Profiles in Debunking Courage: Counterpunch
We linked to Counterpunch's terrific series of articles debunking 9-11 Denial a couple of months ago.
Today, I listened to an interview with Counterpunch's co-editor where he mentioned that the magazine took some wounds from those articles. I was a little surprised and skeptical, until he said (about 3 minutes into the interview):
"Fifty percent, I would say, at least, of our readers believe to one degree or another, that the Bush Administration was responsible responsible for--orchestrated or was in some other way complicit in the 9-11 attacks."
Now, Counterpunch's readership is not exactly mainstream America; it's well Left of the Democratic Party. But it takes real courage for a newsletter to write so forcefully against a conspiracy theory that half of its readership believes.
posted by Pat @ 12:10 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Well, not that I am in favor of criticizing anyone, but Bush does set himself up quite a bit. I find it humorous.
Even so that's no reason to believe 9/11 conspiracies. I dislike the guy to, but I'm not going to let my emotions cloud my judgment. This Bush Derangement Syndrome is getting out of control.
The readership of Counterpunch isn't even on the Democratic Party's radar.
I disliked Clinton, but you didn't see me claiming that he blew up the USS Cole with a death beam laser.
Shawn, I meant Left of the Democratic Party, not on the Left of the Democratic Party. My bad.
Actually, if truth be known, given the Clinton admin was in power right up to 9 months before 9/11, if you were to pick an admin to blame for it....lol
TAM
I missed this article when it was published but Cockburn hits the nail on the head with this description of the fruitcakes:
It's the same pattern with the 9/11 conspiracists, who proffer what they demurely call "disturbing questions", though they disdain all answers but their own. They seize on coincidences and force them into sequences they deem to be logical and significant. Like mad Inquisitors, they pounce on imagined clues in documents and photos, torturing the data - as the old joke goes about economists -- till the data confess. Their treatment of eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence is whimsical. Apparent anomalies that seem to nourish their theories are brandished excitedly; testimony that undermines their theories--like witnesses of a large plane hitting the Pentagon -- is contemptuously brushed aside.
While I can have a dialogue with people who don't share my views on a number of topics, it is impossible to have one with a Denier. It isn't just that they are wrong, even worse is the fact their arguments are so damn dishonest.
This and the admonition over at the DailyKos are perhaps a welcome awakening on the left. They are going to have a hard time governing if much of their base is allowed to become unhinged because their saner members don't dissuade them from buying into this crap.
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