There are a lot of conspiracy-debunking materials out there, and a skilled debater can thoroughly dismantle the Loose Change filmmakers if she prepares. I’d especially advise Hasselbeck to stand up to Rosie herself, who promised that she would get physicists from Harvard and Yale to appear on The View to back up her theories about controlled demolition. Instead, these no-name dropouts are the best she could do.
But even if the conspiracy theorists are humiliated on The View this Thursday, the fact that they made it onto the show at all is disturbing enough. In the 1980s, tacky talk shows like Donahue and Geraldo regularly allowed neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and Holocaust deniers to shock the audience. Although their beliefs were always challenged, sometimes vigorously, just the fact that they were invited on the air conferred a legitimacy upon their beliefs that they did not deserve. In her seminal book Denying the Holocaust, Deborah Lipstadt writes about how the producers of one show wanted her to debate so-called “revisionists” on the air. They told her they thought it was important that viewers saw “the other side” of the issue.
No matter what happens on The View, the “9/11 truth movement” will have been exposed to millions of daytime TV viewers who will never have heard of it. Their theories will have been deemed a subject worthy of debate, and this nonsense will take another step toward the mainstream.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - TV and Film Guy
Congratulations! This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States.
2 - Chris
Unfortunatly she really would have the short end of the stick. CTers always have the upperhand in a debate as they just need to list their 'facts' with no need to show scientific proof while the debunker is left with having to know all the different science topics involved to debunk it. And without foreknowledge of topics covered, there is just no way to prepare properly. Rosie and the CTers have already won. And they will beat that into everyones head across the internet.
3 - KateHarding
Why is this necessarily a job for the "token conservative?" 9/11 conspiracy theories are not a liberal thing--they're a conspiracy theorist thing. As you said, the theories are easily debunked. Most liberals embrace logic, believe it or not.
4 - lori
Ms. Hasselbeck spells her name with an "s" rather than a "z": Elisabeth
5 - Lisa McKay
Fixed, thank you (and hi!).
6 - Deano
I don't understand why they would be giving these nuts a major media venue in the first place. I can only assume the big foot hunters and fake alien autopsies are due up next....
Stupidity really ought to be a capital crime.
7 - Steinback
While it's not hard to see what is speculation and what isn't in films like "Loose Change", "9-11 Mysteries", etc, you don't appear capable of such seperation. Watch "Press For Truth" to get a hold of a good 9-11 movie that plainly shows so many of the lies we have been presented. But you may not even believe that which is fact given your attachment to the Popular Mechanics article, which was so full of fallacy and outright lies in so many instances that I feel if that's your best argument against these conspiracies then you may up and decide tomorrow we've been invaded by aliens, and they look just like us.
8 - Tom Johnson
I really love topics like this because it gets everyday people insisting that they are experts on things that it takes many years of college and post-graduate education to achieve the knowledge the experts need to be able to determine what happens in disasters like this. The physics of events like this are so far beyond our normal understanding of everyday life that we "everyday people" can't begin to grasp what is going on in them. Anyone who insists he/she does is a fool.
9 - Jacob
Every major event in the past 100 or so years has a conspiracy hypothesis surrounding it. No matter what the outcome there would be a conspiracy attached to 9/11. So to try to eliminate any of that is impossible. With that said Damian and people like him have wholeheartedly supported every action the government have done with regards to 9/11 by not investigating it. There are many questions that have not been answered and many that will never be answered because the steel was shipped to China so fast that a second more conclusive study did not have after the FEMA study. There are many things that could have been learned from studying 9/11 conclusively and that would have saved lives in the future. Unfortunately people's emotions got the best of them and we won't know everything we should about 9/11.
10 - Mike
Maybe the truth is just so awful, many of you wouldn't have the mental capacity to handle it. The important thing is that we learn the truth and we expose the lies! All of the evidence, if looked at closely and with an open-mind, concludes that the united states government, at the very least, knew 911 was coming and allowed it to happen. Even further evidence suggests that they had a direct hand in it.
The only way we will ever get to the bottom of it all is if we properly examine ALL of the evidence. And that has yet to be done. Tune in to my show, every weeknight, 10pm-12am EDT as we examine this and other issues that are continually ignored by the mainstream media!
Revolution Radio, Monday-Friday 10pm-12am EDT!
11 - Ryan
All of you who are not in favor of having this debate on The View are hypocrits. You call 9/11 Truth Activists "nuts" etc. , but you have NOT heard our claims. Perhaps you have read a negative spin article on us, or perhaps you watch Fox News with Bill O'Reilly.
Let me get this straight.
You believe that there was a conspiracy to commit murder in Iraq, and to kill american soldiers by lying about WMD's in Iraq.
You believe that Bush has secretly tried to make himself a dictator by passing Executive Orders outlining his responsibilities should another major attack occur.
You believe that Bush and his cronies are secretly spying on Americans which is completely UNCONSTITUTIONAL.
But you cannot fathom for even a second that they wouldn't plan something like 9/11 in order to make this stuff happen?
Let me help you. You liberals (I was once one too) believe that Republicans are bad and that Democrats are good. That is SOOOO wrong.
There is no left/right paradigm in the US. It is a lie. Both parties are in cohoots to keep us from having power. You know, THE PEOPLE.
