Conspiracy

Generally speaking, I'm a fan of Jerry Quickly. He hosts the 5-6 pm current affairs show on KPFK on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. He's entertaining, engaging, and, most of the time, politically astute. He's so good at what he does, in fact, that when the show is expanded during fundraising drives (like the one going on now) they have him host the two hour extra-long version of Beneath The Surface every day, Monday to Friday.

But he seems to have a weakness for 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and I find that frustrating and hard to understand. Today, for example, the main gift for donations was some "documentary" in that general area. They played audio clips and had the creator on as a guest, intermixed with Jerry doing his "give us money" patter.

Now, I'm all for having an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out. I can't comment on the big deal they were making of flashes of light and things under the 9/11 planes where they shouldn't be, because all I heard was the audio. But there is one point they made a big deal of that anyone should be able to rebutt with ease.

The point in question is that George W. Bush, at some point in the last couple of years, answered a question from an adoring young fan about what he was doing on 9/11 in a way that included saying he watched the first plane hit the WTC on television. There is only one known piece of footage of that event. It was captured by some French documentary filmmakers who happened to be there and it was not released until some time after. So this guest and Jerry go to the wall saying that the only possible explanations are that Bush was deliberately lying on that day, which he would have no reason to do, or he and the government knew what was going to happen (or even planned it) and watched the whole thing on some feed from a secret government videographer who was lying in wait to film it.

Uh-huh. Really.

Or how about the fact that he's a big dummy who says stupid, inane, incoherent, incorrect things all the time? It seems to me that Occam's Razor -- the principle that the simplest explanation is the most likely -- dictates that this piece of data is most easily accounted for by the "guy who says dumb, wrong stuff all the time said a dumb, wrong thing" explanation.

Neither Jerry nor his guest mentioned this.

Sigh.

Anyway, KPFK still rocks most of the time. Donate if you have money to spare!