2007 Reading List - The Culture of Fear
Book One
The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner
Could your child be a ticking time bomb?
Will you die in a horrible plane crash that could have been prevented?
Will your child be killed in school?
Will you be killed by a disgruntled co-worker?
Answer: No.
At least, it is very, very, very unlikely. But chances are those scenarios make you feel the tiniest bit afraid. Why? Why be afraid of plane crashes when you're far more likely to be injured or killed in your car? Why be terrified of being killed by some random criminal when violent crime rates plummeted until this year? Why worry about diseases that, as far as medical science can tell, don't even exist? Why panic that your child will be molested by some anonymous internet perv when most children already know their abusers?
Because someone's making money off your fear. Either a lobbyist, a lawyer or a publisher, most likely, and they're willing to pump you full of fear if it means you will turn to their product or service to make yourself feel safe. It's what makes this country go.
In this book, Glassner takes a look at some of the biggest scares of the 90's: defective breast implants, teenage moms, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, "Crack Babies," the rising upsurge of heroin use in our teens, and so many others. All of these were big stories in those years, and I'm sure some of them will make a comeback sooner or later. Something they also all have in common: none of them had any basis in reality.
So how did they get to be so big? Well, the biggest culprit is the modern media. They want big, flashy news stories so they can sell ad space and issues. Then the politicians cite them, advocacy groups sprout like mushrooms and try to get into them, and then the lawyers show up.... The news anchors use phrases like, "It happened in this tiny Florida town, and it could be happening in yours." Or, "Chip Winchester brings us this terrifying report." Or, "To the victims, this tragedy will continue for the rest of their lives."
The formula: Take a very unlikely event - death by DPT vaccination for example - and find at least one victim. They don't even have to be a real victim, but it helps if they can be convinced that they are. Bring on someone with no qualifications but a strong interest in the case, and label them as an "expert." Then make sure you get the emotional, heart-wrenching interview with the family. If there's a dead child, all the better. Or a beautiful woman. Or a veteran, preferably a young one with a beautiful wife and young child. Someone in the family then becomes the "Victim-turned-expert" and proceeds to spread the meme that if it could happen to them, it could happen to you. Lather, rinse, repeat. Next thing you know you have politicians making laws based solely on what they watched on the Geraldo Rivera show, and the whole thing goes on and on. They take advantage of the knowledge that their viewers have neither the time nor the resources to verify each and every claim that comes out of the news department. We have to trust them and they use that trust to increase their power, their prestige and their profits.
If the American people had an ounce of common sense, however, these scares would fall flat. People would see someone on TV labeled "Expert" and demand to see this person's qualifications. If he or she had none, or if they couldn't point to independent corroborating research to prove their point, they would turn the channel to a more reputable network. But no, we fall for them every time. Why?
Glassner's main thesis is that these fear epidemics basically serve to either hide or misdirect from the things we should be afraid of. For example: crack babies. During the Crack Baby Scare of the 80s and 90s, everyone from the local news anchor to the President of the United States was convinced that there would be some kind of zombie army of crack-addicted children tearing the nation apart in a few years. They called it a scourge, a danger and a plague, and warned that if we didn't make tougher drug laws, we would probably all be bitches in a crack house come the millennium. They said that crack babies would probably be uneducated, unemployed, and with no moral compass to guide them.
Funny how that didn't happen, isn't it? Even funnier is that the exact same effect of being born of a crack using mother - the lack of education, the lack of employment and suchforth - could probably also be attributed to living in poverty, which is where most crack addicts come from. But it's hard to talk about poverty and make people care. It's uncomfortable to tell Mr. and Mrs. America that they could be one paycheck away from the street, because that is far more likely to be true. And nobody wants to hear that.
One of my favorite gems from this book - Glassner points out the "single mother" scare. The idea was that women were having babies out of wedlock, and raising them on their own. Because these children were "illegitimate," our leaders believed, they would no doubt grow up to be criminals. Now, tell me - how many news stories did you read about single fathers raising monster children? I'll tell you - none. In fact, fathers were held in such high esteem that many people cited the mere presence of a father to be the key factor in raising a good child.
Conclusion: No matter how hard a woman works, or how much she may try, she is incapable of raising a decent child without a man. So the "single mother" scare is simply a cover for our national prudishness, our oily sheen of misogyny which even today, in the twenty-first friggin' century, still believes that a woman at her best is still not equal to a man at his worst. But we can't face that particular flaw in our national character, nor can we bring ourselves to change it. So we demonize these women and imagine we've achieved something. Hoo. Ray.
The baseless fears that we accept and run with dovetail very nicely into the things we really should be afraid of - the growing underclass in the US, the loosening of regulation on business, the difficulty - sometimes impossibility - of finding good medical care, the oversaturation of our nation with handguns, the egregious ways in which corporations influence legislation.... All these are real problems. But we can't fix those. Either we don't know how or we don't care. And so we make up boogiemen. Because if we have to be afraid of something, at least let it be something that doesn't exist.
Hell of a book to start the year....
