It’s very old hat at this point to critique television news for its incessant fear mongering and shallow drama. Whether it’s the local news ignoring local politics to report on crime, fires, and car crashes, or the national news serving up a steady diet of sex scandals and scary stories, the emphasis is always on the latest catastrophe or the most recent diversion.
I don’t want to overstate the influence of the media, which is only one ingredient in America’s complex cultural stew. However, it certainly does play a role, and so we can legitimately critique it for contributing to the anger and fear that increasingly pervade our culture, both of which were on display this week.
It began with reports that California’s Poison Control had to issue a warning against people taking potassium iodide for no good reason. Why the sudden increase in vomiting and vertigo from PI poisoning? Because news programs scared people with threats of Japanese nuclear radiation drifting across the Pacific, and noted that potassium chloride was supposedly the cure. The 
problem, of course, is that PI is not a vitamin or an inoculation, but is rather a potent chemical compound that if taken without reason can create health problems.
Of course once the meme got going, there were opportunistic charlatans like nukepills.com looking to exploit the situation by hawking potassium iodide, which is actually an over the counter product. This was yet another scurrilous leaf on the rapacious weed of medical self-diagnosis, which is fed by websites like WebMD, and FCC deregulation that allows pharmaceutical companies to runs ads beseeching people to pester their doctors for various medications.
The main result of this panic, aside from all the dizziness and barfing, was that PI manufacturers have exhausted their stock and won’t have more back on the market until mid-April. Which should be right about when that huge, billowing cloud of Japanese radiation washes over the West Coast. The fear of this phantom radiation catastrophe was complemented by the diversion of Saturday Night Live alum Victoria Jackson’s angry homophobic rants.
Prior to SNL, Jackson had achieved minor prominence during the early 1980s as a stand up comedian by playing everyone’s favorite trope, the dumb blonde. For those of you under the age of 30, it really is frightful to remember how established that stock character was in American 
entertainment, with countless devotees from Charo to Suzanne Sommers. It was so prevalent that Loni Anderson was able to make a whole career out of defying the stereotype, bleaching her hair and playing the intelligent bombshell; the smart blonde was still considered novel.
My personal recollection of Jackson on SNL is that she was very limited, hemming herself in with shtick like playing up her high-pitched voice to recite poems or sing songs while she tap danced. She seemed nice enough, but never actually made me laugh. I’ll now have to dispense with the “nice enough.”
While her television career died many years ago, she’s recently been reborn as a religious-right activist. In that capacity, she wrote an angry screed railing against two male characters kissing on a recent episode of Glee. But don’t let that color your perception of her. You see, Jackson’s prejudice is not limited to homophobia. For example, she also hates Muslims, and opened her most recent article this zinger:
Frankly, I’m afraid to say anything about Muslims. Why? Because they kill people.
Ha Ha. Is that the response she’s looking for? Or am I supposed to grab a pitchfork and a torch and go kill some Muslims? I’m a little confused.
But perhaps my confusion is understandable since Jackson is actually framing her bigotry in the context of her tired old comedy act. Seriously, I’m not clever enough to make up something like that. You don’t believe me? Look at this footage of her singing a “funny” song about how Muslims are evil and, wouldn’t you know it, also in league with Liberals.
She even tried to open with “funny” when she went on Showbiz Tonight of all places to defend her anti-gay claptrap: she was wearing one of her tell-tale hair scrunchies (scrunchies are to Jackson what suspenders are to Gallagher) and attempting to employ what people in the trade refer to as “comic timing.” Though she quickly dialed it down when the host held her feet to the fire about being a bigot. But Jackson was ready. She countered by literally waving the bible, dismissing the entire phenomenon of homophobia as nothing more than “a cute little buzz word of the liberal agenda,” and by claiming that Muslims hate god, and that half of all teenagers have contracted a venereal disease from oral sex.
Not to worry though. I have it on good authority that they can cure it with a little potassium iodide.