DEBUNKED!

CONSPIRACY THEORIES, URBAN LEGENDS, AND EVIL PLOTS OF THE 21ST CENTURYBy RICHARD ROEPER

CHICAGO REVIEW PRESS

Copyright © 2008 Richard Roeper
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55652-707-4

Contents

Introduction..............................................................................................viiI EVIL PLOTS1 The Steel Didn't Have to Melt..........................................................................32 The Clinton Kill Count.................................................................................193 The Conspiracy That Won't Di...........................................................................234 The Kennedy Assassination, 1999 Edition................................................................29II THE MEDIA5 It's a Media Blackout..................................................................................396 Katrina and the Waves of Misinformation................................................................477 The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy..........................................................................55III SPORTS AND GAMING8 Online Poker Conspiracies Flushed Out..................................................................599 The NFL: National Fixed-Ball League....................................................................6710 Casino Culture........................................................................................8311 Curt Schilling and the Bloody Red Sox.................................................................91IV ENTERTAINMENT12 The Sopranos' Last Supper.............................................................................9913 The Secret of The Secret..............................................................................10514 Beware of False Idol Votes............................................................................117V BUSINESS15 I'll Have an Iced Grande Vanilla Nonfat Conspiracy....................................................12716 Rummy and the Bird Flu................................................................................13517 Evian is Naive Spelled Backwards......................................................................139VI MIRACLES18 Dead Man Talking!.....................................................................................14519 It's a Miracle-That Some People Believe This Stuff....................................................153VII THE CULTURE20 The "War" on Christmas................................................................................16521 Classical Gas.........................................................................................17722 Warning: Jager Bombs Can Kill You!....................................................................18123 The Godless Dollar Coin...............................................................................18724 Rock Me Nostradamus...................................................................................191VIII POLITICS25 Bush's Mystery Bulge..................................................................................19726 Barack Obama: Radical Muslim!.........................................................................20327 The Hate Crime Prevention Act.........................................................................209IX MOVIES28 Of Soylent Green and Men in Black: The Best and Worst Conspiracy Movies Ever Made.....................215Index.....................................................................................................237

Chapter One

THE STEEL DIDN'T HAVE TO MELT

Well your a moron Dick I will never buy or read the Sun Times after your column on Rosie today! She has more courage than you will have in your next 100 lives combined. I'm a Navy veteran and ... I can tell you for a FACT that 9-11 was a complete and total INSIDE JOB! Keep selling your country down the river for your newspaper paycheck you are now and always will be a piece of shit traitor. You don't have the guts to print an honest 9-11 piece. -One of the more reasoned e-mails I received from 9/11 conspiracy theorists after I wrote a column expressing doubts about Rosie O'Donnell's 9/11 opinions

If there were one point I'd like to drive into the mindsets of all the conspiracy theorists that look at the events of 9/11 not as one of the most tragic days in American history but as the mother lode of all conspiracies, it would be this:

The steel didn't have to melt.

Every time I make even a passing reference to 9/11 conspiracies on TV or radio or in my newspaper column, I hear from the indefatigable legions of 9/11 skeptics.

They send me 2,000-word rants about the "Phantom Plane" and the Pentagon.

They provide handy links to all sorts of Web sites offering "proof" of a wide-ranging 9/11 conspiracy that begins and ends with the White House.

They make claims about "secret government facilities" that house the passengers and the crews from the flights that "supposedly crashed."

They ask unanswerable questions, as if doing so somehow adds weight to their arguments.

And they inevitably trot out the supposedly irrefutable proof that preplanted explosives felled the World Trade Center. This proof hinges on the theory that jet fuel doesn't burn at a high enough temperature to melt steel, and therefore the steel didn't melt, and therefore something else had to make the buildings collapse. Something like preplanted explosive devices.

But here's the thing:

The steel didn't have to melt.

When jet fuel burns, it reaches temperatures of up to 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and it's true that steel won't yet melt at that temperature-but try to find an experienced firefighter who has ever come across fully melted steel at even the worst fire scene. (Charred and bent and distorted, yes. Melted? No.) For the towers to collapse (say it with me now), the steel frames of the WTC didn't have to melt-they had to sag and crack and experience stress, which is surely what happened. At 1,500 degrees, the steel frames would have lost 75 percent or more of their strength-and that's enough for a building to collapse.

Pointing out that jet fuel doesn't burn at temperatures high enough to melt steel has about as much relevance as pointing out it was a sunny and beautiful day in New York City on September 11, 2001.

* * *

You'd think conspiracy theorists would embrace the known facts of 9/11. After all, it was a conspiracy-a complicated, audacious, obscenely horrible conspiracy involving a multitude of murderous thugs acting in concert at the behest of an evil, United States-hating terrorist.

Like any such plot in recorded history, it was a messy and mistake-riddled conspiracy that could have fallen apart at any number of junctures. There is no such thing as a "perfect" conspiracy. If there were, the conspiracy theorists wouldn't know about it, because then it wouldn't be perfect, would it?

But just because it was sloppy and preventable doesn't mean it didn't happen-nor does it mean there "has" to be a more elaborate and even more devious plot behind the plot.

Before sunset on 9/11, conspiracy theorists were already working themselves into frenzied speculation about what was really going on. By now the 9/11 conspiracy game is an industry unto itself, with dozens of Web sites, DVDs, and books dedicated to "exposing" the "real truth" about what...