Saturday, April 27, 2013

Rachel Maddow eviscerates conspiracy theorist Alex Jones


from our friend Richard Metzger over at Dangerous Minds



About ten years ago, whoever was managing Alex Jones at the time would have DVDs of Jones’ shouty “documentaries” messengered over to me at the Disinformation office.

I was already well aware of Alex Jones and sight-unseen, I already knew that this was not going to be something that I was going to be interested in, and especially not interested in investing any money into (the idea was that we would have manufactured it and distributed it on DVD).

Aside from the fact that they were obviously the products of a ranting and raving unhinged paranoiac lunatic with access to someone who knew Final Cut Pro, Jones used footage that there was no way he could have gotten the rights to use.

They were these long, like, messy video collages of fact, conjecture, crappy pixelated news footage and the jumbled-up logic, red-faced, bulging vein exhortations Jones is famous for. I will admit to watching them on the treadmill but they were always binned immediately afterwards.

In the intervening years, Jones has become a household name in some of America’s more gullible households, mostly due to Glenn Beck disgracefully elevating his profile on Fox News. Beck ultimately decided to cut out the middleman and unashamedly ripped off Alex Jones’ shtick. Oh yeah, Beck stole his act lock, stock and fucking barrel, went to the bank with it and then kicked Jones to the curb to distance himself from his hot-headed, foaming at the mouth mentor (and lesser showman). Jones does have a legitimate gripe with Glenn Beck, if you ask me, but it is Beck who deserves the blame for mainstreaming a kook like Alex fucking Jones in the first place.

Of late, Mr. Jones has been his own worst enemy, making himself into a laughingstock, first with his infamously berserk Piers Morgan interview on CNN and then again with his “false flag” accusations about the Boston bombing.

Jones makes outrageous predictions constantly. Is he ever right?

Nathaniel Downes at Addicting Info thinks Alex Jones is a fraud. That might be more than a little unfair to Jones—I think he believes what he says, he’s just fucking nuts—but he’s amassed an impressive list of some of Alex Jones’ greatest misses from 2012:

Worldwide shortage of rare earth metals – Didn’t happen

Food supply disruptions hit western nations – Didn’t happen

Deadly superbug mutation goes wild – Didn’t happen

New evidence links vaccines and neurological disorders – The opposite happened

U.S. power grid suffers catastrophic failure – Didn’t happen

Satellite breakdown – Didn’t happen

GM crop contamination leads to crisis – Didn’t happen

Honeybee population collapse spreads to other species – Didn’t happen

Weather patterns become increasingly radicalized – Debatable

Nuclear power sees global resurgence – The Fukushima incident discredited this

Nuclear weapons unleashed in the Middle East – Didn’t happen

New exotic superfood from South America emerges in western markets – Didn’t happen

A high-tech, portable vitamin D sensor device is invented – Didn’t happen

U.S. debt gets downgraded while world investors slash purchases of U.S. debt instruments – The debt was downgraded, but investors still flock to it

U.S. nearly comes to military conflict with China over natural resources – Didn’t happen

Huge new scandal implicates major pharmaceutical company in scientific fraud – Nothing out of the ordinary here

China unleashes armies of corporate espionage hackers onto western nations – Some debate on this is ongoing

Medical imaging scandal unfolds as older patients begin to show serious health damage from radiation via mammograms, CT scans and more – Didn’t happen

Another 9/11 false flag incident – Didn’t happen

The world won’t end on December 21, 2012 – Hey, a stopped clock is right twice a day!

EPA pressured to regulate pharmaceuticals in the water supply – Can’t even contemplate this one without the brain hurting

Nursing home drugging scandal exposed – Didn’t happen

The psychiatric industry will declare more normal behaviors to be “disorders” – Didn’t happen

Vaccine industry goes crazy with new vaccines for all sorts of “diseases” – Didn’t happen

War on health freedom ramps up, targeting raw milk, homeopathy, herbs and supplements – Didn’t happen

The world becomes a far more dangerous place for honest citizens – So open-ended you cannot even evaluate

New attempts are made to destroy internet freedom – SOPA and PIPA have been discussed for awhile, so not a real argument

China’s boom will bust, sending ripples through global economy – Didn’t happen

Central and South America will drop the U.S. dollar as a currency – Didn’t happen

Local currencies emerge following the collapse of the dollar – As the dollar didn’t collapse, this didn’t happen

TSA suspends full body scanners after celeb photo scandal – No, was suspended due to dangerous exposure to radiation

Cell phone brain tumors start to appear in younger users – Didn’t happen

Medical industry claims to find cause of autism – Didn’t happen, although some hope has been raised

Terrorist strike on the U.S. water supply – Didn’t happen

Sperm count drops, infertility rates rise – Fertility is increasing, not decreasing, across the United States

“Stealth personal recorders” go mainstream – We call them Cell Phones, although Alex Jones is quick to claim that they cause cancer


Good times!

 

 

Rachel Maddow’s epic Alex Jones takedown from last night is quite amusing. She starts off all serious, but wait until the clips of feverishly ranting Alex Jone start. After that she riffs on him like the fool he is and annihilates him, but with her typical good-natured wryness. Jones is perfect fodder for her wit. Good stuff.

 

 

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