Some guy told me it was true… When somebody starts a sentence with those words, I immediately become very skeptical. This is the beginning of a story that has a good chance of being a conspiracy theory. Hey, I like a good conspiracy theory. For example, do you really believe Bobby Bones (can’t be his real name) could win Dancing With The Stars without some help from high up. Some guy told me it was true. Who is the guy? That’s the beauty of conspiracy theories, you don’t have to reveal your source. Just say, “some guy,” and let your victim figure out if it’s true. Now back to real “fake” stories.
I have worked in publishing for years and have had plenty of opportunities to make things up. That was allowed as long as I was writing my first person columns. I was trying to get a laugh. Everything I wrote was based in fact but at times I would bend things to make it seem humorous. It was well marked for the gullible. There were also times where I did real reporting, (ok, the woman who was supposed to do it called in sick and someone had to step up) and I was responsible for documenting everything I wrote. Research, that’s real work. Making things up is much easier.
Conspiracy theories have been around for as long as man walked the earth. How about that Julius Cesar assassination? Some guy told me…sorry, got off track.
Some of the most circulated conspiracies in this country over the past 80 years include Franklin Roosevelt letting Pearl Harbor happen to usher us into World War II, UFOs crashing at Roswell, Jimmy Hoffa vanishing, the Moon landing was staged and the Dallas Cowboys are America’s team (couldn’t resist).
The Kennedy Assassination provided all different kinds of theories. Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t act alone. There was a shooter on the grassy knoll. Either the Cubans, Mafia or Lyndon Johnson planned his killing. That Oliver Stone would make an overwrought movie about the whole thing. It provided fodder for decades.
There’s the rub. We’ve always had conspiracy theories but we didn’t have a daily barrage of them. We had weeks, months or years to flesh them out and add our own twist. How can I get all panicky about the most current theory when I’m handed a new one in a few hours. At this rate, I’ll never find out what happened to Hillary’s emails, or was it Whitewater or maybe Bengazi. There are so many, I can’t keep up.
There was one conspiracy theory that did set one guy off. A not so reliable source reported that the Clinton’s were running a child sex ring in the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C. Outrageous! If that were really true somebody should do something about it…and someone did. A gullible, AK47 toting believer went to Washington and shot the place up with his assault rifle. Problem was, he had difficulty finding the basement, since there was none. The only abuse going on in the place were people devouring their pizzas or the pizzas themselves. It was a miracle no one was killed.
One of my favorite movies is “All the President’s Men.” It is based on a book with the same name. It is about two reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who exposed the corruption in the Nixon administration about the Watergate burglary and cover-up. They were played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. I’ve seen the real players and the movie actors were a bit of an upgrade. Sorry, guys. I have two sources to confirm it, my wife and her friend.
In the movie, these reporters are digging up damaging information on a real conspiracy but being forced to confirm their info with multiple sources. No theories allowed there, just the truth. As a result it brought down the Nixon administration and gave us the unfortunate ability to add the word “gate” to the end of any political scandal. How annoying is that? If the actress Christine Applegate did something nefarious, would it be Applegate-gate?
Instead of reliable news sources providing us the last word on any of these scandals, our information comes from the internet and social media. Now there’s a bastion of reliability. While the New York Times, Washington Post and other reliable news sources are having their reporters dig deep for facts, some bully jumps on Twitter, spouts a name, puts gate behind it and presto, you have a real live conspiracy theory without any facts to back it up. Next thing you know, a perfectly innocent person is forced to deny something that is complete fiction. Now, I heard that the guy making up these stories is XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. Damn, my editor redacted me again. Guess I have to find a more reliable source than my cat Deep Throat.
The target of such drive-by character assassination, can deny it all they want but the damage is done and the misinformation grows like a wildfire. The fabricator walks away without being held responsible to spread more venom.
Unfortunately the one person that does it more than most is sitting in the White House. He taps away on Twitter trying to distract us from the reality of his disastrous administration. Don’t worry though. I heard that the alien species that left him here as a baby in Roswell, New Mexico will be coming back soon to take him home and we will be able to get back to our normal lives. Some guy told me it was true…and, it’s more plausible than anything he ever said.
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