Some say Ebola is the Milosevic of West Nile virus.
October 8, 2014 12:28 PM   Subscribe

 
"It's the Putin of Stalin"

tee hee
posted by The Whelk at 12:30 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


I agree that the original statement deserves being made fun of, but that piece seemed a lot longer than it needed to be and could have stood a lot more subtlety, I think. I actually found it kind of hard to read.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:32 PM on October 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


This article is truly the Teju Cole on Twitter of the Teju Cole in the New Yorker.
posted by RogerB at 12:33 PM on October 8, 2014 [6 favorites]


To me the repetition was a plus; it raised the absurdity into the realm of jazz improv or Philip Glass.
posted by matildaben at 12:34 PM on October 8, 2014 [6 favorites]


"...literally the “Some of my best friends are black” of #NotAllMen."

This is full of win.
posted by daq at 12:39 PM on October 8, 2014 [6 favorites]


To me the repetition was a plus; it raised the absurdity into the realm of jazz improv or Philip Glass.

Fair, I get that, and I apologize if I seemed snarky, it just didn't really work for me. I hope my comment was more "thoughtful critique" than "this sucks" (which it didn't, I just happen not to have been a huge fan), and I might well have missed that mark.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:41 PM on October 8, 2014


Yeah, a lot of the lines don't work but if you throw enough stuff some of it's going to hit the target. I didn't chuckle until I got to
Throughout the country of Africa, Ebola is the Abu Ghraib of think pieces.
but I'm pretty sure that line is not inherently funny in any way -- the only way any of it works is as a huge steaming pile of inanity.
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:41 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]




This is funny as hell but I'm not really connecting the dots. It looks like a GRE question where we are supposed to pick out the one that doesn't fit in.
posted by waving at 12:49 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ebola is the Masque of the Red Death
am I doing this right?
posted by echo target at 12:53 PM on October 8, 2014


It's an infectious disease that white people could reliably die from so it's scary as hell to the media.
posted by Talez at 12:58 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I fly a lot for my job, and of all the many indignities of air travel the single worst is probably the fact that just about every air terminal plays CNN on loop.
posted by Itaxpica at 1:00 PM on October 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


This is funny as hell but I'm not really connecting the dots. It looks like a GRE question where we are supposed to pick out the one that doesn't fit in.

Not to be the too-soon Halloween costume of joke explanations, but the point is that none of them fit because "ebola as the ISIS of biological agents" is a metaphor devoid of meaning, solely focused on using as many 24-hour-news-cycle buzzwords as possible.

This is network news as random text generator.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 1:01 PM on October 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


This was funny. But Teju Cole is the slamdance of psychological novels.
I don't know what that means.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:17 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I guess this piece is mildly funny, but I do not understand this continuing argument that I'm not supposed to be worried about ebola. I'm not personally worried about it, but I'm worried about everybody in West Africa that's already sick or at risk, I'm worried about the nurses in Spain, I'm worried about Ashoka Mukpo, I'm worried about Thomas Eric Duncan's family. There's a dismissive tone to some of this fear-shaming that really bothers me, like I should only care about this if there is a risk of my personally contracting the disease. I am fully capable of being worried about the intense suffering that is already happening because of ebola without having to be personally threatened by it.

I get that this is aimed at the media, but especially given how poorly the Dallas incident was handled by the US (check the tail end of the last ebola thread if you want details - it was really pretty awful, especially the terrible way Duncan's family was treated) this comes off as overly dismissive and very poorly timed.
posted by dialetheia at 1:22 PM on October 8, 2014 [16 favorites]


It's an infectious disease that white people could reliably die from so it's scary as hell to the media.
From what I can see from the news if you're white it's totally curable.
posted by fullerine at 1:49 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


It's an infectious disease that white people could reliably die from so it's scary as hell to the media.

And thus this illustration by André Carrilho.
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:53 PM on October 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


I guess this piece is mildly funny, but I do not understand this continuing argument that I'm not supposed to be worried about ebola.

