Your Argument Is Invalid

Today's Daily Banter column is all about Alex Jones and the fucking idiots who follow him like he's the pied piper of the clinically insane and the galactically stupid.

Here's a small excerpt:

"So what's the result of all this groundless conjecture, this paranoid insanity passed off as information that truly deserves to be taken seriously? The world of the conspiracy theorist, the place where ignorance and arrogance meet, since there's no bigger idiot than a guy who believes that the Boston Marathon bombing never happened, and that guy ironically always thinks he's the smartest person in the room -- what happens when that begins bleeding into the real world? Well, for some, it truly does become tough to tell what's real and what isn't anymore. It's not the government, with its supposed secret machinations and subservience to the Illuminati or whatever-the-hell, that winds up clouding reality and leaving those who only skim the news trying to figure out what's up and what's down; it's the sensational, irrational bullshit dispensed by Alex Jones and his mentally unhinged shock-troops.

And good luck arguing with them. Trying to make someone see reason who considers it a point of pride that he's unwilling to believe anything his eyes see and his ears hear is like trying to explain how the Large Hadron Collider works to a four-year-old. If you honestly think that chem trails are for real and that 9/11 was in inside job, there's just no hope for you. Debunking your views one-by-one would be useless, since the beauty of a conspiracy theory is that it's a self-reinforcing delusion. Best to just laugh at you or call you a fucking idiot to your face and be done with it."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Month

"You’re an asshole. And so is Alex Jones."

-- Unidentified Boston resident who took it upon himself to verbally annihilate InfoWars pretend reporter Dan Bidondi today

You have to see this. It was only a matter of time before somebody did something like this to these fucking morons.

Sir, I have no idea who you are -- but you're a goddamn hero.

That said, if you want to continue to be depressed by how stupid some people are, click over to YouTube and read the comments for this thing.

Quote of the Day

"After the establishment media called me abhorrent for talking about the ‘Family Guy’ clip and Fox pulled that episode, that was all the evidence I needed that I had stumbled upon the truth. In fact, I discovered the United States government had this false flag attack planned way back in the 1940s, when the Road Runner and the Coyote were created. Let’s look at the facts: the Coyote is this loner, a pathetic loser who is always trying to kill and maim the Road Runner with dangerous explosives he got from the ACME Corporation, which sounds just like the American government. You have to be a low-grade moron to not see parallels with these two Chechen kids, these losers who supposedly carried out this bombing; and the runners -- the Road Runners -- in Boston. Only this time, after many failed attempts, the Coyote was successful."

-- Alex Jones on the Boston Marathon bombing, according to the Daily Currant

Yeah, the Daily Currant is a satire site. But be honest: Could you really tell by this quote?

There Ain't No Sanity Clause 2: Boston Boogaloo

Last week I posted a link to a Facebook conversation between a bunch of lunatic conspiracy theorists and a friend of mine, Josh Olson, who had proceeded to tear them apart piece by piece. These people were of course alleging Alex Jonesian nonsense in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, crap like the ever-popular "false flag" terrorism claims and the ridiculous and easily debunkable rumors of a "controlled explosion" on the day of the blasts.

As I said at the time, the world of the conspiracy theorist is where ignorance and arrogance meet, because these morons truly do believe that they're the only people who really know what's going on and the rest of us are the stupid ones, when in reality it's of course exactly the opposite. Under normal circumstances, it'd be best to ignore the Alex Jones crowd completely, because there's simply no arguing with someone who will not accept reality, who won't believe what their own eyes see and what their own ears hear and who are convinced that there's some dark secret lurking behind the veil of every single fucking thing they experience. But the problem is that, thanks to social media, these clowns now have a voice and thanks to the sheer volume of media outlets these days they have the ability to occasionally subvert respectable journalism and inject their insanity into the mainstream. Case in point: what happened last week at a critical news conference in the immediate wake of the bombings, when Info Wars "reporter" and raving dipshit Dan Bidondi hijacked the spotlight by bombarding Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick with questions about false flag terrorism and government cover-ups.

