The Lidle Crash "Conspiracy"

FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | October 17, 2006 | By Jon Sanders

[.cnI redruM]

Alex Jones dishes out mad conspiracy stew and the paranoiacs (even college professors) lap it up. But the formula is simple, and somebody is going to profit off these poor fools: everything that happens is orchestrated by a Grand Conspiracy, which can be determined post hoc — and any facts that don't fit the conspiracy, well, the Grand Conspiracy was so clever, it even knew to plant those red herrings! It is the ultimate Procrustean bed.

I have had my encounters with Alex Jones and his ilk. After my FrontPage Magazine article criticized one college professor for her course preaching the 9/11 Bush/Zionist plot, I was inundated with the most bizarre, angry, vicious, and paranoid e-mails from the conspiracymongers put onto my column by Jones — whose web sites and videos were used by the professor as her primary sources. Jones even invited me on his radio program, and immediately before he introduced me to his audience, he made a remark about being "CIA funded, like some of these writers are." Not being CIA funded, I know firsthand how Jones makes up wild stories to continue to feed his audience conspiratorial red meat.

Breaking through the conspiracymonger's mindset is a nearly impossible job, because a Grand Conspiracy theory almost always insulates itself from any self-test or falsifiability. When all events are assumed to be orchestrated, then each single event counter to the theory is invariably assumed to be hoaxed to put the diligent "truth-seeker" off the scent. I have tried, with some success, in personal communication with honestly seeking 9/11 doubters to communicate the tools for proper skepticism and how they must also be used on the theories themselves.

I have also tried to illustrate before the fact how a conspiracy theorist might react to events. Furthermore, a recurring theme in the 9/11 and other Grand Conspiracy theories is that "Eyewitnesses said X but the government and the controlled media are saying Y — obviously they're trying to hide the truth, which is X." I have tried to point out in new events how eyewitness accounts to a sudden, surprising catastrophe are often conflicted, erroneous, and wildly variable in the confusion that immediately follows.

So, was the Lidle crash a government psy-op?

Yesterday, following the tragic plane crash in New York City that claimed the life of New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, I wrote about the inevitable conflicting reports and how a conspiracymonger might treat them. I wrote:

It's been a few hours since this accident hit the news reports, but Fox News notes this: "The Federal Aviation Administration said that the small aircraft was fixed wing, but earlier reports indicated that it may have been a small helicopter."

Hot Air has basically live-blogged the catastrophe; you can read how many reports have come in that have later proven to be erroneous. As I've pointed out before, there will always be confusing and conflicting details from people on the scene when something like this happens. But conspiracymongers make no allowance for initial confusion during an event — in fact, they exploit that confusion to build a case after the fact for government (or whomever) "suppressing the truth."

So in this instance, should it become a cause célèbre in kookdom, the tinfoil hats would start churning out bug-eyed rants about "The FAA is LYING about 10/11! Eyewitnesses report seeing black helicopters hitting the buildings! We're living in a wag-the-dog police state! It's time to panic!"

I couldn't resist checking, and sure enough, Alex Jones had already started in on a governmental conspiracy angle. In an article entitled "Manhattan Plane Crash Simple Accident Or Suspicious Psy-op?," Jones and co-author Paul Joseph Watson had speculated in the first paragraph,

Is this a government psy-op intended to invoke memories of 9/11 as the mid-term elections approach?

Shortly after my post, the news broke about Lidle. I wondered what Jones et al. would have to say about that. Would they suggest that Lidle was in on the plot? Would they propose that the late Yankees pitcher was a tool of the Neo-Cons, or would they suggest that he's perhaps alive and well in a Secret Government Bunker sharing drinks with the 9/11 hijackers, and Elvis and Amelia Earhart, too?

No, what Jones and Watson did was even more hilarious. They changed the article, wiping out all traces of their immediate thoughts that it could be a government psy-op campaign to influence the mid-term election. The new article instead accused others of "hysterical reactions" — to wit,

Fox News' Neil Cavuto … bizarrely put the pilot error of the Yankees' Cory Lidle into the context of how it would affect the upcoming mid-term elections.

Yes, what Fox News (you realize, of course, that Fox is the medium of the supposed Bush/Zionist plot) put "in the context" of how it would affect the elections, Jones and Watson had put in a blaring headline as a potential "government psy-op" campaign. Which they later tried to put down the Internet memory hole.

Unfortunately for them, in their original reworking of the article, they had forgotten to change the lead paragraph. So while the new headline said "Fox News Spins Plane Accident; Says It Could Affect Election," their second sentence still spun the plane accident: "Is this a government psy-op intended to invoke memories of 9/11 as the mid-term elections approach?"

