Beyond the fringe

A few years ago Francis Wheen, who has written much on the subject of Mumbo-Jumbo, noted a tenacity characteristic of a certain class of crank beliefs:

To the congenital conspiracy theorist, the sort who denies that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, there is a simple rule: always disbelieve the evidence of your own eyes. Whatever remains, however improbable or downright impossible, must be the truth. Ergo there are no columns of refugees [in Kosovo]: it's all done by trick photography.

It's a useful rule, and extends even to those who have never (at least to my knowledge, and in public) speculated that the moon landings were faked by the Freemasons. Andrew Bolt of the Australian Herald Sun has sent me his latest column, which deals with a well-known foreign correspondent. Apparently Robert Fisk (for it is he) gave a lecture this month at Sydney University that was broadcast on Australian television on Sunday. He said:

Serious people across the States are asking -- people in Iowa, for God's sake -- are asking me in letters, 'What really happened [on 9/11]? How did those buildings fall so neatly down?'

And I can't answer them except to say I am in Beirut and not New York and I can't investigate this. But there are a lot of things we don't know, a lot of things we're not going to be told.

I would suggest that Fisk go from Beirut to New York and conduct his investigation, but the exercising of this type of speculation by a senior foreign correspondent for a distinguished British newspaper is not a matter for levity.