Anyway, the same people Josh took down last week are still at it -- and so I once again invite you to put on your tinfoil hat and immerse yourself in the mentally unbalanced "reality" of the people who believe not only that the Tsarnaev brothers were unwitting patsies set up by the government, but who actually think that the victims of the attack were wounded beforehand because they would've died had they lost limbs like that, and that, in fact, there may not even have been a bombing.

Pay special attention, by the way, to the craziest and balls-out stupidest person you'll ever come into contact with: Wren Tyree.

And once again marvel at how Josh won't tolerate any of that shit.

Facebook: Christine Robert: "What's the Agenda of the Person Feeding You 'Facts?"/4.22.13

There Ain't No Sanity Clause

Cesca eviscerated the Alex Jones-fueled conspiracy theorizing that immediately cropped up in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing in his piece at Banter this morning. He did it by presenting actual, you know, facts.

I on the other hand didn't even bother. I just called those circulating and buying into wild tales of false flag terrorism, "controlled explosion" bomb drills, and TSA sporting events crackdowns fucking lunatics -- since that's what they are.

The thing about conspiracy theorists is that they're impossible to make see reason because the more you shoot holes in their inane rants and nonsense beliefs the more they become convinced that you're just part of the conspiracy. Or you're just another one of the sheep who refuses to see what's really going on. Or some shit.

Best of all, they truly do think they're the smart ones. That's the beauty of a conspiracy theory: It allows the most ignorant, delusional and just plain fucking stupid among us to believe they're secretly the only ones with a clue as to what's really going on. The world of the conspiracy theorist is right where idiocy and arrogance meet. You've known people like that almost your whole life, likely dating all the way back to the special breed of ironically pompous social outcast of high school, and they've always been worthy of laughter and mockery.

With that in mind, I give you this link. It's going to make your brain hurt, sure, but watch as a friend of mine, Josh Olson, just rips the shit out of the person submerging herself neck-deep into Alex Jones's morass of horseshit. Remember, don't drink the Kool-Aid -- and namaste.

Facebook: Christine Robert: "As Yet Unreported"/4.16.13

"Here's To Ben"

Daily Banter overlord Ben Cohen made a nice little appearance on RT News's Thom Hartmann Show late last week to debate the Daily Caller's White House pretend reporter Neil Munro -- you'll remember him as the jackass who heckled President Obama during a Rose Garden press briefing last year -- and libertarian columnist Marc Harrold.

It not only features Harrold right off the bat living up to the stereotype of today's libertarians as conspiracy-spouting anti-government lunatics who live and die by the drivel Alex Jones spouts, but there's a lot of Ben's adorable British accent (which always makes me swoon). Given how much RT loves Ben, I'll have to ask him one of these days if he ever nailed Alyona Minkovski. Because, if so, awesome for him.

By the way, you know, Ben -- Munro is Irish. I think you're allowed under British law to seize his seat and arrest him if he gives you any crap.

(Yes, I know, I know. Almost every crack I've made in this post could be considered sexist or racist. As always, feel free to direct your complaints here.)

Quote of the Day

"I think it is a relevant point of conversation. If he is a skeet shooter, why have we not heard of this? Why have we not seen photos? Why has he not referenced it at any point in time as we have had this gun debate that is ongoing? You would have thought it would have been a point of reference."

-- Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, questioning whether President Obama was lying when he said that he occasionally goes skeet shooting at Camp David

My favorite part of the above quote is the first sentence: "I think it is a relevant point of conversation." You know what else the current crop of Republicans and conservatives have considered relevant points of conversations? Where Obama was born and whether his birth certificate is phony. Whether he faked his college transcripts. His use of teleprompters. Whether Obama's real father was a communist. If his family's Kenyan background trained him to hate America. Whether the president's speech to children was an attempt to secretly indoctrinate them with socialist propaganda. That Obama may have engineered a series of shooting sprees as a pretext to taking away Americans' guns. Whether the Obama administration faked the falling unemployment numbers in the lead-up to the 2012 election. Whether he ousted Gaddafi so that al Qaeda could take over in Libya. Whether he's at the top of a conspiracy of silence in Benghazi.

