Let she who is without geography sin cast the first globe! On her MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow mercilessly mocked Darrell Issa for confusing Guinea with Guyana. The Republican congressman made his mistake during a discussion of the country in which the latest Ebola outbreak began. Issa said it was "Guyana," a South American country, whereas in fact it was Guinea, a West African one.
Fair enough. Issa should have gotten his countries straight. But of all the hosts in the MSNBC lineup, Rachel Maddow should have been the last to have the chutzpah to highlight Issa's blooper. For you see, just last month, Maddow made a big geography blooper of her own. During a discussion of President Obama's then-impending trip to Estonia--a Baltic country--Maddow went on—repeatedly and at length—about the last time a president had visited . . . the Balkans. H/t NB reader John C.
After we reported Maddow's mistake, instead of owning up she tried to cover her error, tweeting out that "she didn't mean to imply" that Estonia is in the Balkans. Right.
Having now blogged twice in two months about others' geography mistakes, I better be sure not to make any of my own. Think I'll start boning up on American geography . . . by visiting all 57 states.
Note: Maddow also mocked Issa's mispronounciation of the disease as "Ebol-i." Did she not know that President Obama had made the same mistake, or was Maddow just hoping that no one would call her on it? H/t Mother124 via WeaselZippers. To deal with the epidemic, President Obama better send more corpse-men over there!
RACHEL MADDOW: We begin tonight in South America. Can we put up a map of South America? On the continent of South America, there is a country called Guyana. It can be a little confusing because Guyana is near another country in South America that has a similar name: French Guyana is just two borders over. But both of those countries are roughly on the same part of the eastern coast of South America. What neither of those countries has anything to do with, is Africa. Africa. Whole different continent. Africa, western Africa, is where the nation of Guinea is. Guinea is one of the countries where Ebola is now an epidemic. So to be clear, Guinea is in Africa. Guyana is in South America. Armed with that knowledge, go, congress, go.
DARRELL ISSA: Beginning in March, 2014, in the West African nation of Guyana, the world first learned about, yet another new outbreak of the Ebola virus.
MADDOW: Republican congressman Darrell Issa today, telling the world today that Ebola started in a nation called Guyana, which is a nation in South America which has nothing to do with it.
