Post Censored

Well, I finally went over the edge at the Seattle Times. They posted this interesting story about a man in a banana costume getting arrested for indecent exposure. This, as you might expect, invited anyone with a budding standup comedy career to take their best shot. While several of my offerings made the grade (see Donuthole's posts), my favorite was censored. So I repost it here for the benefit and smiles of all:

How is a banana like a Liberal? They're soft and squishy on the inside, and yellow on the outside. How is a banana like a Republican? When they get older, they turn brown and are good for making bread.

Just Following Orders

Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist, is entertaining, that's why I watch his stuff. However, I can't buy into 9/11 was an inside job theory. It's more than simply a visceral rejection of the notion that our government could do something so evil and insidious. The facts simply don't add up. If the 19 hijackers were intelligence assets of the U.S., as Jones claims, how could they have been persuaded to crash planes into buildings? Conspiracy theorists might claim that they were simply patsies, who were duped into boarding and hijacking the flight, only to have the plane remote controlled into the trade center and the Pentagon. They point to the fact that these so-called Islamic fundamentalists led a rather debauched lifestyle leading up to zero-hour, going to strip clubs, getting drunk, and ordering porno. I don't know about you, but I have a lot more faith in a person's religious hypocrisy than I do in the government's ability to remote control planes into buildings.

Yes there are a lot of unanswered questions: The molten fragments dripping from the towers, similar to the reaction of steel to thermite. The extraordinary maneuvers of the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon after getting failing marks from his flight instructors one month before. The multiple reports of the sound of explosions before the collapse of the towers and building no. 7, as though it was a controlled demolition.

I recently heard a lecture by attorney Daniel Sheehan, who was involved in the Pentagon papers case, and investigated Iran-Contra, and Karen Silkwood's disappearance. He gave a succinct rundown of the conspiracy behind the JFK assassination that was amazingly lucid, and had the ring of truth. He spoke with absolute conviction and certainty, that it was the result of rogue elements within the intelligence community who felt betrayed by JFK, who allied with certain figures in the mob who despised RFK, to use their assets and resources (disaffected Cuban refugees) to murder the president, all financed by Henry Booth Luce and Howard Hughes. What makes Daniel Sheehan's recitation so convincing? It's because he connected the dots.

If Alex Jones were to confine himself to more rational claims, that rogue elements within the CIA allowed the hijackings to take place, or even greased the wheels to make M. Atta & crew's jobs easier, that would be a whole lot easier to believe than a conspiracy that went up to the to active involvement of the White House.

Because the claims are so wild, they suffer from what I would call David Icke syndrome: they seem like the ravings of cranks and kooks. Most people will reject them out of hand while there may be a kernel of truth embedded in the substrata of their arguments, because they can't be taken seriously. This is what happens to people on a crusade. It's so bizarre at times (David Icke's reptilians) that it seems to me as though madmen have pierced the veil of reality. They may really be onto something intuitively and psychically, but they've mythologized their own perceptions to the point that it seems fabulous. Maybe they're "useful idiots" to the conspiracy (if it exists) because their ideas are so far out. Or maybe they're just in on it and spreading disinformation.

The best lies are those that contain a germ of truth.