And that doesn't even include non-Obama-related conspiracy theories like the encroaching threat by Sharia law and the U.N. and, of course, the belief that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax.

And now this: A Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives is basically asking for proof that President Obama has gone skeet shooting.

Marsha Blackburn, you are sincerely a fucking idiot -- and your party is thoroughly devoid of even an ounce of intelligence or a single good idea. All you have is desperate nonsense.

Cesca wrote an entire piece on this today over at Banter. It's definitely worth reading.

Quote of the Day

"That is an obscene lie... You are misleading the American people because you want to make a political point. We have never in the history of this republic mounted a raid on the circumstance described here ever."

Geraldo Rivera, smacking down Fox News über-douche Eric Bolling, who was continuing to push the conservative talking point that what happened in Benghazi was a failure of leadership, that there's a cover-up at work, and that U.S. forces should've attacked the crowd of protesters that attacked our embassy

Between Geraldo and Chris Christie bucking the Fox News tide of histrionic idiocy, I'd normally say that it feels like Opposite Day or something. But the reality is that while he can certainly be a pompous tool, Geraldo generally tries to be as intellectually honest as possible, and I've always given him credit for that.

As for Benghazi, I got into a big debate with someone about it on Facebook yesterday -- one of the very rare occasions that I choose to argue politics on anyone's page besides my own. Here's the deal: As tragic as it is, and it is absolutely tragic, it's a relatively by-the-numbers incident. Over the past few decades, our embassies in Arab and North African countries have faced deadly attacks countless times, irrespective of who happens to be in the White House. We choose to undertake diplomacy in very dangerous places and -- while I certainly don't mean to diminish what happened in Libya -- violence against our very brave and dedicated men and women stationed in those areas is simply the cost of doing business. Should every single possible question be asked about what happened in Benghazi in an effort to determine whether it could've been prevented and to help ensure it doesn't happen again? Of course. Is there some nefarious plot to cover up institutional incompetence afoot at the highest levels of government. Not a fucking chance.

I wouldn't have blamed George W. Bush or any Republican president had it happened on his watch, untethered to any specific administrational act overseas, simply because when you're in an Arab country there's almost no way to prevent the kind of anger and violence we saw in Benghazi. Pretending that Obama could, or that he reacted the wrong way to it -- which neither he nor Panetta, nor the military officers in that region did -- is ludicrous. No one left anybody to die. Also, do I even need to add that should the roles have been reversed and we'd had a Republican in the White House, the same people who immediately began beating up on Obama -- while our embassy was still on fire, no less -- would be calling any public critic of the president during a crisis like that a traitor who's guilty of giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

Gerlado, by the way, went on to say that he talked to Charles Woods, whose son was killed in the attack, and that it bothered him to hear Woods's accusations against the Obama administration because they're based on little more than conspiracy theory perpetuated by outlets like Fox News, who are looking for something, anything to hang around the neck of Obama during an election year.

"He is being led down a primrose path of misinformation that is making it look as if President Obama went gambling in Las Vegas when he could've been saving people in Benghazi and that's a lie." Rivera said.

Related: The Daily Banter: The Right's Made-Up Benghazi Cover-Up/11.1.12

Adding: Cesca remains convinced that if Obama wins next week, the Republicans will almost immediately begin looking to impeach him over Benghazi. And he's apparently not the only one who thinks this.

Adding More: Suck it, Bolling. You bullying little turd.

Quote of the Day

"(Obama) is going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN. Okay, what’s going to happen when that happens? I’m thinking worst case scenario here. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. We’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations. We’re talking Lexington-Concord take up arms and get rid of the guy. Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops — with the little blue beanies. I don’t want ‘em in Lubbock County. Okay. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here’. “And the sheriff, I’ve already asked him, I said ‘you gonna back me’ he said, ‘yeah, I’ll back you.’"

