EoT: Glenn Beck’s Ebola Fantasy and Texas Textbook ‘Doozies’

A roundup of news, columns and features about the state, from media around the world.

Dallas-based conservative radio and TV host Glenn Beck can now add public health expert to his resume, after declaring during his show last Monday that Nigerian prison guards will bring airborne ebola to Texas, Salon reported.

“Due to an extreme shortage of prison guards in Texas, prisons are so desperate for employees that they started looking outside of the country to hire prisoner guards,” Beck said. “Where are they from? Well, there’s a substantial number of prison guards from Mexico and Nigeria … The only thing we know about Nigeria is … ebola is breaking out.”

Beck also said that “letting Nigerians roam freely in and out of our country … might seem like something we should look into!”

For years Texas prisons have hired foreign citizens who are legal U.S. residents. Public health experts say it is highly unlikely ebola will mutate into an airborne disease.

The stereotypes of Texans as Christian zealots, xenophobes and racists were reinforced by national media after a report by the Texas Freedom Network found false and misleading information in proposed history, government and geography textbooks for Texas public schools.

Issues with the textbooks, referred to as “doozies” by The Washington Post, ranged from negatively portraying Islam and Muslims with statements such as “much of the violence you read or hear about in the Middle East is related to a jihad” to using outdated and offensive terms such as “Negro” and “Caucasoid.”

The State Board of Education votes on the textbooks in November.