The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things (Paperback)

Barry Glassner does an excellent job of taking false statistics and exaggerated television reports and exposing them for what they really are: fraudulent mediums to increase profits and to increase control over American mindsets.

One thing that Michael Moore and Barry Glassner do not have in common is this: Barry Glassner doesn't seem to be making an attempt to blatantly manipulate his audience. Glassner did a thorough investigation and covered all areas of his subject, finding a plethora of information to support his thesis rather than a few mere tidbits. His research was well-founded and his argument is both convincing and trustworthy. I can't say the same for all of Michael Moore's work.

A must-read.

(Just a side note: For as much as I hate the media, I find it interesting that the only way I became aware of this book was actually through the media - i.e. Michael Moore's movie "Bowling for Columbine." Moore used the media in order to tell his audience that the media is the reason that they're so afraid of everything. Don't you just love irony?)

To wit: in an anecdote about anti-abortionists, Glassner relates the story of certain of the lunatic fringe of anti-abortionists claiming that a woman who has an abortion has a greater chance of developing breast cancer. Media reports and politicians' please followed. The underlying problem with these claims was that they were reductive: the reduced a complex problem about epidemiology, probability, and statistical analysis to 'abortion = high chance of breast cancer'. That such an equation is emotive and not conducive to intelligent discussion of how cancers develop is not lost on Glassner but is lost on the American publics thirst for easy answers.

What Glassner alludes to, but never squarely comes to terms with, is that Americans by and large are ill-educated, ignorant, deficient in comprehension of mathematics, and utterly devoid of any understanding of scientific inquiry and the scientific method. Instead, far too many Americans are seduced by the canivalesque emotion of the evening news; Dan Rather's stentorian authoriatarianism being sufficient proof that the end of the world is nigh.

On these points, Glassner excels: Americans are deluged with emotionalism and sensationalism, all to the detriment of intelligent discourse on the issue at hand. But he does not finish this argument; namely, that America has inculcated in itself a culture in which such ignorance and naivete can flourish, and even be tolerated and expected. That is an interesting discussion Glassner does not touch.

Despite these good qualities, there are times when Glassner becomes didactic in tone, especially when discussing the Catholic Church and the issue of gun control. On the one hand he claims the demonization of the Catholic Church is misplaced (he claims sexual predators among the clergy is not as widespread as it appears to be) and on the other, he hews to the simplistic argument about guns that the mere existence of guns promulgates murders with guns.

Neither of these positions really holds up to scrutiny. While Glassner makes the interesting point that the Church ought to be criticized on the basis of its affiliations with certain political parties in Europe, that is really irrelevant to the discssion of the Church here in the United States, what with its rampant denials of widespread abuse by priests. He in effect is saying, the Church ought to be criticized, but not because of sexual abuse by priests. He fails to explain why the Church's affiliation with certain political parties in Europe (which he fails to mention by name) is a more worthy basis of criticism than is the wanton abuse of children by priests.

On the issue of guns, Glassner asserts that, if there were fewer guns (i.e., more gun control) there would be fewer murders. No doubt this is true, however, he comes to this conclusion by effectively saying that the mere presence of guns contributes to mass slaughter. This is like saying the mere presence of alcohol in a bar makes you drunk. In both cases, of course, it takes the conscious action of a person for an undesired effect to occur.