-- Judge Tom Head of Lubbock, Texas on the coming UN takeover of the United States, facilitated, of course, by President Obama

I'm not sure what's more entertaining, the thoroughly batshit delusion that there are going to be UN troops and vehicles rolling up Main Street in Lubbock if Obama is reelected -- or the macho fantasy that tough-guy Tom Head and the tough-guy local sheriff would be able to stop them if they did, I tell you what.

As Cesca often says -- WOLVERINES!

As Jon Stewart says -- next stop, leash laws for unicorns.

And as I often say -- fucking Texas.

(via Cesca)

Quote of the Day

"The doctors are not gonna tell you both sides of the issue... they're told by the pharmaceutical industry, which makes billions of dollars, that it's completely safe. The efficacy of these shots have not been proven. And the toxicity of these things -- we're having more and more side effects. We're having more and more autism."

-- Rob Schneider on the supposed link between vaccinations and autism

So there you have it: every reputable doctor and researcher in the civilized world or -- the woman on the new cover of Playboy and Deuce Bigalow.

I realized I've been recycling a lot lately, but we've had an influx of new readers around here recently and, what with the holiday and all, I'm all about cheap and easy content.

So there's this:

"Autism Speaks (and Speaks, and Speaks)" (Originally Published, 5.6.09)

Good news for people who think that posing nude in Playboy and hosting a crappy MTV game show automatically comes with its own PhD in neuroscience: Jenny McCarthy will soon have a daily platform from which to berate the medical community for not taking her advice on treating autism.

Unless you're lucky enough to have mercifully been born deaf, you're probably well aware of Jenny's delightful one-dingbat crusade to find someone or something to blame for her 5-year-old son's autism. For the past couple of years, she's jumped in front of pretty much every television camera and microphone in the continental United States to stir up unnecessary controversy over certain childhood vaccinations by proclaiming her belief that there's a link between them and autism and shouting down anyone who has the gall to doubt her credentials (or, in the case of Denis Leary, to doubt the veracity of the abundance of recent autism diagnoses in this country in the first place). Because, really -- why trust those doctors and their medical degrees when you can listen to Jim Carrey's girlfriend?

There's little as obnoxious in the pop cultural sphere as the celebrity who declares him or herself the all-knowing, unrelenting voice of experience on a particular subject simply because it happened to have touched his or her life in some way. For every one Michael J. Fox, who's fought Parkinson's with staggering humility and a dignified focus that's truly benefited others, there are ten Jenny McCarthys -- who write books on how gross it is that white stuff sometimes comes out of your vagina during pregnancy.

Actually I take it back; there is one thing more obnoxious: someone who enables that person.

In this case, the one foisting Jenny's show on an innocent public -- the one whose personal largess pretty much guarantees that Jenny McCarthy will be the next big thing in daytime television -- is none other than the event horizon of all human experience: Oprah. No one absorbs, assimilates, then repackages under her own mantle the breadth of existence that Oprah does; if something hasn't happened to her -- it just hasn't happened. Who the hell knows, maybe Oprah assumes that being tangentially associated with someone whose child is autistic will qualify her as an expert on yet another subject currently capturing the public's imagination. She had to have some way to stick her greedy little fingers in the autism pie, seeing as how she won't be getting her own kid, autistic or otherwise, at any point short of chloroforming one at her school in South Africa and sneaking him or her through customs in a giant box marked "make-up."

The real problem is that celebrities of the Oprah and Jenny McCarthy stripe are so used to being deferred to on just about every issue by a sycophantic media that they really have come to arrogantly believe that they're qualified to offer an informed opinion on anything they've Googled once or twice or read an article on while sitting in First Class. When we're talking about, say, Oprah's favorite funnel cake recipe or Jenny's thoughts on the feel of silicone versus saline breast implants -- no harm, no foul. But when they begin playing doctor -- when Oprah hypes the latest trendy Hollywood colon cleanse or Jenny recommends that parents not inoculate their children or touts Scientology-esque "cures" for complex diseases -- that's when things get dangerous.

