Greg Gutfeld admonished the media for fear mongering about the Ebola virus last night. But the only example he cited was liberal Joan Walsh - who wasn’t warning about the virus so much as our public health infrastructure’s ability to fight it. Meanwhile, Gutfeld gave Fox News a huge pass on its far more inflammatory fear mongering.
Substituting for Bill O’Reilly last night, Gutfeld addressed Ebola in the Talking Points commentary. He began by recounting an incident in which an American passenger grounded a plane by falsely claiming to have Ebola. Gutfeld likened that to the media:
What a metaphor for the media! A sweaty entity that knows fear gets eyeballs. After all, Ebola is way more interesting than the rotavirus which kills thousands of children daily. Now that goofball on the plane got hauled away. But the hysterics in the media get to stay.
Great! I first thought as I heard Gutfeld say this. What a nice change of pace from the “We’re all gonna die!” talk that seems to have become the norm for Ebola discussions on Fox.
But no. This was little more than yet another excuse to bash liberals. Gutfeld continued:
Take Joan Walsh, who blamed Thomas Duncan’s death on “Rick Perry’s Texas.” I blame that idiocy on Joan Walsh’s brain.
Actually, Walsh did not “blame” Duncan’s death on “Rick Perry’s Texas” so much as she blamed a health care system that gives short shrift to the uninsured and she blamed Republicans for doing their utmost to undermine public health systems and then complaining they don’t work well enough.
But even if you think Walsh was irresponsibly inciting panic, she was was a lot more measured and rational than the over-heated rhetoric to be heard on Fox:
- Host Andrea Tantaros argued that we can’t trust the government because African Ebola patients could go to witch doctors instead of medical doctors. That view was seconded (and thirded) by Bill O’Reilly and Bernie Goldberg.
- Host Neil Cavuto announced, “The (government) assurances that the world won’t end or at least humanity won’t end. I’m telling you, be afraid because none of this ends nicely. Which means the world really will end.”
- A medical doctor, who repeatedly appeared on Fox, declared it “inevitable” that Ebola will “consume every third world country on the planet” and, as a result, “We’ll be importing Ebola on an hourly basis.”
Yet Gutfeld gave everyone on Fox a pass, thus suggesting that it’s only liberals inducing Ebola panic.
It’s too bad, because otherwise, he made some good points.
Watch it below.