The Culture of Fear (51 page)

33
“Speaking Out on the Autism ‘Epidemic,’”
Miller-McGlune,
June- July 2008.

34
Donald McNeil, “Book Rallies Resistance to the Antivaccine Crusade,”
New York Times,
13 January 2009; Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey, “My Son’s Recovery From Autism,”
CNN.com
, posted April 4, 2008; Weston Kosova and Pat Wingert, “Crazy Talk,”
Newsweek,
8 June 2009. See also full-page advertisements in national
publications from Carrey and McCarthy’s advocacy group, Generation Rescue (e.g.,
USA Today,
25 February 2009).

35
Sharon Begley, “Anatomy of a Scare,”
Newsweek,
2 March 2009. See also, Matthew Normand and Jesse Dallery, “Mercury Rising,”
Skeptic Magazine
13, no. 3 (2007).

36
See, for example, “Gulf War Syndrome Is Real, Panel Concludes,”
Washington
Post, 18 November 2008; Mary Engel and Thomas Maugh, “Report to Congress: Gulf War Syndrome Is Real,”
Los Angeles Times,
18 November 2008. See also, Harriet Hall, “Gulf War Syndrome or Gulf Lore Mythology,”
Skeptic Magazine
14 (2009): 26-29.

37
Daniel Heimpel, “The Toxic Mold Rush: California Mom Helps Fuel an Obsession,”
LA Weekly,
23 July 2008.

38
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Facts About Stachybotrys Chartarum and Other Molds,”
http://www.cdc.gov/mold/stachy.htm#Ql
. Accessed 18 November 2008.

39
“Damp Indoor Spaces and Health,” National Academies Press, 2004 (quote is from the press release from the Academies.) See also, Linda Thomas-Mobley, “U.S. Evidence Laws and Their Influence on Mold Litigation Outcomes,”
Journal of Professional
Issues in
Engineering Education and
Practice 133 (2007): 352-57; David Edmondson, Mark Nordness et al., “Allergy and ’Toxic Mold Syndrome,‘”
Annals of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology
94 (2005): 234-39; Jay Portnoy, Kristina Kwak et al., “Health Effects of Indoor Fungi,”
Annals ofAllergy,Asthma and Immunology
94 (2005): 313-20; Daniel Fisher, “Dr. Mold,”
Forbes,
11 April 2005; Richard Wilson, “Ensuring Sound Science in the Courts,”
Technology in Society,
26 (2004): 501-22.

40
Danilo Yanich, “Crime Creep: Urban and Suburban Crime on Local TV News,”
Journal
of Urbari
Affairs
26 (2004): 535-63.

41
Sheryl Gay Stolberg, “Science Looks at Littleton, and Shrugs,”
New York Times,
9 May 1999.

42
Sharon Begley, “The Anatomy of Violence,”
Newsweek,
30 April 2007. Pages away, in a separate feature devoted to “Guns: The Global Death Toll,” the magazine reported that in Japan, “handguns are prohibited. Shotguns are very strictly regulated and rifle permits can be obtained only after owning a shotgun for ten years.”

43
Stolberg, “Science Looks at Littleton, and Shrugs.”

44
Philip Cook, Bruce Lawrence et al., “The Medical Costs of Gunshot Injuries in the United States,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
282 (1999): 447—54; Jeffrey Coben and Claudia Steiner, “Hospitalizations for Firearm-Related Injuries in the United States,”
American Journal of Preventive Medicine
24 (2003): 1-8; Naomi Duke, Michael Resnick et al., “Adolescent Firearm Violence,”
Journal of Adolescent Health
37 (2005): 171-74.

45
Gary Fields, “Going After Crimes—and Guns,”
Wall StreetJournal,
5 August 2008. See also, Timothy Egan, “The Guns of Spring,”
New York Times,
8 April 2009.

46
Brent Cunningham, “Re-thinking Objectivity,”
Columbia Journalism Review,
July-August 2003; David Altheide, “Terrorism and the Politics of Fear,”
Cultural Studies-Criminal Methodologies
6 (2006): 431-432.

47
M. Engel, “War On Afghanistan: American Media Cowed By Patriotic Fever, Says Network News Veteran,”
Guardian,
17 May 2002.

