The Jewish Observer

We have lost our sense of proportion over what causes hysteria. Please, after reading the following do not think that I am trivializing school shootings or any other tragedies that have occurred over the past decade or so. I am just trying to put some things into perspective. The consequences of the tragic events that have afflicted our country are not only the deaths and injury to a variety of innocents, but what seems to be the death of common sense as well.

I am sure you have read numerous reports of the insane applications of zero tolerance policies in schools. Just in the past few months a 6 year old girl was suspended from school for talking about shooting a friend with a “Hello Kitty” bubble blowing gun. A 7 year old boy nibbled a pop tart into the rough shape of a gun and waved it around was also suspended; as well as two 7 year old boys who pointed pencils at each other and make shooting noises. While purists can find justification for the strict application of zero tolerance rules for all of these situations, really isn’t the suspension of these young children just getting hysterical for minor incidents? As Kathleen Parker pointed out in a recent column, could the teacher not just say, “cut it out,” and perhaps use the incident as a teachable moment about appropriate behavior?

Our propensity for hysteria is also evident in politics. To listen to the reports on Fox News, the Obama administration is riddled with scandals. Three are getting gleeful play on right wing news outlets: the IRS requiring a longer questionnaire from Tea Party groups to acquire non-profit status; the secret subpoenas the Justice Department issued for private phone records of Associated Press reporters; and the ongoing investigation into killing of the American ambassador to Libya in Benghazi.

Let’s look at each of these for just a moment. Certainly it is wrong for the IRS to single out one group over another. The fact that the groups the IRS required to submit longer applications for non-profit status are ideologically opposed to the existence of the IRS, is no excuse for treating them any different than other groups. Lost in the hysteria, however, is a simple question: why do any political groups deserve non-profit status? The intelligent conversation that should emerge from this situation is a review of who gets non-profit status. Instead, we will get a drum beat of how the administration is targeting those with whom it does not agree. Instead of realizing that the IRS sometimes overreaches, and the administration is not plotting the overreach, we will get hysteria from right and left wing media (condemning or defending Obama, depending on their perspective).

The subpoenas by the Justice Department are disturbing. They raise questions about the relationship between government agencies (CIA, military) and the press. They raise questions about the boundaries between the need to protect American citizens and our protection of society’s liberties such as the existence of a free press. But I must ask; where was the hysteria over the loss of so many personal freedoms with the passage of the Patriot Act? Why is this the incident that pushes the media into a frenzy?
The Benghazi questions are being spun by some into a scandal worse than Watergate. To my mind, the administration’s handling of Benghazi, not only the preparations that led to a lack of security at the consulate but also the handling of the aftermath is more Keystone Cops than Nixonian. This is bad and embarrassing, but not sufficient cause for hysteria. Like the previous examples, it seems to be media exposure that lends fuel to the hysteria surrounding the incident. I am not saying that any of these examples of government mess ups are justifiable or in any way correct. They are just not worth the hysteria the media stokes over them.

So I have a theory. As information becomes more and more available; that is, as the media becomes more and more ubiquitous, the size of the crisis (or perceived crisis) that causes hysteria becomes smaller. In other words, the bigger the mouthpieces, the smaller the issue needs to be to cause people to go into panic mode. Allow me to give an example.

On October 30, 1938, significant stretches of the US and Canada went into panic mode over a supposed invasion of the United States by Martians. Orson Welles, did a special presentation of his radio show, Mercury Theater, for Halloween by presenting an updated version of H. G. Wells novel “The War of the Worlds.” Presented on CBS radio as a series of “newscasts,” the broadcast began as a presentation of music by “Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra.” The program was “interrupted” by reports from the supposed landing site in Grover’s Mills, NJ. Welles timed the first “news report” to coincide with the time a large part of the audience tuned in after a break in a popular program on NBC radio, so many listeners did not catch the disclaimer that this was a dramatic presentation. The result was that panic ensued. Jack Paar, later the host of television’s “The Tonight Show,” was hosting CBS radio in Cleveland and fielded panicked calls from listeners. When he assured them it was just a dramatic presentation, many accused him of concealing the facts. Throughout the northeast and eastern Canada, folks began to leave their homes thinking the Martians had landed. If you wish to listen to the original broadcast in its entirety, just go on YouTube and type in “Orson Welles War of the Worlds.”

We can laugh about this now, but understand in pre-World War II America, during the Depression, with few electronic media outlets (only radio, no TV and certainly no internet), the supposed landing of aliens from space was not only a very big deal – but at least for a few moments – believable. An investigation into the IRS in 1938 would not have created this kind of hysteria. Neither would the bringing of a bubble gun to school or boys pretending to “shoot” each other with pencils. During a time with limited media outlets (radio, newspapers, telegraph) the cause of hysteria would have to be something amazing. For another example please see the Halley’s Comet panic of 1910. However, during a time in which everyone is able to receive and broadcast information at a whim, the really big things are fast easily debunked (it would not take long to learn a Martian invasion was a hoax). So the everyday occurrence, the things that should not cause a problem, are taken and escalated into crises. Every small thing becomes a reason to panic. It is how we are continually entertained by the news. The small becomes big.

There is a common denominator between the great panics of the past (Martians, comets about to collide with the Earth) and the small ones of today (children pretending to shoot guns in schools, the usual screw-ups of the government and its many agencies). Whether big or small hysteria causes us to abandon common sense and lose our focus on the things that will really make a difference.