It's not about that; it's entirely a jab at Fox News's inane ISIS comment. This post's title ("... on Ebola media hysteria") misses the mark.
posted by yath at 1:57 PM on October 8, 2014


It's an infectious disease that white people could reliably die from so it's scary as hell to the media.

I get where you're coming from, but it really is a terrifying virus no matter who you are. The fear of contracting it in the US is wildly overblown, absolutely, but it's a reasonable thing to be afraid about in the abstract sense - it's a horrible, horrible disease, marked by extraordinarily intense suffering before death and a very slim chance of survival, with ~70-90% mortality rates in previous outbreaks.

It's not about that; it's entirely a jab at Fox News's inane ISIS comment. This post's title ("... on Ebola media hysteria") misses the mark.

That makes sense, thanks. I still think the "let's make jokes about ebola" thing is in fairly poor taste, but it's less bad if this is explicitly aimed at Fox.
posted by dialetheia at 2:01 PM on October 8, 2014


It wasn't FOX's inane ISIS comment. It was CNN's.
posted by merelyglib at 2:19 PM on October 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Solon and Thanks: "This is network news as random text generator."

"We go now to our correspondent, Markov Chaney, reporting live from the coffee urns at the World Health Organization."
posted by boo_radley at 2:21 PM on October 8, 2014 [7 favorites]


The Robert Anton Wikson joke, boo_radley? Deep cut, indeed.
posted by Itaxpica at 3:42 PM on October 8, 2014


I agree that ebola is worrying in the sense that people are dying from it and that deserves respect and concern, but I also am a teaching assistant for an introduction to global health class and I swear to you this is indistinguishable from some of the assignments that get handed in.
posted by WidgetAlley at 4:04 PM on October 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Is this the Ebola humor thread? Good.

My sister sent me the following, which she received from a distinguished infectious disease specialist:
Subject: How to avoid Ebola...
  • Boil all bodily fluids before consumption.
  • Regularly examine your DNA under an electron microscope for any indication that Ebola has attached itself to your cell membranes.
  • Recognize the symptoms of Ebola, which include fever, chills, and developing symptoms too late to do anything about them.
  • Cover the nose and mouth of Ebola patients when they sneeze to avoid spreading germs.
  • Avoid eating bat soup, which is actually pretty sound advice whether there's an ongoing Ebola outbreak or not.
  • Ebola can only be spread once patients are symptomatic, so if you believe you've been exposed, get all your errands and public trips out of the way before your symptoms start showing.
  • Be sure to stay up to date on developments by signing up for the official CDC phone tree.
  • Try being born one of the 15 percent of rural Gabonese citizens with natural immunity to the virus.
  • Give billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies.
  • If you see a suspicious-looking filamentous virus particle roughly one micron in length, stay away.
  • Continue following lifelong plan of avoiding Dallas, TX at all costs.
  • posted by alms at 5:34 PM on October 8, 2014 [12 favorites]


    "...Ebola is actually the George W. Bush of being forced to listen to someone’s podcast."

    LOL
    posted by brundlefly at 5:47 PM on October 8, 2014 [5 favorites]


    My sister sent me the following, which she received from a distinguished infectious disease specialist:

    ...who reads the Onion. I am pretty sure that expertise came in handy when determining whether to forward the advice!
    posted by dhartung at 12:16 AM on October 9, 2014 [4 favorites]


    but the point is that none of them fit because "ebola as the ISIS of biological agents" is a metaphor devoid of meaning, solely focused on using as many 24-hour-news-cycle buzzwords as possible.

    I understood it and made a joke, sorry you don't have a sense of sarcasm.
    posted by waving at 6:06 AM on October 9, 2014




    Not sure how that article is related to Fox. The LaGuardia workers are striking because they are expected to deal with cleanup of bodily fluids with no training nor protection. Also, Ebola is definitely something to worry about since the current epidemic in West Africa is still not under control (and may not be for the foreseeable future) and if, god forbit, it spreads to India we'll all be in trouble.
    posted by enamon at 11:17 AM on October 9, 2014 [2 favorites]




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