conspiracy theories

The Sec. of Transportation Tells Kim Kardashian That She’s an Irresponsible Ignorance-Spreading Fool. Good!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

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?”

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“What’s Going On Here?” I Have No Idea, and Neither Do You

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Two maybe major news stories have broken on conservative news media this week, but neither of them appear in the nation’s most prestigious newspapers this morning. I haven’t checked, but I’m reasonably certain that I won’t hear about those “BREAKING!” developments on NPR, PBS, CNN or MSNBC either.

Why would that be? Well, one explanation is that the stories are fake news. The other…Come on now, you should be able to figure it out by now!

In Story One, FBI Director Kash Patel turned over to Congress a declassified intelligence report involving a Chinese plot to mass-produce fake U.S. driver’s licenses to facilitate Chinese nationals in the U.S. obtaining fake mail-in ballots that would be cast for Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The intelligence reports from August 2020 weren’t corroborated or fully investigated, but were taken back from intelligence agencies by the FBI at about the time that then-FBI Director Chris Wray testified there were no known plots of foreign interference ahead of the 2020 election. Some sources report that the FBI tried to destroy the evidence. The investigation was stopped even though U.S. Customs and Border Protection intercepted nearly 20,000 fake licenses, a possible corroboration of the buried report.

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Got It: Candace Owens Is An Idiot.

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

I am happy to say that I was never especially impressed with Owens, but when she first emerged as a conservative black woman who was not deceived by Black Lives Matter and was an articulate and attractive pundit on the Right, many were. Lately the proverbial blush has been off the rose since she has displayed ugly anti-Semitic attitudes, but never mind: that video makes everything that has come before irrelevant.

That’s signature significance. Anyone who believes that space travel is a hoax is, by definition, an idiot. No one should take Candace Owens seriously. Ever.

Let us never speak of her again.

Comment of the Day: “How Should We Deal With Friends Who Believe Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories?”

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

Another epic and irritatingly rational Comment of the Day from Extradimensional Cephalopod, this one on the thorny topic of discussing unlikely conspiracy theories with true believers. Almost all of E.C.’s contributions to Ethics Alarms topics are helpful and impressive; this is one of his—its?—best.

This is Extradimensional Cephalopod’s Comment of the Day on the post, “How Should We Deal With Friends Who Believe Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories?”:

Your friend has arrived at a conclusion that is based on, generously speaking, an implausible interpretation of the evidence surrounding the Titanic’s disaster. If he were looking at the evidence with no biases, he presumably would not have come to this conclusion. Therefore, I suspect that he has either an emotional attachment to the conclusion, or an emotional attachment to the process he used to reach it.

An person’s attachment to a conclusion might be as personal as a belief about what that conclusion says about them or someone they respect, or it might be as impersonal as preferring a more pleasant view of the world, such as one where disasters don’t just happen by accident.

An attachment to the reasoning process may be based on a fear of not having a good alternative reasoning process to turn to, a fear of what conclusions those alternative processes might lead to, or (similarly) an attachment to another conclusion that they arrived at through their current process. For example: “I have to believe this person wearing a cape is a bad person, because if people who aren’t bad can wear capes, that means that maybe I did a bad thing by attacking those other people for wearing capes.”

I’d like to talk with your friend and see how his worldview compares to what I suspect it is. My preliminary hypothesis is that your friend’s subconscious reasoning process is loosely based on the following premises, which I am not rendering judgment on at this time:

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How Should We Deal With Friends Who Believe Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories?

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

A friend and business associate just stunned me by professing belief in a conspiracy theory that I had never encountered before. He doesn’t see it as a theory, either: he is certain that it is historical fact, that it has been covered up by historians and other malign forces, and that eventually it will all be revealed.

This one is, I am quite certain, bonkers, just as bonkers as the Truther claim that Bush and Cheney were really behind the attack on the Twin Towers. My cognitive dissonance scale is in revolt: I have to trust and rely on this individual, whom I respect and admire. Yet embracing something this wacky is a red flag. A big one.

The short version of the conspiracy is that the calamitous sinking of “Titanic” in 1912 was secretly orchestrated by financier J.P. Morgan. His motive was to remove three powerful businessmen—Benjamin Guggenheim, Isidor Straus, and John Jacob Astor—who opposed the formation of the Federal Reserve.

A related conspiracy theory is that as part of an insurance fraud scheme, Morgan had “Titanic” secretly switched with one of its sister ships, “Olympic.” That one is, if possible, even wackier than the murder plot, and like it, the theory is easy to debunk. Both ships had distinct construction identification numbers or yard numbers that were stamped on many of their parts, including their wood paneling. “Olympic’s” yard number was 400 and “Titanic’s” was 401. Many artifacts bearing the number 401 have been raised from the wreck of “Titanic,” and items auctioned off after “Olympic” was retired in 1935 show the number 400. Also, I can’t figure out why switching nearly identical ships would benefit anyone, but we don’t need to go into that.

As for the murder plot—

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Comment of the Day: “Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job…”

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

I have neglected Comments of the Day of late I know, and I am sorry about that. There have been many excellent comments, and also many I have not had time to read carefully: the responses to the “What do you believe?” post alone generated many strong COTD candidates (and they are still coming in).

I might as well start with a comment I said I would post under the designation three weeks ago, and whiffed: Michael R.’s brief arguing that the Secret Service’s epic botch in Pennsylvania that only avoided getting Donald Trump killed by the intervention of moral luck was no accident.

Is the EA post that inspired Michael moot? After all, Kim Cheatle finally resigned after the indignity of having Congress members of both parties tell her to. However, the information that has been drip, drip, dripping out about the near-assassination has not disproved Michael’s thesis; if anything it bolsters his argument.