48
David L. Altheide, “Consuming Terrorism,”
Symbolic Interaction
27 (2004): 289-308.

49
Nancy Snow, “Media Terrorism and the Politics of Fear,” The World Association for Christian Communication website. Available at:
http://www.waccglobal.org/lang-en/publications/media-development/46-2007-3/465-Media-terrorism-and-the-politics-of
fear.html.

50
John Mueller,
Overblown
(New York: Free Press, 2006), p. 13 (and see numerous other comparisons throughout Mueller’s book).

51
Luke Mitchell et al., “At Issue in the 2004 Election,”
Harper’s Magazine,
1 March 2004.

52
George Bush, White House Press Conference, 14 September 2001; address to Congress, 20 September 2001; “State of the Union Address,” 29 January 2002. See also, Mark S. Hamm, “The USA Patriot Act and the Politics of Fear,” in
Cultural Criminology Unleashed
(Portland, OR: Cavendish Publishing, 2004).

53
Department of Homeland Security, Strategic Plan. Available at:
http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/strategicplan/
; George Bush,
TheDepartment of Homeland Security,
June 2002. Available at:
http://www.dhs.gov./xlibrary/assets/book.pdf
.

54
Phillip Zimbardo, “Phantom Menace: Is Washington Terrorizing Us More Than A1 Qaeda?”
Psychology Today,
May/June 2003; Robb Willer, “The Effects of Government-Issued Terror Warnings on Presidential Approval,”
Current Research in Social Psychology
10 (2004): 1-12; Tom Ridge,
The Test of Our Times
(New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2009).

55
Gregg Easterbrook, “The Smart Way to Be Scared,”
New York Times,
16 February 2003; Matt Palmquist, “Bioterror in Context,”
Miller-McClune,
June-July 2008, pp. 72-76.

56
Palmquist, “Bioterror in Context,” p. 74.

57
Tony Karon, “The Dirty Bomb Scenario,”
Time,
10 June 2002. John Ashcroft, transcript of Moscow announcement on June 8, 2002, available at:
http://archives.cnncom/2002/US/06/10/ashcroft.announcement
; Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, available at:
http://www.nationalacademies.org/ocga/Laws/PL107_188.asp
; Council on Foreign Relations, “Dirty Bombs,” updated 19 October 2006, available at:
http://www.Cfr.org/publications/9548/#5
Mark Hamm, “The USA Patriot Act and the Politics of Fear,” in
Cultural Criminology Unleashed
(Portland, OR: Cavendish Publishing, 2004), p. 2296.

58
“National Planning Scenarios: Executive Summaries,” April 2005, available at:
http://cees.tamiu.edu/covertheborder/TOOLS/NationalPlanningSen.pdf
.

59
Josef Joffe, “Here’s How America Looks to the World,”
Washington Post,
4 May 2008.

60
Hamm, “The USA Patriot Act,” pp. 288, 292.

61
“The Politics of Fear” (editorial),
New York Times,
18 July 2007; Frank Rich, “The Terrorist Barack Hussein Obama,”
New York Times,
12 October 2008.

62
Timothy Noah, “What We Didn’t Overcome” (parts 1 and 2),
Slate,
November 10 and 12,2008.

63
CNN, “Larry King Live,” 21 January 2009; Andrew Penner and Aliya Saperstein, “How Social Status Shapes Race,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
105 (2008): 1962-1963.

64
Lincoln Quillian and Devah Pager, “Estimating Risk: Biased Social Perception and the Likelihood of Criminal Victimization” (unpublished manuscript), Northwestern University, 2009.

65
Regarding racial profiling, see, e.g., Ian Ayers, “The LAPD and Racial Profiling,”
Los Angeles Times,
23 October 2008; prison statistics published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, available at
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.html
; poverty data are from the Census Bureau, Current Population Reports.

66
Bruce Link, “Epidemiological Sociology and the Social Shaping of Population Health,”
Journal of Health and Social Behavior
49 (2008): 367-84; Centers for Disease Control, “Health, United States, 2004,” table 30, posted at
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus04trend.pdf#03
. See also, Kai Wright, “America’s AIDS Apartheid,”
American Prospect,
July 2008.

67
Adam Serwer, “Justice Polluted,”
American Prospect,
March 2009; Kai Wright, “The Subprime Swindle,”
TheNation,
26 June 2008; Amelia Tyagi, “Amid Hope, Black Homeowners Struggle,”
Marketplace,
Minnesota Public Radio, 20 January 2009; E. Scott Reckard, “NAACP Suits Claim Mortgage Bias,”
Los Angeles Times,
14 March 2009.

Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, Barry Glassner is the author of seven books on contemporary social issues, including
The Gospel of Food
and
Bodies.
He was previously chairman of the sociological departments at Syracuse University and the University of Connecticut. His articles and reviews have appeared in newspapers and journals throughout the United States and abroad, including the
New York Times,
the
Los Angeles Times,
the
Wall StreetJournal,
the
Chicago Tribune,
and the
London Review of Books.
He has also published research studies in the
American Sociological Review, American Journal of Psychiatry,
and other leading social-science journals. In addition to being extensively quoted and profiled in dozens of newspapers and magazines, he has appeared on
The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Nightline,
and other television programs, as well as programs on CNN, CNBC, and MSNBC, and National Public Radio.

Professor Glassner’s honors include an Outstanding Book of the Year award from Choice magazine and a visiting fellowship at Oxford University.
The Culture of Fear
was named a Best Book of the Year by the
Los Angeles Times Book Review
and Knight—Ridder newspapers and has been hailed by reviewers everywhere. The book and Glassner himself are featured in Michael Moore’s film,
Bowling for Columbine.

When first published in 1999,
The Culture of Fear
was greeted with admiration and outspoken appreciation—admiration for Professor Glassner’s extensive and deep research and appreciation for his calling attention to the false fears that sap the time, energy, and money of all Americans and to the
real
problems and
dangers that face us all. Numerous awards, author appearances, quotations, and references later, the book has taken on renewed significance with its being featured, along with its author, in Michael Moore’s prize-winning film,
Bowlingfor
Columbine. With each passing year since its publication, the book’s central theme has become more salient and more relevant to our lives.

Glassner’s eye-opening examination of the pathology of fear that affects all segments of our society reveals why Americans are overburdened with overblown fears and why those fears continue to be publicized by special-interest individuals and groups. He exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our anxieties and our views of and responses to life as it really isn’t, and who benefit from that manipulation. Politicians win elections by exaggerating concerns about crime and drug use when, in fact, both are in decline. Advocacy groups raise money by inflating the prevalence of specific—and phantom—diseases. Newspapers and television news programs monger new scares on a regular basis in order to gain ratings or increase sales.

“Why,” Glassner inquires, “are so many fears in the air, and so many of them unfounded?” The simple answer is the immense power and money that “await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes.” By identifying the actual fear mongers among us, their methods, and their motivations, Glassner aims to shift our attention to the realities that do endanger us, individually and communally, and to ways of dealing with those realities. “We waste tens of billions of dollars and person-hours every year on largely mythical hazards,” Glassner asserts; and those dollars and hours could be easily redirected to effective programs rather than enervating scares.

There has never been a time in modern American history when so many people have feared so much. Glassner demonstrates, chapter after chapter, that it is our manipulated
perception
of danger that has increased, not actual dangers themselves. This vast market in trepidation can and should be replaced by programs and measures focused on correcting the true, if unpopular and unpleasant, causes of our problems. “We need to learn how to identify exaggerated or false fears from legitimate ones,” Glassner has insisted. “We need to be able to distinguish between isolated events and rumors, on the one hand, and real problems and dangers on the other hand.”
The Culture of Fear
goes a long way in helping us to make the correct distinctions and to identify the true dangers.

1. Glassner begins his book with the double question, “Why are so many fears in the air, and so many of them unfounded?” (xix) How does he answer those questions? What specific fears does he cite as unfounded or exaggerated,
and what explanations does he put forward? What fears strike you as particularly pervasive and without factual basis? How would you explain them?

2. Why do specific fears, and fear in general, seem to play such a critical role in contemporary life? What purposes—social, political, psychological, and other—might be served by the promulgation of and belief in specific fears and threats, however unfounded, misreported, or overstated they may be?

3. What potential dangers, hardships, and costs does Glassner associate with the inflated, exaggerated, unfounded, false, and overdrawn fears that he identifies? What can be done to allay or prevent those dangers, hardships, and costs? Which of Glassner’s pseudodangers and scare campaigns do you consider the most important or the most threatening to the well-being, stability, and improvement of individuals, communities, and American society overall, including your own well-being? Why?