Exactly.
Yes, some conspiracies are real. Notice that this is being published by the NYT. Why do you suppose they decided to publish this now? Do you suppose that the Zippy myth is about to unravel? If they can discredit “conspiracy nuts” in advance, it will be easier to perpetuate the lies for a much longer time.
The flip side of this is that people hang on to their beliefs long after the sell date. For example, people hang onto losing investments, a boss will keep an terrible employee he hired, etc. for much longer than is rational. An outsider can much more easily see that the stock is tanking or the employee is horrible than the person who bought/hired.
This is why Zippy voters defend Zippy long past the time it is obvious to the rest of us that he is evil / corrupt / failing.
Articles like this in the NYT are just a further example of the lenghts people will go to in order to defend an earlier poor decision.
Did anyone watch the last episode of the Simpsons?
Homer and his barfly buddies won the lotto. The popular black guy (Carl Carlson) went to cash the ticket, and skipped town, stealing 50,000 from each of his buddies. Sounds a little like art imitating life.
So they try to track down their previous friend Carl, and find out he's not even an American citizen!!
He was adopted by an Icelandic couple, that were traitors to their homeland. Is this getting a little too parallel?
Carl stole their money to take back to his homeland, attempting to clear his family name only to discover it was even worse than history had recorded.
The unbelievable ending was they forgave Carl because, he had helped them move, and bought Homer a beer once.
The tinfoil hat on my head says they are foreshadowing.