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defrogAs I've mentioned before, I likes me a good conspiracy theory. They are great entertainment. However, it’s important to keep track of where the fun ends, and reality begins. Which is why, whenever a news story breaks that seems to give credence to the more outrageous claims on one side of a politically charged issue, I find it’s helpful to await further developments.
One recent example is the census worker who was found strung up with the word “FED” scrawled on his chest. A whole lot of left-wing bloggers jumped on that one suggesting strongly that the Teabagger hysteria over the census being a plot by Obama to turn America into Cuba had gone too far and the extremists were ready to start killing people.
Turns out it was a suicide insurance scam. And now Michelle Malkin is demanding retractions and apologies.
And you thought irony was dead.
On the flip side, we had the story that someone had hacked the email server of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and posted over a thousand emails of scientists discussing global warming research.
Global warming skeptics and general-purpose right-wing bloggers jumped all over the emails, claiming that the emails provided conclusive evidence that scientists were actively colluding to alter data to fit the global-warming theory. While they were at it, they complained that the MSM [mainstream media] was in on the conspiracy by refusing to report the content of the emails and treating it as a plain hacker story.
Turns out they were cherry-picking emails, and that when you actually sit down and read them in context, none of them demonstrate any evidence whatsoever of a conspiracy to commit science fraud.
Unless you want them to.
That’s the great thing about conspiracies: there’s an explanation for everything that contradicts yr own claims.
What fun!
Back to reality,
This is dF
One recent example is the census worker who was found strung up with the word “FED” scrawled on his chest. A whole lot of left-wing bloggers jumped on that one suggesting strongly that the Teabagger hysteria over the census being a plot by Obama to turn America into Cuba had gone too far and the extremists were ready to start killing people.
Turns out it was a suicide insurance scam. And now Michelle Malkin is demanding retractions and apologies.
And you thought irony was dead.
On the flip side, we had the story that someone had hacked the email server of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and posted over a thousand emails of scientists discussing global warming research.
Global warming skeptics and general-purpose right-wing bloggers jumped all over the emails, claiming that the emails provided conclusive evidence that scientists were actively colluding to alter data to fit the global-warming theory. While they were at it, they complained that the MSM [mainstream media] was in on the conspiracy by refusing to report the content of the emails and treating it as a plain hacker story.
Turns out they were cherry-picking emails, and that when you actually sit down and read them in context, none of them demonstrate any evidence whatsoever of a conspiracy to commit science fraud.
Unless you want them to.
That’s the great thing about conspiracies: there’s an explanation for everything that contradicts yr own claims.
What fun!
Back to reality,
This is dF