Nothing Jenny McCarthy has suggested about the link between vaccinations and autism has been proven -- far from it. But Jenny isn't letting that stop her campaign of ignorance. She has her convictions as a mother and her moral certitude as a celebrity.

And soon, she'll have a bigger audience than she's ever had before.

Re-Birtherism (Complete)

The Full Text of My Latest Piece for the Daily Banter

An ongoing meme on the podcast that Bob Cesca and I do involves a debate over how much good actually comes from constantly bitching online. It typically goes something like this: Bob plays the admittedly heroic role of the passionate crusader, a guy who fights injustice armed only with a keyboard and a microphone and who points out the insanity of modern politics with the goal of changing things for the better; I make a couple of shitty cracks, throw up my hands at the futility of it all, then go get drunk. All things considered it works out pretty well for us. He's like a righteous Felix Unger, cleaning things up as best he can, and I'm Oscar Madison, not giving a crap -- or at the very least Jack Klugman on the deck of the sailboat in the opening credits of Quincy, examining the chick in the bikini with a champagne glass in my hand.

I generally think Bob's doing God's work and I'm just being a slacker, but every once in a while I can say without fear of contradiction that, dammit, I'm right: Things are so thoroughly fucked-up that it's incomprehensible that any sort of raging against the dying of the light will make one bit of difference. Case in point: birtherism -- the conspiracy that simply will not die.

Chances are if you don't have a little card in your wallet that needs only one more punch to earn you a free night at Bellevue you thought the whole birther thing was put to rest years ago -- or at the very least, if you're particularly obstinate, last year when President Obama publicly smacked down reality TV asshole Donald Trump by producing his long-form birth certificate. Turns out you're wrong; like Jason Voorhees, who can't be stopped no matter how many times you stab, torch, shoot or blow him up, the thoroughly debunked belief that Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S. and therefore isn't constitutionally eligible to be president just keeps coming back for more.

Within just the past week or so, the secretary of state for Arizona -- a place that I'm convinced is some kind of experimental test bed used by aliens to measure human stupidity -- has threatened to keep Obama off the ballot in November pending an investigation into the authenticity of his birth certificate. Running concurrently with this mind-boggling idiocy is the ongoing investigation into Obama's true upbringing launched by real-life cartoon character Joe Arpaio, whose "threat unit" has now been dispatched to Hawaii to flash their badges as if they hold any fucking authority whatsoever and demand answers in what Arpaio and doddering buffoon Jerome Corsi are sure is the biggest conspiracy in U.S. history. And lest you think that only the ass-backward yokels of Arizona are perpetuating this long-since-decided nonsense, a copy of the platform being proposed by Republicans in Iowa shows that they'll officially demand that any candidate for President of the United States prove his or her natural born citizenship when they meet in mid-June. These aren't far-flung fringe lunatics we're talking about here; these are members of the ostensible GOP establishment -- and they're jumping feet-first into a pool clouded with the warm piss of conspiracist wack-jobs.

The nature of a conspiracy is that it's a self-reinforcing delusion: The less it appears to be real, the harder you look and don't find the answers you're sure are there, the more it proves that there's treachery afoot and that it involves the highest levels of power -- the only ones who could successfully engineer such an exhaustive cover-up. And you need look no further than talk radio clown Alex Jones -- whose latest YouTube video claims that his media contacts have warned him that the upcoming Ridley Scott film Prometheus will contain coded messages about the Illuminati -- to understand that there's profitability in ridiculous fear-mongering, whether it's making money, pandering to a specific audience or simply making yourself an icon among the very, very dumb. The result is always the same, though: A person who truly believes a conspiracy theory will not ever be convinced otherwise. It just won't happen.