Ultimately, the question, as it so frequently does in the Age of the Great Stupid, comes down to Hanlon’s Razor: Is it intentional malice, or is it incompetence? The COTD concludes, “To cling to an incredibly unlikely incompetence argument in light of a much more likely explanation is only required if you don’t want to acknowledge something you are unwilling to accept.”

Maybe, but I will still cling even while admitting that other recent Hanlon’s Razor mysteries that have been popping up (“Did Democrats and the media just miss the fact that Joe Biden was a proto-vegetable because they are lazy, biased and inept, or did they deliberately participate in a conspiracy to deceive the American people ‘to save democracy’?” is one obvious example) demand the malice label.

Here’s Michael R’s Comment on the Day on the post, “Accountability? What’s Accountability? Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Still Has Her Job, and Only the Prominence of a Confederacy of Ethics Dunces Can Explain That.”

***

You have to make a lot of hand wringing arguments to state:

(1) They didn’t put snipers on the roof that THEY identified as a threat.

(2) They didn’t secure the building despite the threat of the roof.

(3) They didn’t notice the guy on the roof despite the fact that the crowd had been taking pictures of him for 25+ minutes.

(4) They let a 20 year old kid drive up, unload a ladder, climb onto the roof spread out his blanket, assemble the rifle and take 7 or 8 shots accidentally. That is the most generous assessment. If THEY left the ladder to the roof there for access, it is worse.

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NOW Will People Accept That Fox News Firing Tucker Carson Was Mandatory?

/ Jack Marshall / 2 Comments

It was interesting that the following incident occurred shortly after my post defending horror auteur Mike Flanagan from a conservative critic’s attack because he had one of his characters say that she “threw up in her mouth” thinking about Tucker Carlson. Guesting on “Prime Time with Alex Stein” (Stein is kind of a cheap knock-off of Tucker Carlson), the Fox News exile was asked by his conspiracy theory-loving host, “Do you think that the moon landing was real, and do you think that it was done by Nazis that were literally brought over during Operation Paperclip? Is that a conspiracy or is that true, in your opinion, Tucker?”

I’ve always wondered if the Nazi scientists were only figuratively brought over in Operation Paperclip, haven’t you? Stein’s question was brain-meltingly stupid, and the only responsible answer to it in a broadcast setting would be, “Of course the moon landing was real, of course I don’t believe it was faked, and if you do, I’m leaving so I can be interviewed by someone who is smarter than you, like, say, my dog.”

But Carlson didn’t say that. Instead, he replied, “You know, I don’t know! I do know that the the original moon landing tapes have been erased at NASA because they needed, you know, the tape space. So they just kind of taped over them.” Yeah, they did: almost all conspiracy theories depend on relevant records and evidence being destroyed or lost. It doesn’t matter: the moon landing conspiracy theory is one of the most ridiculous and insulting of them all. Giving it any credence is unforgivable: Buzz Aldrin once punched a guy in the face when he implied that the old astronaut was part of the supposed hoax, and I thought that was an appropriate response.

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When Too Late Is Unethical: The Strange Case Of JFK Assassination Witness Paul Landis

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

Paul Landis, one of the Secret Service agents near John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, has suddenly decided to reveal relevant actions and observations from that terrible day 60 years ago. His new perspectives, as the New York Times puts it, may “rewrite the narrative of one of modern American history’s most earth-shattering days in an important way,” and “encourage those who have long suspected that there was more than one gunman in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, adding new grist to one of the nation’s enduring mysteries.” The appropriate responses to Landis’s sudden urge to tell all are 1) “What took you so long?” and 2) “Oh, shut up.”

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“Thanks, Tucker!” Carlson’s First Twitter Show Confirms The Ethics Alarms Verdict On His Firing By Fox

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

The last time I was compelled to write about Tucker Carlson following his surprise firing by Fox News, I wrote,

The outpouring of conservative support for Tucker Carlson is quite nauseating, and shows an unfortunate infestation of bad judgment and ethics corruption when the necessary conduct is to recognize that an ideological ally is neither trustworthy nor honest. One report yesterday, pointing to the Fox News’ ratings crashing with Carlson’s exit, noted that younger Fox News viewers had led the stampede. Carlson is a demagogue with dubious motives, and the young are especially vulnerable to demagogues. I regard it as unethical for a news organization to put demagogues on the air for exactly that reason.”

Yesterday, Carlson premiered his new show on Twitter, and was kind enough to confirm that analysis, far from the first Ethics Alarms has made marking the one-time Golden Boy of America’s only conservative-biased network as a cynical, manipulative, self-promoting and untrustworthy narcissist.

You can watch Carlson’s Alex Jones imitation here. Only a deliberate conspiracy-monger would say this for public consumption:

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Signature Significance: Tucker Carlson Generously Demonstrates Why He Had To Be Fired

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments

It was really nice of Tucker Carlson, while his former bosses were being condemned and attacked throughout the conservative news media, to go on a podcast and demonstrate exactly why any responsible news organization would be ethically obligated to show him the gate. I’m sure that wasn’t his intent, but the fact that he doesn’t even recognize the implications of his own words is an additional reason why he had to go. He’s irresponsible. He’s untrustworthy. He is a demagogue, and, I suspect, a sociopath. People like Carlson—Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy, General Edwin Walker, Alex Jones, Robert Welch and so many more—abuse the First Amendment and are, to be blunt, destructive to the nation.

On the podcast of another Fox News exile , Carlson said,

“If you say, like, ‘What actually happened with building 7? Like that is weird, right? It doesn’t—like, what is that?’… If you were to say something like that on television, they’d flip out. They would flip out. So you’d, like, lose your job over that. It’s an attack on my country. Can I ask? I don’t really understand. Do buildings actually collapse? No, they—maybe they do. I don’t know. But, like, why can’t I ask questions about that?”

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