CDC: Bauer Simplex 24 Gripping Right-Wing Bloggers

The Center for Disease Control warned the nation today that an epidemic of Bauer Simplex 24 is sweeping through the conservative blogging community.

The syndrome, known as BS 24, causes ordinarily cowardly individuals to boast of their own hypothetical bravery during dangerous real-life events.

“BS 24 is triggered when someone discusses a recently terrifying situation, such as being held hostage, interrogated, or encountering a terrible act of violence,” said Dr. Su Do Nihm of the CDC. “It causes the victims to become delusional and fantasize how they would have responded with the calm, firm resolve of Kiefer Sutherland reading a television script.”

The disease first appeared in 2001 and has become progressively more widespread with every television season. This year had already seen an outbreak after the abduction of British sailors by Iran, with many conservative bloggers exclaiming they would never have been broken under such interrogation, even when facing such tactics as Cheeto-boarding and videogame depravation.

But an especially nasty, logic-resistant strain appeared after the recent news of the massacre of students at Virginia Tech University. John Derbyshire, writing for the conservative National Socialist Review, expressed surprise that students did not “jump” the Virginia Tech gunman, Cho Seung Ho. Derbyshire commented, “At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him....It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.”

Dr. Coe Bagz, Research Fellow at the Frasier Crane Institute for Television Psychology, calls this “a classic case of BS 24.”

“In terms of his words, Mr. Derbyshire does in fact seem like a cool, collected, and determined individual, almost as if knows ahead of time what will happen and that the ‘writers’ will protect him,” said Dr. Bagz. “But that does not mesh with Mr. Derbyshire’s real life actions, where he is deathly afraid of having even a penis pointed in his face.

“I wouldn’t say that inspires a lot of confidence in his ‘jumping’ ability,” Dr. Bagz added.

As the disease usually does, it spread quickly to other areas of the right-wing blogosphere, including columnists Nathanael Blake and Carol Ionne.

“Conservative bloggers tend to transmit BS 24 rapidly because of their propensity to have unsafe, often anonymous, rhetorical masturbation in large groups,” said Dr. Nihm. “They tend to splatter their fellow bloggers with their written emissions without considering the consequences.”

Dr. Bagz noted that, while there is no medicinal remedy for BS 24, it does have one known therapeutic cure. “Actual combat tends to clear up BS 24 immediately, so we usually recommend enlistment.”