I opened last week’s New York magazine to an ad for chocolate dipped bacon. That’s when I first started noticing pork.
Next, I kept seeing tweets containing the words “swine flu” on Twitter, then the major news sites, and finally TV. This deadly killer was engulfing Mexico – spreading like wildfire – the mother of all killers – like the great flu pandemic. A London paper lead with a headline that it could kill up to 120m people. The hysteria seemed to grow by the minute.
Just before I got on a plane last Wednesday, I witnessed four young women exiting the previous flight from Washington wearing face masks. We were yet again being yanked by the media.
Hysteria. Panic. Fear.
I understand those topics cause people to tune in, click or chat. But I’m mad. Mad that our mindsets are being so susceptible to this crap. Retailers putting up sanitizing solution at all counters, people hawking surgical masks, entire school districts closing.
Ever since 9/11, the news media has engorged on “what if” and “worse since” descriptions. First it was terrorists, then Wall St, credit markets, home sales, jobs, now public health.
What bothers me so much about this may be personal. I grew up the son of a white civil rights leader; a lone voice for justice. My dad marched with King, organized marches and helped draw up integration laws.
It felt during the 60′s that my white dad cared more for blacks than he did for his own sons. “The cause” was a fourth brother in the room. And the favorite at that.
The future was dark for him but for very real reasons. He had aroused the ire of the John Birch society and others trying to block equality for all.
One day, I picked up the mail to find a postcard written in red ink to “take your nigger-lover family back south or die.”
I’m working on a biography of those days called, “I Have A Scream” sharing my journey to understanding, but the overriding thing I learned from my dad was fear. Someone truly could kill us; it wasn’t a “what if.” We had the threats on the phone, in person, in the mail.
As a result, I grew up fearing the world. I walked with my head down towards the sidewalk. I was quiet. Strangers wanted to harm us. Possibilities and hope were something foreign to me.
And while an event happened in my life where I realized the future was indeed bright, it took many years to try and undo the damage of all that fear. I cover the event in the book but that’s not the point of this post.
Every time I see the “well-meaning” coverage saying, “there’s something even worse, still to come,” it brings me back to my childhood. And I get mad.
How many kids, teenagers and adults are feeding on this news and fearing the future like I did? Not from a real threat or evidence it is personally affecting them, but it is from people hypothesizing death that is making them afraid. Afraid of the future. Afraid of possibilities. Afraid of life.
It doesn’t have to be that way. Sure your grandmother can have alzheimer’s, your sister can be a drug addict, your daughter can be in a messy divorce. But you are counting on you to keep it together. You can’t afford the luxury of staying trapped like some sheep in a pen.
Recently we discovered that swine flu is really just the flu. Oh and Mexico isn’t as bad as they hyped this past week. Read the Saturday NYT article by Liz Robbins entitled, Outbreak in Mexico May Be Smaller Than Feared.
We cannot give power over our future to fear. Otherwise, we end up looking to our feet instead of the stars.
