De plane, de plane

I'm a big believer of non-believing.

I have little faith in religion, politics, media or anything resembling an institution. I'm a natural born cynic. And though I have a healthy respect for those consumed by doubt, I'm also acutely aware of when skeptics go off the rail.

Particularly the conspiracists.

The Birthers who claim President Obama was born in Kenya. The 911 Truthers who believe it was the CIA and Haliburton that blew up the World Trade Center. Or even the white supremacist militias who put their stock in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and who are convinced the Jews run the world.

This is particularly troubling because if my tribe is pulling all the strings I'd like to know why I have not been invited to one god damn meeting.

Of course, what these conspiracy theorists lack in credibility, they more than make up for in sheer imagination.

Perhaps that's why I end up spending an inordinate amount of my time paging through their websites and watching their incredulous youtube videos.

I don't have the energy or the inclination to debunk all their harebrained notions. I would hope most people with any common sense would see that's exactly what these folks lack. But I'll give you a great cherry-picked example -- which, by the way, is the favorite methodology of conspiracists.

Take this picture for instance. On many videos and on many websites, the 911 Truthers allege, there is a missile strapped to the bottom of the 767 that struck the South Tower.

A missile? Really?

I don't see a missile in this grainy shot but if there were one, the reality is it would measure more than 15 feet in length. Hardly something the baggage handlers at Logan Airport would have missed that morning.

"Hey Bobby, hand me that Samsonite... what the hell...is that a two ton LGB-AF62 with laser guided telemetry and infra-red capability jerry-rigged to the bottom of this wide body commercial airliner?"

It simply doesn't add up. Unless the baggage handlers and anybody else who saw the planes that morning, including other pilots, ground crew, and little children staring out the window before boarding their flight and torturing 250 innocent passengers, were all in on the jig.

Is that what these folks are suggesting?

This is where conspiracy theories fall apart. They depend on massive collaboration, deception and off-the-chart intelligence.

And frankly from my experience in the world, and in the advertising world in particular, people are just too damn stupid to pull that off.