Nutty Napolitano and Goofy Geraldo Raise Eyebrows

CNN, seeing a chance to get a dig in at their fiercest rival, highlights the new new celebrity Troofers:

It's rare that two media watchdogs – one on the left and one on the right – ever agree when it comes to assessing coverage on the cable news outlets.

But both the conservative Newsbusters and liberal Media Matters are aiming fire at Fox News' Geraldo Rivera and Judge Andrew Napolitano for recently suggesting the third building to fall on September 11, 2001 – 7 World Trade Center- may have collapsed for reasons beside the widely held belief that fire from the two World Trade Center towers nearby was the ultimate cause.

Newsbusters:

Both Napolitano and Rivera have, er, raised questions about the "official" (read: commonsensical) explanation for the collapse of the WTC7 building on September 11, 2001. This conspiracy theory has been thoroughly debunked a number of times. Apparently Geraldo and the Judge are not convinced.

Media Matters:

As Media Matters has documented, Napolitano's previous Jones appearances have been marked with conspiracy theories about the government and the "New World Order." For instance, Napolitano and Jones have agreed that Obama will "start a wider global war" to "be a prince," and discussed whether a powerful banking cartel linked to "world government" would "collapse the economy" and use that "as an excuse for martial law." Napolitano also told Jones of Texas secession: "That time has come. That may actually happen" because of the actions of the government.

Newsbusters links our old buddy Alllahpundit from a couple weeks ago on the Gerald conversion:

Why, oh why, oh why would the nefarious neocon junta that’s supposedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks have bothered with Building 7 in the first place? Never mind the huge number of government operatives they would have needed to plant explosives in the various buildings damaged or destroyed that day, or the fact that somehow not a single one of them has leaked anything about the plot more than nine years later despite that information being worth untold millions. Just ask yourself: If they were going to bring down the Towers as a pretext for war in the Middle East, why the hell would they have brought down Building 7 too? The structure’s collapse adds nothing to the already severe trauma of the day, and taking the time and effort to plant explosives would only increase the odds of detection. It would have been a wholly needless risk.

Of course, the real answer to that question is that to conspiracy theorists, nothing just happens. It was always planned to happen. Oh, sure, they've got some nebulous argument about how the SEC's files on Enron were stored in the building and somehow this prevented the government from prosecuting those responsible (which would be news to Jeff Skilling).

The Huffington Post also covered Napolitano's Trooferism:

Fox Business host Andrew Napolitano revealed on Tuesday that he does not believe the government's account of the 9/11 attacks. Napolitano, who hosts "Freedom Watch" on Fox Business and is frequently seen on Fox News as a legal analyst, told radio host Alex Jones — who is a prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorist —that the attacks "couldn't possibly have been done the way the government told us."

The subject came about when Jones noted that Geraldo Rivera had recently raised questions about the collapse of World Trade Center 7 on Napolitano's Fox Business Show. 9/11 conspiracy theorists have centered on that building's collapse, contending that it was blown up by government forces. Jones asked Napolitano what his opinion about the issue was.

That post attracted an astounding 11,347 comments, and revealed that many of the Huffington Posts' moderators (apparently chosen automatically by a computerized set of criteria) are Truthers themselves.

Update: Family members weigh in:

Charles Wolf's wife, Katherine, died in the North Tower on Sept. 11. He calls conspiracies like those Napolitano discussed "ludicrous," and accused him of using the tragedy to seek attention.

"After all the investigations, they are rather ludicrous," he said. "Nine and a half years after, to bring something like this up, what kind of publicity is he looking for for himself? It appears to me to be rather self-serving. He is not worth getting upset about, he is just someone who is looking for publicity."

Rosemary Cain, whose son, firefighter George Cain, died that day, took issue with Napolitano specifically.

"Judge Napolitano? I can't believe that, I really don't believe it," she said when she heard about his comments. "What can they gain by that? I think it is beneath him to come out with a remark like that. He is in a position of respect."