Halls of ivy

[Grant Barrett]

On Sunday, March 12, 2000, James E. Clapp <jeclapp at WANS.NET> wrote:

>Yes.  How do people come up with these things?  And why do others give them
>credence?  I think the phenomenon is related to general popular paranoia:
>The obvious explanation for something must be a cover-up for a much more
>complicated (and usually sinister) truth, and the more self-evident the
>explanation the more devious and dangerous the plotters are.
>
>Examples from Roswell, New Mexico, etc., etc., abound; but this general way
>of thinking was nicely illustrated for me when I was clerking for a federal
>judge and we were assigned one of those cases filed periodically by
>completely wacky people...

Very nicely put.

Anyone who's ever worked for a newspaper of any size probably has a wacko file on
hand filled with letters espousing theories of this type. My favorite conspiracy, which
I may still have around here somewhere, was an eighty-some-odd page manifesto
linking Reagan, Kennedy, the Pope and Michael Jordan. Our paper had a policy to try to
print all letters; even this one saw a few column inches because it was far more
interesting than the repetitive deluge from Jesus-wheezing harpies about the sin of
homosexuality.

The most bothersome thing, to me, about these unverified theories (even in
etymology), is that there is a gradation from true to false and these theories run the gamut.
Some are no more slightly off than a bad if-then statement, so though still false,
they may seem plausible.