Salon looks at Truther signees

[Sporanox]

In order to commemorate Patriot Day in some kind of royally messed up fashion, Salon has elected to publish the following piece:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/11/truth_petition/index.html

Haven't posted here in a while, but I wanted to hear people's thoughts on this - the piece itself and the drivel from the persons contacted.

Great moments in academia:

Gray Brechin, historical geographer and visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley's Department of Geography:
Since when did Salon permit Glenn Beck and the almost equally loony WSJ editorial page to set the terms of discussion, calling those who want answers to so much that remains unexplained about 9/11 "truthers" and thus giving them equivalence with "birthers," "deathers" and "tea baggers"?


Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law and practice at Princeton University; distinguished visiting professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara:
I would re-sign the 9/11 statement calling for investigation and clarification with respect to the series of questions that have never been satisfactorily answered. To call for an investigation along these lines does not make one "a 9/11 truther" or an endorser of a conspiracy theory.

I have to be honest - I didn't expect to hear the "just asking questions" tripe from a Princeton faculty member.

Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University:
Yes, if I had it to do over again, I would sign that statement readily, since the questions that it raises are not just legitimate but terribly important -- and they have not been answered credibly.

[gtc]

calling those who want answers to so much that remains unexplained about 9/11 "truthers" and thus giving them equivalence with "birthers," "deathers" and "tea baggers"?

That's worth a stundie nomination. It works on so many levels.

[Sporanox]

Can we put it in the September running? :D

[gtc]

Done.

[MikeW]

I have to be honest - I didn't expect to hear the "just asking questions" tripe from a Princeton faculty member.
Richard Falk wrote the foreword for David Ray Griffin's New Pearl Harbour, so he's a long association with tripe.

I see Mark Crispin Miller spouting some of his own with the usual misleading funding comparisons: "[the 9/11 Commission] was deliberately enfeebled by Bush/Cheney: grossly underfunded ($3 million -- while, for example, the budget for the study of the Challenger disaster was $50 million, and Whitewater cost over $40 million)"

[Brainster]

Quote:
Since when did Salon permit Glenn Beck and the almost equally loony WSJ editorial page to set the terms of discussion, calling those who want answers to so much that remains unexplained about 9/11 "truthers" and thus giving them equivalence with "birthers," "deathers" and "tea baggers"?

He's got the order reversed. People (including me) started calling them the "Birthers" to discredit them by associating them with the "Truthers".

[dudalb]

More proof that political ideology can makes idiots of us all..even if you have PHD's and teach at a college level.

[Perfume V]

I have to be honest - I didn't expect to hear the "just asking questions" tripe from a Princeton faculty member.

Yeah, you'd have thought by that time they'd have been able to just answer some of those questions.

[Puppycow]

I think Krauthammer puts it well (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/10/AR2009091003408.html?hpid=opinionsbox1):

You can no more have a truther in the White House than you can have a Holocaust denier -- a person who creates a hallucinatory alternative reality in the service of a fathomless malice.
. . .
But on the eighth anniversary of 9/11 -- a day when there were no truthers among us, just Americans struck dumb by the savagery of what had been perpetrated on their innocent fellow citizens -- a decent respect for the memory of that day requires that truthers, who derangedly desecrate it, be asked politely to leave. By everyone.

I personally think that, unless they are prevented by tenure rules or something, that any university professors who are Truthers should be fired. Put them in the same category as the Holocaust deniers.

[beachnut]

I think Krauthammer puts it well (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/10/AR2009091003408.html?hpid=opinionsbox1):

I personally think that, unless they are prevented by tenure rules or something, that any university professors who are Truthers should be fired. Put them in the same category as the Holocaust deniers.
This part was a good summary.
But reality doesn't daunt Jones's defenders. One Obama administration source told ABC that Jones hadn't read the 2004 petition carefully enough, an excuse echoed by Howard Dean.

Carefully enough? It demanded the investigation of charges "that people within the current [Bush] administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

Where is the confusing fine print? Where is the syntactical complexity? Where is the perplexing ambiguity? An eighth-grader could tell you exactly what it means. A Yale Law School graduate could not?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/10/AR2009091003408.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
What you sign does mean a lot. Joining the nut case conspracy loons is not a good idea.

[Sporanox]

What you sign does mean a lot. Joining the nut case conspracy loons is not a good idea.

No kidding. Unfortunately, a number of posts in the blogosphere now defend him on the grounds that 35% of Dems believed this at one time...

Makes me wonder exactly how people view conspiracy theories on their side of the political spectrum. I expect this same problem will crop up with a few loose-mouthed birthers down the road as well.

[Sporanox]

I think Krauthammer puts it well:

He does indeed.