Bruce continues his examination of Alexander Cockburn’s put-down of the 9/11 contrarians, those who think more was done to pull down the unimaginative architectural shoebox monstrosities at the lower end of Manhattan than simply flying a couple of airliners full of passengers and jet fuel into them.
We’ll never have proof because any evidence pro or con was hauled away and destroyed. So, I think it doesn’t do a lot of good to speculate. Jerry McNeely, my screen writing teacher hammered on the fact that truth is stranger than fiction so a writer should stay away from it. This was before the age of the docu-drama. And of course most docu-dramas suck, proving his point that a good story is a contrivance simply told. I don’t know what the story is regarding the WTC demolition and I don’t think it matters. What matters is what’s happening every day. The energy spent detailing the conspiracies around bin Laden, the deaths of Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan, the Bush/Saudi partnership, the furshlugginer Grassy Knoll… all of these things are better put aside to concentrate on why Billy Frist is a suck dog opportunist and Glenn Reynolds is his Butt Boy, on why Senator Allen never should have been elected in the first place, and why he damn sure better not be elected now that everybody knows he is an overt racist elitist bigot of the first water.
The conspiracy of course exists. Laura Bush is as culpable as her Pet Goat. The point is, that we don’t get anywhere poring over dead documents like the Warren Commission report. We get somewhere when we can expose the current misbehavior of the miscreants in such a way that even the NASCAR daddies become ashamed to identify with them.
When Senator Allen speaks of the turtles in his pond and says “Around here, only the [African Americans] eat them,” he scores points with his constituency. The politics of conspiracy are also politics of polarization, but one offhand racial epithet from a patrician senator playing good-old-boy mobilizes more bigoted assholes than the most brilliant conspiracy theory mobilizes well intentioned and thoughtful liberals, no matter how well wrought the theory.
erry McNeely, my screen writing teacher hammered on the fact that truth is stranger than fiction so a writer should stay away from it.
It says a lot about how far we’ve come when a coordinated plot by religious fanatics, involving 19 martyrs and dozens or hundreds of support players hijak four airliners, turn them into improvised cruise missles and slaughter thousands of people … is not strange or amazing enough.
Put what happened but on 9/11 in a book on 9/10 and it would have been rejected by an intelligent reader as too outlandish and stretching the credibility of even a Tom Clancy-esue thriller.
Precisely. Truth IS stranger than fiction. Nobody would believe it, which is why it makes a bad story.
“it would have been rejected by an intelligent reader”
especially if the mastermind (a favorite term of fiction writers and politicians alike) is a CIA asset!
Bruce, are you suggesting that Osama may never have left the CIA payroll and that could have something to do with the difficulty we have finding him? I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!
you read it here first, folks.