Gibson on "TB Man story": Usually it's someone "from the third world" or who contracted "ooga booga fever" in "some godforsaken hellhole"
On the May 31 edition of Fox News' The Big Story, host John Gibson said he was "mesmerized" by what he called "[t]he TB Man story" -- the recent news that American attorney Andrew Speaker traveled by airline while infected with antibiotic-resistant tuberculosis. Gibson stated: "It seems every time a story pops up about somebody who has suddenly contracted some strange or incurable disease, it's somebody who is either from the third world, or was traveling through some godforsaken hellhole, and somehow managed to contract ooga booga fever."
From the May 31 edition of Fox News' The Big Story with John Gibson:
GIBSON: Now "My Word." The TB Man story has me completely mesmerized. I've been doing this for a few years. It seems every time a story pops up about somebody who has suddenly contracted some strange or incurable disease, it's somebody who is either from the third world, or was traveling through some godforsaken hellhole, and somehow managed to contract ooga booga fever.
I got dengue fever in Mogadishu, Somalia, just for instance. You tend not to get dengue fever in Los Angeles or Jersey City, I believe. So when this TB story broke about the guy flying halfway around the world with a super-serious drug-resistant strain of TB, I thought it would be the usual scenario. The guy's in the U.S., he's coughing, he knows he's got TB, but doesn't realize he's got incurable TB, gets on the planes. Headed to Europe, to a must-attend wedding, informed there that he has a bad disease, sneaks back into the U.S. because he knows that's where the best health care is. That's the narrative you expect the story to take.
—A.I.
