Another day, another pop-journalism story about the supposed menace posed by the peaceful Zombie Community:

Look at you, all plump and fleshy, with a quickening pulse and body jam-packed with sweet meats. That brain of yours, with the scrumptious gray matter and thinking cap makes certain re-animated corpses crave a dining bib.

So what are you to do when the formerly living awaken with a hunger for a little human takeout? Are you ready for the zombie apocalypse?

Probably not. If you have to ask yourself that question, or took a moment before answering, then definitely not. In the time it took you to hesitate, even the slowest zombie could pull a dine and dash – or shamble – on you.

Oooh, scary. And a slow living person could hit you in the face with a pool noodle; should we be fearing the NERFpocalypse next?

Counterfactuals and hypotheticals aside, the obvious truth is that the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ ranks below even flying cars in the annals of futurist predictions: it never, ever happens, for fairly obvious reasons, and yet you never have to go very far to find some wide-eyed, over-credulous pundit mouthing off about the possibility that ANY TIME NOW the Undead Community will eat your face, just as any day now you’ll be able to take your flying car to the (presumably also flying) Taco Bell drive-thru.

Because pattern recognition is not a big thing with these people.

Our learning-curve-that-is-more-or-less-flat subject of the day is one Aaron Sagers, and he has lots to say about how the CDC in particular is debasing itself by allying with The Walking Dead for more of its ‘safety’ campaigns that just happen to demagogue the American Zombie Community.

He doesn’t mention that just this month the CDC, through its spokesman, stated that it was never ok to kill Zombies. I’m not claiming that Sagers is wrong about the CDC’s current actions, but noting their hypocrisy on this issue would provide valuable context to his readers.

Oops. Another oversight.

Still, it was disturbing to hear that the CDC is renewing its on-again, off-again relationship with cheap Anti-Zombie rhetoric:

The CDC has also recently partnered with AMC’s zombie drama “The Walking Dead” – based on Robert Kirkman’s comic book series – to utilize clips from the TV show and add helpful tips such as, “Clean water is zombie-free water.”

Right. Is it also Irish and Italian free water? Bigots.

Sagers does provide something of a useful service by listing several real-life Anti-Zombie events, including some we had already heard of and planned to investigate further. I suppose we should thank him for that; sometimes, in the midst of working day after day to advance the rights of this critically misunderstood and underserved community, we forget to poke our heads up and see what the real loonies out there are doing with their time.

So thank you for that, Mr. Sagers.

Sigh. Guess we have even more work to do than I thought.

Madison, Wisconsin Zombies peacefully discuss issues of the day with then-Mayoral candidate, now-Madison Mayor Paul Soglin. Not the sort of picture you’re ever going to see on CNN, sadly, because it just doesn’t fit the fearful narrative very well.

Feel free to discuss this issue in detail with Mr. Sagers (@aaronsagers) on Twitter; we plan to.

Tags: Journamalism, Mainstream Media

This entry was posted by John Sears on Saturday, February 25th, 2012 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.