I used to know a lot of conspiracy theorists, but I cut them out of my life. They have two major problems (aside from being weird, bigoted, gullible, repetitive, paranoid, inflexible and often wrong): 1. They have no sense of humor, and 2. They interrupt everyone else ALL THE TIME.
This essay on joke-telling by Roger Ebert explains why those two problems are connected. Jokes don't work when they are interrupted. Next time you're trapped next to someone who wants to tell you all about the New World Order and Building 7 and the dreaded CFR, try, as an experiment, to regale him with the following:
A homeless man walks up to a guy and asks for some spare change.
Guy says, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be. Shakespeare."
Homeless man says, "Fuck you. Mamet."
Guaranteed: The true Conspiracy Guy won't let you utter the name "Shakespeare" without bursting in to give you a five-minute brain dump on the Bacon theory or the Oxford theory or (best of all!) the Marlowe theory.
Actually, a true paranoid would probably jump in the moment you say the word "man." Pretty much any noun can trigger a Conspiracy Guy. (Also, Conspiracy Guys tend to be so out of it, pop culturally, that they probably don't know who Mamet is.)
Yeah, I occasionally posit the odd eccentric thesis. But at least I'll let you get to the punchline.
17 comments:
You're way ahead of me with the conspiracy guys. They interrupt you--which means they were listening to you in the first place.
Joe, that's an awfully broad dismissal of a variety of people and a variety of conspiracy theories. The majority of Americans (and the House Select Committee on Assassinations) believe there was a conspiracy in the murder of John Kennedy. The members of the 9/11 Commission (and the majority of Americans) believe there was a conspiracy involving 18 young Middle Eastern men in the terrorist attacks. Are all those people equally "weird, bigoted, gullible, repetitive, paranoid, inflexible and often wrong"? Or do those terms only apply to conspiracy theorists with whom you disagree? The word "conspire"--"to breath together"--applies to a lot of activities. Didn't high-level officials conspire to dupe us into a needless war by invoking the threat of "uranium from Niger"?
Speaking of being out of it pop-culturally speaking, shouldn't the joke be updated to change Mamet to Milch?
Or even better, fuckin' Milch? ;-)
Hey, I'm down with the old school JFK guys. And I've met most of 'em -- Lifton, Wecht, Lane, Judge, Scott. They would all let a joke-teller get to the punch line.
But the new generation of paranoids? Something changed.
This reminds me of something from the Beetlejuice cartoon. It's the afterlife, and Shakespeare has writer's block. In exasperation, he moans:
"Maybe Bacon really DID write my plays."
:)
Sergei Rostov
Q: How many conspiracy theorists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Do you *know* how many conspiracy theorists have been killed by light bulbs?!?
Sergei Rostov
Ah, Scott. And you've probably met him, you lucky dog.
One thing about this entry jumps out at me, Joe:
Conspiracy guys are "weird, bigoted, gullible, repetitive, paranoid, inflexible and often wrong."
"Weird," "gullible," "repetitive," "paranoid," "inflexible" and "often wrong" I understand, but..."bigoted"?
Maybe it's my under-30 inexperience talking, but I haven't met any conspiracy nuts I thought were bigoted. Seriously?
Ugh. I let the reference to anti-Stratfordian horseshit through against my better judgment. I mean, I know it's a joke, (or, at least, I hope it is) but it just looks so...wrong.
Gee, Nibbles, I hope you aren't presuming that I am an anti-Stratfordian. A lot of Conspiracy folk are, though.
That said, the Marlowe theory is very fetching. I don't believe it, but I enjoy it. Trouble is, Marlowe's style does not resemble Willie's at all.
If ever you are in L.A., check out the library at the Philosophical Research Society near Griffith Park. They have a boggling collection of rare anti-Stratfordian volumes.
Joe -
Hmm, I thought Nibbles was referring to *my* joke...which of course uses the Bacon bit (er, part the pun) simply as a foil to make a commentary on the artistic temperament.
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Perry -
In this case, "listen" has a different meaning; they aren't paying attention so much as looking for any kind of verbal opening into which they can insert their diatribes.
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Trojan Joe -
Joe was referring to what are more commonly called "conspiracy nuts" i.e. people whose lives are consumed with one or more conspiracy theories. I am reminded of the one guy in Linklater's Slackers:
[Two poeple meet in a bookstore]
"Hey haven't seen you in a while - what have you been up to?"
"Oh, just working on my JFK assasssination theories."
Sergei Rostov
Sergei, you're right. There's an important difference between a conspiracy RESEARCHER and a conspiracy BUFF.
