In an episode of the reality show “The Kardashians” (My god, is that still on?) Uber Kardashian Kim, the only one of the breed who earned her celebrity (with a sex tape and a huge derriere), told actress Sarah Paulson that she had watched interviews with Buzz Aldrin, who was on the Apollo 11 mission with Neil Armstrong and the second person to walk on the moon, and they convinced her that the moon landing was a government hoax.
“I don’t think we did. I think it was fake,” the Kimster announced. “I’ve seen a few videos on Buzz Aldrin talking about how it didn’t happen. He says it all the time now, in interviews.” Does anyone know what the hell she’s babbling about? The last time I heard about Aldrin in relation to the moonwalk conspiracy theory, he punched a guy in the face for claiming it was true.
Then Kardashian repeated a trope of the ancient conspiracy theory: “There’s no gravity on the moon. Why is the flag blowing?” I view that statement all by itself as signature significance: anyone who says it once is too gullible to be let outside without a keeper, and anyone who says it publicly is an idiot. The “mystery” can be answered by viewing the archived videos or by 3 seconds of googling. Who goes on TV and asserts a non-fact that anyone, including her, can prove false in a trice?
This time, however, big guns were trained on the specific idiot. Sean Duffy, the US Transportation Secretary and acting administrator of NASA, rebutted the whatever-she-is on X. He wrote: “Yes, Kim Kardashian, we’ve been to the moon before … Six times! And even better, NASA Artemis is going back under the leadership of [President Trump]. We won the last space race and we will win this one too.”
Madison, Wis, bloggress Ann Althouse, in one of her “it’s not the topic, it’s the tangents” posts, asks,
“Why is a government official calling out a private citizen who expresses interest in a conspiracy theory? We’re Americans. We have our conspiracy theories. Keep your government nose out of our business. You’re only giving more ammunition to the conspiracy theorists. Why stick your neck out to deny what isn’t true? You’re making it more fun to believe the theory!”
Ann is evoking the “Streisand Effect” with her “You’re only giving more ammunition to the conspiracy theorists.” She’s wrong, maybe even at an Ethics Dunce level. This conspiracy is hardly unknown: there was even a movie about it, and I have encountered moonwalk skeptics periodically ever since the event. “Why is a government official calling out a private citizen who expresses interest in a conspiracy theory?” Because, Ann, celebrities are not “private citizens.” They are public citizens; they make their millions by being famous and by appearing, speaking and misbehaving in public. More Americans by far know who Kim Kardashian is than who know who Sean Duffy is. A disturbing number of Americans, maybe even a majority, believe that being a celebrity (and appearing on TV) indicates virtue, wisdom and intelligence. Celebrity culture helped get Donald Trump elected President. Doesn’t Ann Althouse understand that? Hasn’t she ever heard the rejoinder, “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”
It is the duty of authorities, including government authorities, to speak up and slap down toxic information injected into the neck of public perception. Making Americans stupid has turned into a weapon of power, as politicians, “journalists” and celebrities employ the Cognitive Dissonance Scale to confuse the public into accepting what isn’t true as fact. Such efforts must be countered authoritatively, and the quicker the better.
The scion of America’s most shameless self-promoting family preaching the moonwalk conspiracy is a minor example. Tucker Carlson promoting Holocaust denial is far more serious, and yes, I’d like to see the President of the United States slap him down for it. Kamala Harris is attempting to drag down our average IQ (again), with this head-exploding explanation of why 16-year-old should be able to vote:
“I think we should reduce voting age to 16. I’ll tell you why. [Generation Z] has only known the climate crisis [and] missed substantial parts of their education because of the pandemic. If they’re in high school or college,especially in college, it is very likely that whatever they’ve chosen as their major for study may not result in an affordable wage. They’ve coined the term climate anxiety to describe fear of not only being able to buy a home, but that fear it’ll be wiped out by extreme weather. [They]will have 10 to 12 jobs in their lifetime [and are]a specific generation of people who are going to impact our nation and the world. I think we must invest in them but I think that they are rightly impatient with a lot of what is the tradition of leadership right now.”
Oh. Huh? [Aside: thinking about how close we came to having this cretin in the White House gives me the same shivers I got when I just missed getting hit by a bus in the Bahamas years ago..]
Freedom of speech means freedom of stupid speech, but public figures, including celebrities, have an ethical obligation not to spread misinformation, which includes asserting theories, especially wacko theories, that a modicum of due diligence can dispel.
If you care to read Ann’s post, Althouse being Althouse, she then spends an absurd amount of space focusing on Kim’s non-sequitur reply to Duffy: “Wait … What’s the tea on 3I Atlas?!?!!!!!!!?????” As for me, I don’t care what Kim says or thinks about anything, as long as she isn’t making people dumber.
Ethics Alarms 
Sean Duffy morphs into Sean Davis twice, I believe. Delete.
Fixed. I have an explanation for how that slipped by, but never mind….
Sean Davis, Lanny Davis’s son, the basketball commentator? Who seems a fine fellow.
My response to the “moon landings were faked” people is to agree but say that the “fake videos” were made by Kubrick and he insisted on filming on location.
As for the climate anxiety people, I grew up having regular drills where we hid under our school desks to practice if a nuclear bomb hit us. Worrying about climate is like worrying about being chased by a snail.
Even in second grade I thought it was preposterous we getting under our desks when the entire exterior wall was glass windows. I guess getting us under our desks was to protect us from the flying glass, as opposed to the radiation and blinding light?
When I was growing up we had two kinds of drills where we would ‘duck and cover’ — for tornados and for nuclear bombs. I guess they figured if it would work for one it would work for the other.
And, depending on how far away the bomb was, actually it might work.
Perhaps I’m misinterpreting her statement, but for some reason Kamala Harris seems to think having 10 to 12 jobs in a lifetime is a bad thing. I’ve had at least that many and I am part of a generation that was taught to hold on to a good job as long as possible. Some of my younger coworkers switched jobs every couple of years, mainly for better salaries or more interesting work.
I wondered about that as well. Let’s see: I’ve had 1,2,3,4,5,6 jobs before going into business for myself. Most of them I was fired from, and I’m not counting the theater job/jobs.
Yeah, just on a quick count, I’ve had at least 12 jobs of one sort or another over my working lifetime, about 55 years so far and counting.
I have a family member who said the moon landing was faked. I commented, ‘You know who didn’t believe it was faked? The Soviet Union.’
If any group would have, could have exposed it, it was the USSR.
Whenever I hear people talking about the moon landing being faked, I have a couple thoughts.
First — I watched the dang thing — live! As a science fiction fan all my life, we dreamed and read about the first landing on the moon. The one little detail that never occurred to us was that it would be televised, live. But we always knew it would happen.
Second, there is verifiable proof that we landed on the moon. Three of the Apollo missions (11, 14, and 15) left laser reflectors on the moon. You can aim a laser at them and get the reflected light back. Scientists use those to determine the precise distance to the moon’s surface. You could get a laser and do it yourself.
Third, I don’t know this for absolutely certain, but I am pretty sure that you could train a telescope on the moon and actually see the lunar landers and other stuff the Apollo astronauts left there. Don’t know exactly how big a telescope it would need to be, but I’d bet there are amateur astronomers who’ve seen it.
Every item of evidence that the deniers cite has been meticulously debunked.
And, as a previous poster pointed out, unless the Soviet Union was in on the hoax, they would certainly have delighted in exposing us.
Morons.