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05/20/06

Conspiring to have more fun

I have decided, after a great deal of introspection, to become a conspiracy theorist.

Yes, a grassy knoll-examining, UFO-spotting, Protocols of the Elders of Zion-believing wingnut.

Why?

Because those folks seem to be the only ones having any fun.

While the rest of you are bemoaning the stupid war in Iraq, immigration battles, our civil liberties being chiseled away and countless other legitimate concerns, I shall be doing something else.

I shall be moving in with my mother and spending 20 hours a day sitting in front of a computer in my undershirt and pajama bottoms.

I'll participate in dozens of blog conversations in which losers just like me are coming up with ever-more-absurd theories about who really invented macaroni and why the government is secretly beaming messages to our brains to buy Cream of Wheat.

I'll strive to become just like the guy who e-mailed me and probably every other editor in the country the other day after film of the airplane that flew into the Pentagon was released to the news media.

The fellow's address is an apartment in Hoboken, N.J. He did not include information about whether he lived with his mother or was wearing pajama bottoms while he typed this, but those would appear to be safe assumptions.

'... if a video released by the Pentagon clearly showing a cruise missile going into it's (sic) wall on 9/11/01, and not a commercial airliner, is not enough for you folks to abandon the whitewash you have been responsible for during the last five years, than (sic) this country is even further gone than we ever imagined. And the fact that the mainstream media has an overall credibility rating of about half that of the President (according to Pew Research) makes perfect sense.

Golly! How can anyone dispute that incredible evidence? I mean, I didn't see anything in the photos that would indicate it wasn't a jetliner filled with real people who have been mourned by their families for more than four years. But maybe I'm just being close-minded.

Yeah, and what about all that dynamite that was the real reason the Twin Towers came down on 9/11? I mean, there's no way my fellow conspiracy buffs will believe that skyscrapers are going to fall on their own just because they got hit with big, fast-flying airplanes filled with humans and an enormous amount of fuel.

I won't spend all my time, of course, communing with my fellow wingnuts on the computer while my mom makes me a sandwich and wonders where she went wrong.

No, I shall be consulting with astrologers, TV evangelists and refugees from 'The Jerry Springer Show' just to ease the stress.

It will be quite a responsibility to be one of the few people with the insight and guts to inform everyone about the Jewish conspiracy to take over the world by buying up all of the Alpo dog food in Des Moines, Iowa.

If the Jews are making trouble, the Catholics are conspiracy fodder, too. I'll believe every word of 'The Da Vinci Code,' memorize every passage from the Gospel of Judas and reread the 'Passover Plot' just to see if I missed anything about the conspiracy that faked the Resurrection.

I shall be the first one to reveal that the pope — and not just this pope, every pope — is actually Jewish. The tip-off is the little skull cap all those popes wear. I really for the life of me don't see why nobody else spotted this before.

Yes, it's all becoming crystal-clear now. I've never won a Pulitzer Prize. How could that be explained by anything other than a vast, journalistic conspiracy?

I'll listen to the little voices that come from the tiny computer chip implanted in my head by aliens from the planet Zoltar during my last haircut.

I'll write massive treatises about the real reason the networks conspired to ruin my Sunday nights by canceling 'The West Wing' and moving 'Grey's Anatomy' to Thursdays.

In excruciating detail, my e-mails will state that I have it on excellent authority that all the actresses on 'Desperate Housewives' have been monitoring whether I brush my teeth up-and-down or side-to-side.

I'll read every unsolicited letter and e-mail from conspiracy folks just like me who believe President Bush and his cronies cherry-picked intelligence data to justify the invasion of Iraq, and are in cahoots with the oil companies to drive up the price Americans pay at the pump so the filthy rich can get even filthier.

Well ... even conspiracy-theory whack jobs can't be wrong all the time.

———

Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.




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