names to hide their connection to energy companies. Lance Armstrong and just a handful of his closest friends among cyclists knew about his doping activities, but eventually even this tiny circle of silence was broken. And despite the fear of death for breaking the code of silence, or omertà, in the Mafia, sooner or later there is a weak link and the crime bosses go down.
Large secret government operations, like the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, never work as well as they are planned and eventually screw up and are exposed. The Iran-Contra affair was top secret, but eventually a bunch of people made mistakes and it was revealed and investigated. As Michael Shermer quips whenever a 9/11 Truther speaks, “You know how I know it’s not a big government conspiracy that’s been successfully kept secret for many years? Because it happened during the Bush Administration.” Conspiracy believers claimed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was going to operate concentration camps to keep opponents of the Obama administration under control—which is laughable, because FEMA did not have that capability, as shown by its botched response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Also, FEMA employees are not sworn to secrecy. Nearly everything FEMA does is completely open.
Conspiracy theorists claim that these top-secret organizations are capable of hiding everything, but as the Wikileaks and Edward Snowden examples show, sooner or later there is one weak link or leaker who talks or blows the whistle, and government secrets are secret no longer. Donald Trump tried to get away with extorting Ukraine for dirt on his opponent, but a whistleblower exposed that conspiracy and Trump was impeached for it. The Freedom of Information Act has given reporters the power to delve into almost any secret organization, especially governmental organizations, and no secret stays hidden long. The more people and more organizations are required to keep the entire thing hush-hush, the less likely it could actually happen.
On his HBO show Last Week Tonight, comedian John Oliver does a hilarious send-up of the entire conspiracy theory mind-set, especially crazy conspiracy YouTube videos. As he puts it, “Conspiracy theories: they’re just fairy tales adults tell each other on YouTube.” In three minutes, he parodies all the excesses of this way of thinking and “proves” the absurd idea that Cadbury Creme Eggs are a conspiracy by the Illuminati. I highly recommend you watch the video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNS41ecOaAc, or use your browser to search for it.
The Flat Earth
The “Wisdom” of Celebrities
In 2016 and 2017, the media were abuzz with reports of yet another celebrity suggesting that the earth is flat. Most of the coverage was incredulous and slightly sarcastic, but by giving these ridiculous ideas so much coverage, the media ended up spreading the ideas more widely and even, to some extent, legitimizing them. As tabloid journalism has practiced for years, “if it bleeds, it ledes,” and this is even more true now. In today’s media world, the whole point of reporting something sensational or crazy, no matter how ridiculous it is, is to get attention and more hits on the website or to sell more magazines. After all, the bottom line is what matters, not the objective truth. But media reports seldom give a critique or a detailed explanation of why 99.99 percent of the world doesn’t think the earth is flat.
The media had already created a fuss in 2008 when Sherri Shepherd of the morning talk show The View and reality TV personality Tila Tequila said that the earth is flat, or at least questioned the idea that the earth is round.1 (These same people espoused other discredited notions as well: Shepherd is a creationist, and Tila Tequila has preached a wide variety of controversial ideas, including neo-Nazi antisemitism). A number of prominent professional athletes, including Denver Nugget forward Wilson Chandler,2 Cleveland Cavalier (now Boston Celtic) guard Kyrie Irving,3 retired NBA center Shaquille O’Neal,4 and Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Stefon Diggs,5 also came out for the flat-earth notion in 2017 and 2018. Irving explained his thinking in the following words:
Is the world flat or round?—I think you need to do research on it. It’s right in front of our faces. I’m telling you it’s right in front of our faces. They lie to us…. Everything that was put in front of me, I had to be like, “Oh, this is all a facade.” Like, this is all something that they ultimately want me to believe in…. Question things, but even if an answer doesn’t come back, you’re perfectly fine with that, because you were never living in that particular truth. There’s a falseness in stories and things that people want you to believe and ultimately what they throw in front of us.6
O’Neal is a famous prankster who loves to punk reporters with outrageous statements. He later admitted he was joking just to get a reaction out of people.7 Irving eventually retracted his statements and gave a public apology to America’s science teachers.8
The biggest public outrage was the reaction to statements made by rapper B.o.B., whose legal name is Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. B.o.B has advocated the full range of conspiracy theories, including the idea that the moon landing was a hoax, 9/11 was an inside job, the Illuminati are trying to establish a New World Order, Jews are secretly in control of everything, and the US government is actively cloning people. Not only did he start a Twitter war about his beliefs, but he upped the ante, getting into a rap battle with astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson,9 repeating all the usual debunked claims of flat-earthers, and even setting up a GoFundMe campaign to raise $200,000 for his own rocket to send up a satellite so that he could see for himself. Like most flat-earthers, he believes that everything from NASA is a hoax, so he wants to do it himself. The idea of sending his own rocket up would be laughable if it were not so sad, and it doesn’t consider the problem that even a cheap satellite launch costs about $62 million. Then he recorded and released a rap video called “Flatline,” expanding on his ideas, challenging Tyson directly, and even mentioning the noted Holocaust denier David Irving. Some of the lyrics include
Aye, Neil Tyson need to loosen up his vest.
They’ll probably write that man one hell of a check.
I see only good things on the horizon.
That’s probably why the horizon is always rising
Indoctrinated in a cult called science
And graduated to a club full of liars.10
Not to be outdone, Tyson wrote his own rap song, “Flat to Fact,” and his nephew, Stephen Tyson, rapped and recorded it. Some of the lyrics include
Very important that I clear this up.
You say that Neil’s vest is what he needs to loosen up?
The ignorance you’re spinning helps to keep people enslaved, I mean mentally.
All those strange clouds must be messing with your brain.
I think it’s very clear that Bobby didn’t read enough
And he’s believing all this conspiracy theory stuff.11
In March 2018, in a flat-earther stunt, motorcycle racer, daredevil, and limo driver “Mad” Mike Hughes launched his own homemade rocket almost 1,875 feet into the sky from a homemade launchpad near Amboy, California, on the floor of the Mojave Desert.12 His intention was to get high enough to see if the earth really looked curved from space, but at the elevation he reached, it would have been impossible to tell—and he was only in the sky for less than a minute in a violently vibrating rocket with a tiny window, after which he made a hard landing and sustained severe injuries.
Hughes