The Culture of Fear by Barry Glassner
Could your child be a ticking time bomb?
Will you die in a horrible plane crash that could have been prevented?
Will your child be killed in school?
Will you be killed by a disgruntled co-worker?
Answer: No.
At least, it is very, very, very unlikely. But chances are those scenarios make you feel the tiniest bit afraid. Why? Why be afraid of plane crashes when you're far more likely to be injured or killed in your car? Why be terrified of being killed by some random criminal when violent crime rates plummeted until this year? Why worry about diseases that, as far as medical science can tell, don't even exist? Why panic that your child will be molested by some anonymous internet perv when most children already know their abusers?
Because someone's making money off your fear. Either a lobbyist, a lawyer or a publisher, most likely, and they're willing to pump you full of fear if it means you will turn to their product or service to make yourself feel safe. It's what makes this country go.
In this book, Glassner takes a look at some of the biggest scares of the 90's: defective breast implants, teenage moms, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, "Crack Babies," the rising upsurge of heroin use in our teens, and so many others. All of these were big stories in those years, and I'm sure some of them will make a comeback sooner or later. Something they also all have in common: none of them had any basis in reality.
So how did they get to be so big? Well, the biggest culprit is the modern media. They want big, flashy news stories so they can sell ad space and issues. Then the politicians cite them, advocacy groups sprout like mushrooms and try to get into them, and then the lawyers show up.... The news anchors use phrases like, "It happened in this tiny Florida town, and it could be happening in yours." Or, "Chip Winchester brings us this terrifying report." Or, "To the victims, this tragedy will continue for the rest of their lives."
The formula: Take a very unlikely event - death by DPT vaccination for example - and find at least one victim. They don't even have to be a real victim, but it helps if they can be convinced that they are. Bring on someone with no qualifications but a strong interest in the case, and label them as an "expert." Then make sure you get the emotional, heart-wrenching interview with the family. If there's a dead child, all the better. Or a beautiful woman. Or a veteran, preferably a young one with a beautiful wife and young child. Someone in the family then becomes the "Victim-turned-expert" and proceeds to spread the meme that if it could happen to them, it could happen to you. Lather, rinse, repeat. Next thing you know you have politicians making laws based solely on what they watched on the Geraldo Rivera show, and the whole thing goes on and on. They take advantage of the knowledge that their viewers have neither the time nor the resources to verify each and every claim that comes out of the news department. We have to trust them and they use that trust to increase their power, their prestige and their profits.
If the American people had an ounce of common sense, however, these scares would fall flat. People would see someone on TV labeled "Expert" and demand to see this person's qualifications. If he or she had none, or if they couldn't point to independent corroborating research to prove their point, they would turn the channel to a more reputable network. But no, we fall for them every time. Why?
Glassner's main thesis is that these fear epidemics basically serve to either hide or misdirect from the things we should be afraid of. For example: crack babies. During the Crack Baby Scare of the 80s and 90s, everyone from the local news anchor to the President of the United States was convinced that there would be some kind of zombie army of crack-addicted children tearing the nation apart in a few years. They called it a scourge, a danger and a plague, and warned that if we didn't make tougher drug laws, we would probably all be bitches in a crack house come the millennium. They said that crack babies would probably be uneducated, unemployed, and with no moral compass to guide them.
Funny how that didn't happen, isn't it? Even funnier is that the exact same effect of being born of a crack using mother - the lack of education, the lack of employment and suchforth - could probably also be attributed to living in poverty, which is where most crack addicts come from. But it's hard to talk about poverty and make people care. It's uncomfortable to tell Mr. and Mrs. America that they could be one paycheck away from the street, because that is far more likely to be true. And nobody wants to hear that.
One of my favorite gems from this book - Glassner points out the "single mother" scare. The idea was that women were having babies out of wedlock, and raising them on their own. Because these children were "illegitimate," our leaders believed, they would no doubt grow up to be criminals. Now, tell me - how many news stories did you read about single fathers raising monster children? I'll tell you - none. In fact, fathers were held in such high esteem that many people cited the mere presence of a father to be the key factor in raising a good child.
Conclusion: No matter how hard a woman works, or how much she may try, she is incapable of raising a decent child without a man. So the "single mother" scare is simply a cover for our national prudishness, our oily sheen of misogyny which even today, in the twenty-first friggin' century, still believes that a woman at her best is still not equal to a man at his worst. But we can't face that particular flaw in our national character, nor can we bring ourselves to change it. So we demonize these women and imagine we've achieved something. Hoo. Ray.
The baseless fears that we accept and run with dovetail very nicely into the things we really should be afraid of - the growing underclass in the US, the loosening of regulation on business, the difficulty - sometimes impossibility - of finding good medical care, the oversaturation of our nation with handguns, the egregious ways in which corporations influence legislation.... All these are real problems. But we can't fix those. Either we don't know how or we don't care. And so we make up boogiemen. Because if we have to be afraid of something, at least let it be something that doesn't exist.
Hell of a book to start the year....