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Back in the Golden Age of Radio,
there was a program called I Love a Mystery.
Even though it lasted only five years, there are any number of people who
still subscribe to its title, and who will even create mysteries and
conundrums where none exist. We call them "conspiracy theorists," and today we take note of them.
Why? Well, August 5th marks the 47th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, and that occasion reminds us of the many conspiracy
theories that have arisen in the decades since. Monroe, a troubled woman who
had many personal problems in her final years, could not simply have either taken her own life or accidentally overdosed
on barbiturates, these theorists insist. It's obvious to them that
she was murdered because of her tenuous connections to organized crime or her romantic entanglements with John F. Kennedy or his brother Robert
-- or both.
Mentioning the Kennedys opens its own particular can of worms. Were they
murdered by lone assassins, as the evidence suggests, or were they victims of a
cabal that included -- solely, or in various combinations -- Lyndon B. Johnson, the Mafia, the CIA, Fidel Castro, the Soviet Union,
or the military-industrial complex? You’d think a conspiracy that large would have leaked
out somewhere over the past four decades, but so far, only rumor and innuendo have made it through the filter.
Of course, that's the beauty of the conspiracy theory. Only a few random
facts or inconsistencies can be knitted together to form a vast plot that
would make even the most ambitious comic book supervillain blush. Let us
assure you, though, that Dr. Doom wasn't behind the recent transition to digital TV,
and Lex Luthor had nothing to do with killing the electric car (he did steal 40 cakes, though).
In some sense, conspiracy theories are fun. It's like something straight out
of a movie to imagine that aliens did indeed crash land at Roswell, New Mexico, and that their technology is being studied at Area 51, or that water fluoridation was a plot
by Communists to pollute the "precious bodily fluids" of Americans.
But, on the other hand, some theories are too dark to laugh off. 9/11 "Truthers"
have amassed much "evidence" that "proves" that the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were inside jobs, and a number of coups d’etat and overthrown
governments that were alleged to be conspiracies turned out to be actual conspiracies (usually headed by the CIA).
Lately, the most persistent conspiracy comes to us courtesy of the "Birthers,"
who are convinced, despite all logic and no actual evidence or proof, that President Obama was either born in Kenya
or is somehow not a U.S. citizen. (Seems like Stephen Colbert's "truthiness" went further than he imagined.)
Let it not be said, though, that just because something is dismissed as a
crackpot conspiracy theory doesn’t mean it's not real. The men who gather in
Northern California's Bohemian Grove every year to meet and plan their global domination?
That one's legit.
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