Go read the F-ing constitution and declaration of independence sometime!
Before it is outlawed.
12 - Anonymous
Mike, please stop using 9/11 to attempt to advance your pedestrian radio show. Thank you.
Also, you have no proof. All you have is unsubstantiated, wild speculation.
Thank you.
13 - Anonymous
Quotation by Tom Johnson:
"it gets everyday people insisting that they are experts on things that it takes many years of college and post-graduate education to achieve the knowledge the experts need to be able to determine what happens in disasters like this."
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All of the truthers are just mouth-pieces for what they've been told by Uncle Alex, et. al. They have no concept of what they say; they are just told to say it and are only too happy to comply.
Don't believe me? Go ahead and ask Mike or Ryan their background in physics and chemistry.
14 - Harbinger
Truthers think something is true merely because it's on the internet and coincides with their uneducated philosophies.
15 - jimmyb
The TRUTH is not always pretty. The TRUTH is you are really blood and guts,flesh and bone when disected and closely observed. It's not easy to look at, but thats the truth.
9-11 was designed to shock and scare the hell out of people. It was designed that way, so people WOULD NOT ALLOW themselves to ever belive that their government could ever be capable of something so evil. So the masses readily accepted the lie handed to us by our so called government.
9-11 brought obscene wealth to the people involved. It also brought misery and dark control to the rest of the world.
The 9-11 Truth Movement is a sincere organization. They literally are bringing the Truth to light. Wether you choose to listen or not.
16 - Harbinger
jimmyb---
You sound like an Alex Jones pull-string doll. Turn off your television and go learn something please.
17 - George
"9-11 brought obscene wealth to the people involved."
Yes. Ask Alex Jones and Dylan Avery to give you an honest evaluation of their respective incomes and popularity before and after 9/11.
Who benefitted, indeed.
18 - jimmyb
Harbinger and George, I'll turn off my TV if you both just go back to sleep. You both are one of those people whose mind will not allow them to think the unthinkable. I know...The Truth hurts....
19 - Ryan
Do you have a pychology degree to be analyzing us like so? Didn't think so.
Experts are great, and we have hundreds on our side, every day gaining more and more support.
If our movement were illegit, you'd see a fad, and then a quick fading off into the sunset.
Quite to the contrary, we are seeing our numbers multiply day after day after day.
No one was EVER been a 9/11 Truth activist and then one day sat down and said, "you know what, I was wrong all of this time"
but the reverse happens thousands of times a day.
The truth is self-evident. If you can name one piece of evidence that the Government could have failed to intercept four airliners on the most important day to intercept them, and previoulsy in 2001 intercept over 60 flights, please do.
If you can provide ONE PIECE of evidence (let alone proof) that Osama Bin Laden was directly or indirectly invovled in 9/11. Please do.
Both the US and UK governments promised to produce proof, but they never did.
Study the Pakistani ISI connect to Atta.
Study the insider trading.
Study our NORAD air-defense system.
Study it all, then make up your minds. Don't reject the truth just because it is unpleasent to contemplate, or unpopular to discuss.
Dissent is what made this country great, and continues to ensure our freedom from tyrants.
Those who try to silence us. I ask you. Who benefits from your compliance?
20 - sean Paul Mahoney
The bigger conspiracy going on here is The View's ratings stunt conspiracy. TPTB at the show had to do something to save the slumping coffee clatch from cancellation.
Since Rosie's arrival the show has become tabloid fodder (Rosie vs Barbara, Rosie vs Trump, Rosie vs Elisabeth, Rosie vs Kelly Ripa vs Clay Aiken, etc.). And the ratings have never been better.
This "going away present" is one last ditch effort to keep tounges wagging about The View while producers scramble to find her replacement. It has little to do with a search for the truth about 911 and more to do with the almighty advertising dollar.
21 - George
Just bury your head jimmyb, and maybe Uncle Alex will be in later to read you a bedtime story.
22 - Frank Parker
"Stupidity really ought to be a capital crime."
And thus you would be the first case to be tried.
Any topic that generates the hundreds of millions of page views and webhits that this one does is automatically cause for discussion in the mainstream. As a PhD in physics I can only say that nothing thus far presented by way of "official explanation" has come within striking distance of scientific reality. I don't have any idea who committed this crime, nor the specifics of how it was executed, but I know that the explanations provided by the media and our government are demonstrably false.
What honest and thoughtful person wouldn't you want to resolve this issue?
23 - Harbinger
We're not buying your Alex Jones parroted fraud, jimmyb. Feel free to deny 9/11. It is a fundamental freedom. But it is also my fundamental freedom to call you an idiot (in so many words). So, be stupid, but don't be surprised when you are treated accordingly.
24 - jimmyb
Frank Parker, Very well said. Thank you.
25 - Harbinger
"I can only say that nothing thus far presented by way of "official explanation" has come within striking distance of scientific reality."
________________________________________________
You do know "The 9/11 Commission Report" was an estimation based on available facts (a "best guess") and not a doctrine of absolute truth, don't you?
Also, it is unlikely you've officially investigated the events. Consequently, your entire realm of knowledge and understanding is in the domain of the internet. If you are the consummate scientist you claim (and not just a pedant), you will easily recognize the inherent danger and restrictions of such knowledge and understanding.