That is what I happened upon shortly after my original post, and it's what I took a screenshot of, figuring that Jones and Watson would later discover their mistake. I took another screenshot this morning of the rewritten article. I highlighted the "hysterical" portions of each.

The article before its complete revision:

http://www.johnlocke.org/site-docs/images/AlexJonesbefore.jpg

The article after revision:

http://www.johnlocke.org/site-docs/images/AlexJonesafter.jpg

I hope the 9/11 "truth" profs and their acolytes see this and realize. This is your truth guru at work.

I expect, however, that any reaction will be either along the lines of "The Zionists in charge of the CIA had Sanders make this up in a feeble effort to derail Jones and the 9/11 truth movement" or "Jones is controlled opposition; the ultimate tool of the regime." Well, I suppose it could be both, too.

Also, with regard to my initial prediction, I see there's already an article on Jones' site bearing the headline "Some Eyewitnesses Claim Crash Was Helicopter."

[.cnI redruM]

Michael Moorism at its worst. ALex Jones is crazy like a fox. He makes money off of stoking these delusions.

[battlegearboat]

This sounds Cirrus.

[the OlLine Rebel]

Oh brother

[cripplecreek]

Worse yet is the fact that Jones manages to sell his manure to both far left and far right alike.

[SampleMan]

One of the amusing traits of these conspiracy theorists is that they simultaneously believe that Bush is the grand manipulator of all world events, omnipotent and omnipresent, AND that he is a stupid clutz, incapable of running the country.

The sad thing is that this really feeds into the illness for the clinically paranoid, etc.

[hoosierboy]

What is he retarded??

[edpc]

It never ceases to amaze me how he and people who think like him are always "more informed" and "smarter" than the rest of us, yet they usually live like peasants and can't rub two nickles together.

[.cnI redruM]

GWB is like Rainman. He's got his klutz side and his 300 IQ evil genius side. He's also supported by Karl E. Rove - Super Genius.

[.cnI redruM]

Yeah, but they always recycle by drinking the bong water. That makes them more considerate than we are as well.

[mbynack]

I was a Command and Control specialist for the Air Force - a job similar to a 911 call center operator. Any initial reports that we received were usually about 30% correct. We would get reports of a plane crash and witnesses would say they saw the plane on fire as it crashed. It turned out to be a farmer burning off a field. There were no planes within 30 miles of the site at the time of fire.

We had reports of a major fuel spill with over a thousand gallons of fuel leaking from an overturned truck. It turned out to be a fuel truck stuck in a ditch and it leaked less than 5 gallons.

Farmers claimed that military tanks had driven through their crops, but no tanks were operating in that part of the country for months.

The more the government tries to dispel the false reports, the more convinced the nuts are that it's a cover up. If the government doesn't try to clear up the false reports, that's also taken as proof of a cover-up.

[johnny7]

“Would they propose that the late Yankees pitcher was a tool of the Neo-Cons, or would they suggest that he's perhaps alive and well in a Secret Government Bunker sharing drinks with the 9/11 hijackers, and Elvis and Amelia Earhart, too?”

Red Sox fans would... and most likely, they would try to tie it in with 5 game massacre.

[sticker]

Yeah, then they have to spend all their money on munchies

[.cnI redruM]

I mean they've had him warming up in the bullpen for at least three weeks...

[.cnI redruM]

The potato-chip industry appreciates their economic vitality.

[johnny7]

If K-Rod was flying that plane... he wouldn't have hit anything.

[.cnI redruM]

As Tommy Lasorda once said of Lou Bernadeux.."You couldn't hit the water if you fell out of a boat!"

[mad_as_he$$]

Ok so the Government has the technology to implode the Twin Towers and do it with missiles that have holographic projectors but they need to have two guys die in a small plane accident to psych us all out? Please, the Razor is the best answer. $hit happens.

[mad_as_he$$]

Don't forget Cheney and is Haliburton lackeys.

[SuziQ]

My sister was a police officer many years ago, and she said that although they always tried to find eyewitnesses, they took their statements with a grain of salt, unless bolstered by other hard evidence.

She talked about a class she attended where the professor was lecturing about eyewitness accounts to a crime, and someone burst into the class, shouted a few comments, then ran out. After the class had settled down, the professor asked each student to describe the person who had entered the room. Not any two students' descriptions matched precisely. Each person saw the event differently, proving the professor's point about the unreliabilty of eyewitnesses to a sudden, surprising event.

[ßuddaßudd]

Break The Madness !