When I do it, it's research.
When I hide in Jennifer Connelly's bushes, it's not stalking, it's research.
Sergei Rostov
Ah, research, buffery, jokes, pseudo-irony. He who tries too hard gets patronised :-)
Beware straw men. Opposition to false approaches can be over-determined :-)
The alternative to this straw man called "conspiracy theory" is what? Can it be described without comedy?
A solid and profound basis is needed from which to make radical criticism. Nowadays involving a total rejection of what the media are all about. Not of every detail of every message, of course; but of what the use of those means of communication by their controllers is all about. Oh dear, I'm too serious. I'll never make it to the captain's table or meet all those big names. Just didn't ever work up the poise and the right attichewed.
Without that solid basis, one becomes like Karl Popper, some kind of pro-western liberal democrat, or yer average telly watcher who gets drunk at the weekend to forget last week, where political details play the role of the football results, horse form, or chewing gum.
I didn't have a clue who Mamet was. Looked him up, got to a Wikipedia page, didn't bother reading more than a sentence. Kind of proud to be ignorant of such stuff. Would I have known about him if he worked in Britain? Probably not.
Joe - you seem to have read very widely on the Shakespeare authorship question. I know practically zero about that area. It's interesting that he didn't have more of a profile in London. And most of the material told to people in Stratford today is about how he "would have" attended such-and-such a school, and "would have" done this and that in the town, and so on. So you can understand why many intelligent people who haven't spent much time studying the issue are sceptical. But the few people I know whose attitudes I respect who've read a lot about it tend to be Stratfordians.
Certainly there are posh people who don't like the idea that such a great playwright came from a non-posh background. They'd prefer the author to have been someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth. (The 'argument' advanced by Enoch Powell was that he himself knew, from his experience in statesmanship, that the author of the plays must have had similar experience rather than being the son of a local agricultural trader).
Why Georg Cantor (the mathematical "aleph" man) was into Baconianism is something I mean to look into some time. Not that I'll ever get to that library in Los Angeles. Wouldn't ever want to visit the US, and doubt that I'd be allowed entry.
b
Well, yeah, b, the snob thing is what makes the anti-Stratford viewpoint kind of repellent to me. But it's also the question of how WS knew all that stuff -- everything from sailing to lawyering to herb gardening to brick laying. I can't imagine an aristocrat doing the research. I CAN imagine a cheeky, ambitious lad from Warwickshire buying a round of drinks for some sailors and asking them for some authentic-sounding nautical terms.
Of all the anti-Stratford candidates, the only one who wasn't an aristo was Marlowe. So that's one reason why I'm kind of fond of that theory.
As for Mamet: You should rent "Homicide." Seriously. It touches on issues you've written about pertinent to the Middle East. And it is ABOUT the seductive allure of conspiracy theory.
Oh, Nibbles...
I met PDS only once. I tried to start a conversation but he bowed out, very diplomatically. He was, after all, a diplomat. I also had a chance to edit one of his pieces for publication -- and don't ask which, because I can't tell the story here. I didn't change a word. There was no need to -- besides, I wouldn't dare.
I also used to communicate every so often with his protogee Jeffrey Bale. Imagine a Peter Dale Scott who plays in a rock band on the weekends.
@ b : 2:43 AM,
A crew of scumbags attacked Cantor (or his discoveries and accomplishments), driving him near insane in the late '80s when he did that stuff on Shakespeare. It enrages and saddens me. Dryden's attack on Shakespeare, though of course they were not exactly contemporaries, is of the same stink, and has people discussing authorship of Shakespeare's plays instead of rediscovering the principles of what he did with language that make them such enduring masterpieces.
Re Cantor, search (copy and paste)
cantor crowley steiner
for a lead on what happened. But in the end we would be the better for rejoining the great discoveries of Cantor and Shakespeare rather than being sucked into the fetid swamps created by the barely functioning minds of their wretched detractors.
(Apologies if I have caused offense. I don't drink alcohol, but I fear I sound as if I am one writing after too much to drink. I am simply drunk with rage. I am SICK of the dirty smelly boot of manufactured "popular opinion" so arrogantly pressing down on the body of beautiful humanity. Sick beyond words.)
Not sure if you're aware, but YOU ARE a conspiracy guy.
Also, everyone knows that today's mainstream news is conspiracy news from four years ago.
Thanks G. I wonder what in Cantor's work irked them. No way did he go to the Hebrew alphabet by accident. An Aleister Crowley and Bertrand Russell connection? Another reason to look more closely at Trinity College Cambridge! :-) b (wondering about that peace symbol)
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