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I myself prefer the paranoia of those who make the latter choice; specifically, the Democratic-leaning nuts. Don't confuse these Very Special Democrats with the standard TV variety: Those who see attacks on the elderly in every Republican eye, love taxes almost carnally, and still mumble about butterfly ballots over dinner. The Democratic nuts I'm talking about are the ones who believe, for instance, that George W. Bush is a steely eyed Machiavellian oligarch who, with all the anonymity and success of the assassin on the grassy knoll, manipulated five members of the Supreme Court into committing treason to give him the election — that he's Goldfinger in a cowboy hat. These are the same nuts who, on other days, paint up President Bush as hapless Fredo to his father's Don Corleone — this, as quickly as they went from worshipping Bill Clinton as a blow-dried concordance of all wonk-knowledge to running interference for him as a helpless hillbilly who's just a-doin' what comes naturally. (Note to Dems: Stop following up your "Bush is a dummy" stuff with your frustration at how successful he is at beating you these days. If he's really that slow, what does that make you?) Short of teasing Terry McAuliffe with a bag full of yen, nothing is more fun than Democratic conspiracy theories. They think we went overboard about Clinton? HellOOO! Some Democratic rumors just now make our own guesswork about a Bill Clinton love child look as earthbound as a Matlock plot. Consider Peter Sinclair, whose successful cartoon strip "Alex's Restaurant" is set — appropriately for him — in Grassy Knoll, Wisconsin. From his website, Mr. Sinclair is busy swinging the bat for Georgia Rep. Cynthia "Did Bush fly the plane?" McKinney: "Watch for her to be held up to all kinds of ridicule. Perhaps she has gone too far by suggesting, at this stage, direct foreknowledge by President Bush. … [S]peculation … is rampant already." Perhaps that depends on what the meaning of the word "rampant" is. If by "rampant" he means "never occurred outside of Peter Sinclair's cell meeting," he might have a point. Still, I imagine Osama bin Laden phoning Miss McKinney and Mr. Sinclair: "I appreciate your enthusiasm, but let's give me credit where credit is due, hmm?" Mr. Sinclair is a first-rate conspiracy aficionado. In a section of his website apparently inaccessible from the parts about his cartooning, he chronicles the evolution of his less successful intellectual progeny, that 9/11 was home-brewed in the Oval Office. Mr. Sinclair suggests, among other things, that George W. Bush was involved in the attack and in an attendant cover up; that preparations for the war in Afghanistan were in progress long before 9/11; that Flight 93 was shot down by an American fighter; that 9/11 came about because Mr. Bush wanted to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan; and that a six-foot-tall butterscotch candy is chasing Mr. Sinclair around his home while trying to steal his telephone. (That last one's my own theory, but speculation is rampant already.) According to Mr. Sinclair, many similar conspiracies are a bit less likely, though meritorious enough to earn his "Good Question" label. (He awards this. Really.) Mr. Sinclair suggests that Zacarias Moussaoui was protected by the U.S. government while he prepared for the attack, and that American Airlines shareholders used their hush-hush foreknowledge of the tragedy to make a killing in the stock market. I found Sinclair's site through a link off of Buzz Flash — the Internet's Democratic Whine Festival. It's only one of many sites giving great play to — or at least putting quotation marks around — words such as "suicide"; as the fearless, factless investigators at the lefty American Politics Journal did with this breathless headline: "Police Whitewash Enron Exec 'Suicide." (The story under the banner was a Houston Chronicle squib announcing the formal ruling of suicide in the death of J. Clifford Baxter after the lab work made it back through the mail.) Catherine Austin Fitts, a former investment banker and former Republican HUD executive more than a decade ago, has spent the intervening years on the "CIA Deals Crack" circuit, playing to X-Files-style cranks and UFO theorists. Appearing March 6 on uber-left Berkeley's Flashpoint radio show — the same program where Miss McKinney accused the President of helping orchestrate a surprise attack on his own country — Miss Fitts preached her latest notion of Enron, Harvard, HUD and maybe even drug kingpins involved in a huge money-laundering scheme to defraud, well, somebody. Most of this fringe-Dem stuff makes David Icke's Lizard-Shapeshifter Conspiracy look smart. (What do you mean — you don't know about the lizards? Really? Well, that's right-wing media bias for you. Strictly between you and me, the Babylonian Brotherhood of reptile-form puppet masters is hiding in the fourth dimension as they implement the New World Order. You think I'm kidding about this one? Run any of those words — any at all — through a search engine and see what you get.) Then again, maybe the Dem-friendly conspiracists are on to something big — really big. After all, I've heard — can't name the source, sorry — that the Bilderbergers are very unhappy lately. — Michael Long is a director of the White House Writers Group. |
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the White House wisely grants more latitude to the FBI's terror investigators,
the rumble of the civil-rights nuts begins. Those on both the furthest
left and furthest right will see this, respectively, as taking the Next
Big Step toward 1) Big Brother or 2) the establishment of John Ashcroft
as all-purpose King, Policeman, and Potentate Against Everything From
Non-Traditional Sexual Positions on Down.