Which brings me back to my original point: Why the fuck am I even writing this? I get the idea that it's important to point out to those not in the throes of a rage-and-resentment-fueled hallucination just how morally, ethically and mentally bankrupt the people are who've latched onto this horseshit and who refuse to let go; likewise, it makes sense a certain amount of sense to highlight whenever possible the fact that one political party in this country has aligned itself with this kind of farcical non-thinking. But at some point you just get tired of saying the same thing over and over again.

The first piece I ever wrote about birtherism was published in August of 2008. August of 2008. It's almost four years later -- and we're still talking about this crap. I have a semi-functional cerebral cortex, which means that I'm sick of it by now.

No, really, why the fuck am I still writing about this?

The Straight Dope

As promised, my latest piece for the Daily Banter deals with the conspiratorial freak-out from the right that you could've seen coming from a mile -- or at least a week -- away.

Here's the opening shot:

"Well, that didn’t take long.

Following a week that saw President Obama publicly throw his weight behind same-sex marriage — leading Newsweek to publish a for-shock-value-only cover declaring him 'The First Gay President' — his mortal enemies within the right-wing nutjob contingent are reacting exactly the way you’d expect."

Read the Rest Here

Quote of the Day

"President Obama and his allies in the press are trying to pull a fast one on you. You've heard all about the so-called 'contraception controversy,' well there's no such thing... his foot soldier, Sandra Fluke, a contraception activist, is at the center of the storm... President Obama, on the ropes with the economy and specifically with women voters, gets Mrs. Fluke to create a controversy, and the liberal media puppets play along as scripted."

-- Unrivaled jackass Eric Bolling discussing the contraception battle and Sandra Fluke's role in it last night on Fox News

You remember a couple of weeks ago when I said that I was giving serious thought to abandoning politics as a regular topic of conversation around here? This is why. What can you possibly say about something this delusional, divorced from reality and shamelessly batshit crazy? In an effort to spin this Republican-generated PR cataclysm into something its audience will be able to robotically harumph, Fox News is attempting to manufacture a conspiracy. No, Sandra Fluke isn't a concerned citizen with something to add to the very legitimate debate over contraception -- she's a sleeper agent activated by the White House during an election year in the hope of diverting attention away from President Obama's incompetence. There isn't even a national debate over contraception happening. In fact, there's no such thing as contraception -- or women for that matter. You are getting very sleepy.

It's like Bolling and his audience are living in some alternate universe where facts like an improving economy and President Obama's current popularity with women voters simply don't exist. This is Bellevue-quality paranoia. Is there any wonder -- any fucking wonder at all -- why Fox News viewers are the least informed in the country? They're peddled propagandist fantasy 24/7.

But again, is it even worth talking about anymore?

Tweet of the Day

RIP, Parody. You'll be missed.

Assistant To the Quote of the Day, Jr.

"The president's liberal friends in Hollywood targeting a younger demographic, using animated movies to sell their agenda... Hollywood is once again trying to indoctrinate our children... demonizing the 1% and espousing green energy policies."

-- Lou Dobbs on The Lorax

I pass this along with the knowledge that you didn't see him actually say this since Dobbs was forced to take his act to Fox Business a while back. (FYI: That's a cable TV network.)

I swear, Richard Pryor, Mel Brooks and the entire staff of the Onion brainstorming in a room together couldn't come up with shit like this -- the ominous conspiracy theories that the terrified right is always pulling out of its collective tight ass and trumpeting. They'd toss anything like it in the garbage for fear that it wouldn't be believable enough to make convincing satire.

It's gotta just suck to be insane enough to see threats to liberty in the shadows of every corner, even under your children's bed and in the cartoons they watch.

Interesting side note, though: I figured Dobbs would be really into the Lorax considering that they look so much alike -- fat, orange, loudmouthed and typically surly.

It's Not Easy Being Red

No sooner had I mentioned Fox News's lunatic bent toward victimization at the hands of the great liberal conspiracy than this nonsense popped into my in-box. Yeah, I know I'm actually a day late with it. I had a thing.

