There's a sucker born every minute, and most of them have Web connections. Case in point: An Internet video, "Loose Change," purports to prove 9/11 was an inside job orchestrated by the government. (Where the name came from, I have no idea.) It was put together by three young men who, no doubt, think themselves very brave for speaking truth to power, or something like that.
I think they're idiots.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The mere fact that they woke up safe and sound this morning disproves their point. But the larger objection is this: Who in their right mind could possibly believe such a theory?
The video claims that a cruise missile, not an airliner, hit the Pentagon. It also claims that the Twin Towers were brought down by controlled demolitions and that Flight 93 landed at a NASA base and the people on board "disappeared."
Leaving aside for the moment every possible political bias, let's think just how many people it would take to pull off a stunt like this. Engineers, demolitions experts, pretty much anyone who worked anywhere in the buildings involved and the people on the planes (plus their families) would all have to be bought off to make sure they didn't talk.
Now imagine how much money that would take. It must have been a whole, whole lot of money, because in five long years, not one credible person has gone to the press and said, "Hey, George W. Bush blew up the Twin Towers, and I can prove it." If the White House couldn't keep people from knowing about its connection to a burglary at a Washington, D.C. hotel, how could it possibly keep something this big under its hat?
And Woodward and Bernstein didn't have the Internet, either.
I remember that some group had a showing of "Loose Change" on campus last fall. I didn't go to it. I had better things to do, like look for favorite childhood cartoons on YouTube. But I imagine at least a few people showed up, and of those few, at least one believed what he or she saw. It stands to reason: People all over the world have swallowed this video whole.
I would hate to think someone on this campus has done that.
I like to think of Ball State University as one of the saner campuses in this great nation. We don't have huge demonstrations every time someone's feelings get hurt; we don't have major student/security clashes. But sometimes I think I'd rather have that kind of craziness than the kind exhibited in "Loose Change." At least with big demonstrations, everyone gets their nuttiness out in the open for an afternoon and then goes home. With the other kind, it just sort of lurks under the surface and pops up once in a while in conversation. This is the sort of craziness that feeds off a person's need for importance and need to be in on something.
I know because I used to eat up conspiracy theories like cinnamon toast, and if I was still like that I'd have been all over "Loose Change." But then one day I realized that most conspiracy theories are actually pretty lame when you think them through. They're like Halloween costumes: They look scary and cool in the dark, but in daylight you'd be a fool to be frightened of them. They're just cheap plastic, old clothes and a little greasepaint.
The sort of thing you buy with your loose change.
Joanna Lees is a senior magazine journalism major and writes 'The Scenic Route' for the Daily News. Her views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper.
Write to Joanna at jllees@bsu.edu.
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