edgy audience when it comes to Ebola, almost single-handedly crafting an Ebola Truther meme, but yesterday’s performance was on another level altogether. [Gretchen Carlson] managed to somehow cram nearly every single Obama conspiracy theory into one barely comprehensible word salad. It’s all there: the IRS, Obamacare, the VA — hell, she even brings it all back to Benghazi (in case you were waiting for that to finally happen).
You've got to give Fox News credit, though; Gretchen Carlson remains surprisingly lifelike. Sony only wishes they could make a collection of random chips and gears express outrage like that. Nobody ever said the same for
Donald Trump.
"I think very few people trust our government as being competent," Trump said [on Fox & Friends]. "Let's not kid ourselves. I mean with the five billion dollar website for Obamacare, which is still not working frankly and it's a disaster. And so many other things: Benghazi, wars ... IRS."
I like how that just sort of trailed off there. Benghazi ... wars ... flapjacks. Like we woke him from a nap, or like a kid who can't name the letters of the alphabet without singing the little song. Benghazi ... wars ... ellemenopee.
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Please read below the fold for more of this ridiculousness.
There's also the Glenn Beck approach, which is to give Ebola a commercial sponsor.
"You want a reason to have gold? You want a reason to have guns? You want a reason to have God? It's called 'Ebola.'"
And is there ever a reason
not to buy overpriced shiny bits from Glenn Beck's sponsors? No sir, there is not. (Note the specific order those are in. Sorry, Mr. Almighty Sir, but he who pays the money in advance gets the higher billing.)
The Fox News effect is omnipresent. Frequent Fox guest Morgan Brittany took to World Net Daily to write a twitching screed about FEMA CAMPS DISPOSABLE COFFINS OMG WAKE UP SHEEPLE.
“Questions were then brought up about the stockpiling of ammunition and weapons by Homeland Security over the past couple of years and the $1 billion worth of disposable FEMA coffins supposedly stored in Georgia. Why was there preparation being made for FEMA camps to house people in isolation?” she writes. “My fear is that this has all been orchestrated from the very beginning. Who knows? Maybe the current administration needs this to happen so martial law can be declared, guns can be seized and the populace can be controlled. Once that happens … game over.”
We've got to nuke Ebola from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. Oh, and speaking of
twitching.
You know who else will get in? Untold numbers of “diversity” petitioners from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other West African countries where the Ebola virus is epidemic.
That would be Michele Malkin—who is, somewhat inexplicably, still around—telling us that 'twas "diversity" that killed us all. Malkin is most famous for writing a book suggesting that those FEMA camps would be a pretty good thing, so long as we put people of the more suspicious skin tones in there.
And then there's Mike Huckabee. He's sad because he doesn't think he can trust the government to tell him the truth anymore, which makes him officially the last horse to cross the finish line so we'll be sending him a bouquet and a bucket of tasty oats.
There's probably a long explanation to be written here about why certain folks are insistent upon turning themselves into quivering masses of fear over this one particular thing when there are a great many other homegrown 'Murican diseases or bullets or terrorists are much more likely to kill them and we can't get them to ever shut up about how piffling those things are, or how uncannily the tide can turn from government has no business spending money on this to government should move heaven and earth now that I have decided I am afeared of this thing, but it's probably also unnecessary. If you can get from Ebola to Benghazi to the IRS in one half-sentence, we all pretty much get the gist of what's going on here.
If a true epidemic does arrive in America anytime soon we're screwed, you know. Something like the Spanish Flu? We tsk at the foolish people in Africa who suspect the doctors of manufacturing the disease, or who refuse to take precautions because it's what the conspirators want them to do, but we'd have entire news programs devoted to the same thing. There might be a vaccine, but there'd also be pundits warning people not to take those vaccines because suspicious. Everyone would stockpile guns, because the answer to everything is to stockpile guns. We'd be told people were dying because God was punishing us, and that to stop the epidemic we had to appropriately punish gay people, or brown people, or "diversity"-peddlers, or ACORN, or that government was intentionally not stopping the epidemic because they had $1 billion of disposable coffins that they really needed to get out of the FEMA warehouses. Nope, we would be well and truly screwed.
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