Repeated viewings of "The Rachel Maddow Show" provide little in the way of satisfaction for the sane among us, except when she is at her most righteously indignant at the stupidity of lesser mortals, which is to say, nearly all of humanity.
On her MSNBC show Friday, Maddow could barely contain her unbridled contempt for GOP congressman Darrell Issa over his remarks about Ebola.
Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, convened a hearing that day to hear from experts about the outbreak. During the hearing, Issa referred to Ebola as "Eboli" and confused the African nation of Guinea with Guyana, a country in South America. Here's Maddow's sanctimonious response --
MADDOW: On the one hand, who cares that a member of Congress thinks that E. coli and Ebola might be maybe the same thing ....
Who cares, for that matter, when Dear Leader makes the same mistake. Maddow's indifference at that point becomes impossibly small to measure.
MADDOW: ... and that Ghana, Guyana, Guinea, whatever! They're all G to me!
And the Balkans, the Baltics, Balzac, whatever ...
MADDOW: .... I mean, on the one hand, who cares if some guy who runs a car alarm company ...
A capitalist! Seize him!
MADDOW: ... has abso-freaking-lutely no idea what he is talking about when it comes to a deadly disease that has now been diagnosed in two US cities.
MSNBC assured us back in July, not incidentally, that Ebola was found "only" in Africa.
MADDOW: Who cares, right? Except beyond just his car alarm empire, that same person also runs the committee in Congress that has now decided that it ought to be doing oversight hearings on Eboli, e-cola, coca-coli, shinola, whatever. And he has convened those hearings in part so he, personally, genius, can get on television adding important information like this to our nation's understanding of the recola, the cannoli, the email, whatever you call it.
Maddow then showed a clip from the House Oversight Committee hearing on Ebola, with a panel of doctors and government bureaucrats being questioned by committee members. Oddly enough, it was a very short clip, with only Issa being heard --
ISSA: OK, so when the head of the CDC you can't get it with somebody on the bus next to you, that's just not true.
Instead of letting her viewers see any more of the hearing, Maddow responds to Issa --
MADDOW: No, actually, you can't get Ebola on the bus, Darrell Issa. Or on the subway. There's New York City mayor Bill de Blasio, tall guy there, riding the subway today in New York City to show everybody that it is safe to ride the subway. There's New York governor Andrew Cuomo doing the same thing. These are not guys you usually see on the subway. But they're doing these subway rides today to show that it's safe. They're doing this today to counter any worry that might have been stirred up by news that the doctor who spent the last few days in New York City after returning from Guinea spiked a fever yesterday morning and was diagnosed with Ebola last night. The message is that, yes, New York City has its first patient but it's OK, eight million residents of new York City, it's OK. It's OK to take the subway. It is OK to take the bus.
Imagine how perplexed Maddow's dozens of viewers must have felt after reading the following in Sunday's New York Times --
On Oct. 16, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that eight hospitals statewide, including Bellevue, had volunteered to be Ebola treatment centers. Ebola drills would also be conducted in subways and other mass transit.
Hold on a sec .... didn't the resident brainiac at MSNBC, the network that proudly brands itself as a nerd magnet, insist that you can't catch Ebola on the bus? (Or the subway, darn it!). Then why would it be necessary to hold "Ebola drills" on "mass transit"? For example, aren't fire drills held to prepare for the possibility of ... fire? If so, doesn't logic dictate that "Ebola drills" ... on mass transit ... would be held to prepare for Ebola possibly appearing ... on buses and trains? This is all so confusing.
By the way, that House Oversight hearing that Maddow cited? Here's what was said just before her brief clip of Issa's remarks (starting at 1:07:10 in this C-SPAN clip) --
ISSA: We have the head of the CDC, supposed to be the expert, and he's made statements that simply aren't true. Doctor, you can get Ebola sitting next to someone on a bus if they in fact throw up on you, can't you? That's reasonable.
DR. NICOLE LURIE, HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR PREPAREDNESS AND RESPONSE: The way you get Ebola is by exposure to body fluids, yes.
ISSA: OK, when the head of the CDC says you can't get it with somebody on the bus next to you, that's just not true. (Obama made the same claim in his message to West African nations in early September).
See what Maddow did? Even though the dutiful government doctor did her best to avoid answering the question, there was a "yes" tucked in there nonetheless. Maddow was clearly worried that exposing any more of this than necessary was too great a risk for the mental health of her audience.
Since Maddow is purportedly so interested in being factual and accurate, I suggest she read an article in this week's New Yorker magazine by Richard Preston, author of "The Hot Zone," the mid-'90s non-fiction page turner about Ebola.
In an article titled "The Ebola Wars," Preston writes --
A rule of thumb among Ebola experts is that, if you are not wearing bio-hazard gear, you should stand at least six feet away from an Ebola patient, as a precaution against flying droplets.
Perhaps this is something New Yorkers will be hearing more about during those "Ebola drills" on buses and trains, despite Maddow's confident assurance that Ebola cannot possibly appear in these places.