The Hollywood Reporter: Fox Business Host Calls Muppets Communist/12.5.11

I'd put it up as a Quote of the Day, but Eric Bolling is such a ridiculous self-parody that he isn't even worth it. Speaking of which, is it worth mentioning that the new Muppets movie was released by Disney, which is one of the most soullessly conservative corporate behemoths on the planet, to the point where Walt himself, were he alive today, probably would've delighted in setting Occupy Wall Street protesters on fire while kicking an immigrant in the balls.

The Born Insecurity: Update

Good for Salon -- they're shooting the "Trig Truther" conspiracy theory full of giant holes.

Now can you imagine a conservative website, television network or radio show releasing an extended piece thoroughly debunking the Obama birther myth?

Salon: Trig Trutherism: The Definitive Debunker/4.22.11

Trig Unhappy

Remember the piece I posted here last week, pegged off an academic paper written by a Kentucky college professor, that kind of attempted to dissect why the mainstream media didn't bother with the Sarah-Trig Palin conspiracy theory? Remember how that piece was turned down by the Huffington Post?

Well, now we know why.

According to an article running at Politico right now, HuffPo has forbidden any debate over whether Trig is the son of Bristol Palin (and apparently any discussion of the anatomy of the debate itself). According to Huffington spokesperson Mario Ruiz, the reason for the ban on so-called "Trig Truthers" -- and I'll give you a minute to laugh at how fluent we've all become in this kind of ridiculous Orwellian Newspeak -- is that they would violate a HuffPo policy against publishing conspiracy theories.

Of course there's nothing wrong with declaring a controversy fabricated out of thin air and based on little more than unsubstantiated speculation to be out of bounds; it's good journalism not to entertain every half-baked hypothesis or long-debunked argument just because there are a few people out there who happen to be lunatic enough to refuse to let go of it.

I mean, that would be as absurd and unethical as, oh I don't know, constantly giving a former Playboy bunny without a medical degree a forum to pen long-winded screeds connecting autism to childhood vaccines -- even though such a connection had been widely and unequivocally rejected as fraudulent.

Right?

That the kind of conspiracy theory HuffPo's talking about not allowing?

A Womb With No View

I've mentioned on a couple of occasions that I've only had one piece turned down flat by the Huffington Post; that would be the one I wrote a couple of years back skewering Jenny McCarthy for her militantly ignorant stance on the supposed connection between childhood vaccines and autism.

Well, as of this morning, that number has gone up.

The HuffPo team says it's passing on the Sarah-Trig Palin column I published here yesterday. Why, I'm not quite sure -- and I didn't bother to ask since I know I'll get a nebulously deflective answer. But I'm putting this out there only because I'd be curious to see if you, dear readers, have any thoughts on it.

Obviously, the Huffington Post can publish whatever it wants; I'm not the least bit upset over this and I understand if the HuffPo brain trust -- which appreciates the notion of liability far more than I do and therefore is less likely to light everything on fire just for the hell of it -- considers the topic of the Sarah and Trig Palin rumor some kind of third-rail. But it did leave me wondering if I struck the right tone with what I wrote, given that I in no way meant to imply that there's validity to the Palin birth conspiracy theory, only that when considered relative to the Obama birther myth it would have been as worthy (or not worthy) of media scrutiny.

So, opinions? And should I now circulate the piece everywhere I can under the heading of "THE ARTICLE THE HUFFINGTON POST DOESN'T WANT YOU TO SEE"?

I kid.

Search and Destroy

It should be beyond dispute by now that Glenn Beck's batshit crazy shtick is just that -- shtick. But I'm really starting to think that he's actually trying to make his audience of paranoid pensioners terrified of absolutely everything.

The Huffington Post: Glenn Beck Goes After Google/2.17.11

(Update: Cesca makes a really good point -- one that I'd initially considered but was naive enough to quickly dismiss as over-the-top -- that by demonizing Google, Beck is basically telling his minions that any information gleaned from it that debunks his ridiculous conspiracy theory matrix should be questioned. In other words, it can be translated into this cliché: "Don't you get it? You can't trust Google. They're in on the conspiracy!")